Leigh Harline was born March 26, 1907, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the youngest of 13 children, to soldier Carl Härlin and his wife Johanna Matilda.
In 1928, he moved to California and worked at radio stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles as a composer, conductor, arranger, instrumentalist, singer, and announcer.
Harline co-scored and orchestrated music by Frank Churchill and Paul Smith specifically for Disney's first animated feature-length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.
Snow White contained several classic songs by Churchill and lyricist Larry Morey, including "I'm Wishing", "Whistle While You Work", "Heigh-Ho", and "Some Day My Prince Will Come.
His major credits include Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941) for Disney's chief competitor Max Fleischer, the Astaire-Hayworth musical You Were Never Lovelier (1942), as well as Road to Utopia (1945), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), The Desert Rats (1953), The Enemy Below (1957), Ten North Frederick (1958), Warlock (1959), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963), and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964).