Phil Harris, Bandleader Who Was Voice Of `Jungle Book' Bear, Dies

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. - Phil Harris, singer, bandleader and comic who teamed with Jack Benny on the radio and was the voice of Baloo the bear in Disney's "The Jungle Book," is dead at 91.

Mr. Harris died of heart failure late Friday at his home in this desert town. His wife of 54 years, actress Alice Faye, and daughter Phyllis were at his side, family spokeswoman Jewel Baxter said.

With a toothy grin and Southern accent gained during a childhood in Nashville, Mr. Harris created a caricature of himself as a lovable, overdrinking swinger.

His trademark was a finger-snapping rendition of "That's What I Like About the South," and he greeted Benny show audiences with a snappy "Hiya, Jackson!"

"If it hadn't been for radio," he once said, "I would still be a traveling orchestra leader. For 17 years, I played one-night stands, sleeping on buses. I never even voted, because I didn't have any residence."

In later years, after the death of his close friend Bing Crosby, Mr. Harris took his place doing TV commentary for the annual Bing Crosby Pro-Am Pebble Beach golf tournament.

"He was the last bond between the old Crosby and the current day," Frank Chirkinian, producer for CBS-TV golf coverage, said yesterday from the PGA Championship in Los Angeles.

"I'm sure Bing's been waiting for him and he's finally arrived. Now they've got a twosome."

In 1967, Mr. Harris provided the voice of Baloo the bear in Disney's cartoon version of "The Jungle Book," based on a Rudyard Kipling novel about a boy who grows up with animals in a jungle. Mr. Harris sang the Oscar-nominated song, "The Bare Necessities."

Starting as a bandleader in the 1930s, Mr. Harris's career flourished in radio.

As a regular for 16 years on Benny's radio show beginning in 1936, he revealed a talent for rapid-fire delivery of one-liners. It was there he originated the tipsy image that stuck with him.

In 1942, he and his 25-piece orchestra enlisted in the U.S. Maritime Service.

He and his wife teamed up in 1947 for radio's "The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show" after they decided to have a family and settle in the Southern California desert some 110 miles east of Los Angeles. The show lasted until 1954.

His hit records included: "The Thing," "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)" and "The Preacher and the Bear."

A short film starring Mr. Harris, "So This is Harris," won the Academy Award for best comedy short subject of 1932-33. It was one of several films in which he appeared as himself.

He also appeared in such films as "The High and the Mighty," 1954, and "Goodbye My Lady," 1956.

"It was all fun - everything," he once said. "I say thanks to God every night that I get a kick out of every day."

Mr. Harris married Faye, his second wife, in May 1941 in Mexico. The couple remarried six months later in Galveston, Texas. The actress said she wanted to make sure "it would stick and be Americanized."

Mr. Harris also was survived by daughter Alice Regan of New Orleans, four grandchildren and two great grandchildren.