He began to travel back and forth from Manhattan to the Bay Area, and in California he helped to found the Carmel-by-the-Sea artists' colony.

Harris was married in 1908, and after his honeymoon he built a summer home in Fortune Bridge, Prince Edward Island, helping to establish a second artists' colony there.

In the 1920s, he wrote six screenplays that were produced by Peninsula Studios, including Chalk Marks (1924), The Girl on the Stairs (1924), The Wise Virgin (1924), The Awful Truth (1925), Beauty and The Badman (1925), and Let Women Alone (1925).

He saw the major transitions in the motion picture industry occur, both the move from New York to Hollywood, and the progression from silent films to "talkies".

He would base the story on the residents of the local area of his summer home in Fortune Bridge, and actual events that occurred there.