Ken was a cartoonist for the New York Daily Mirror, predicting the horse races in his strip Joe and Asbestos.
In the 1940s, Ken and Mayme Kling hosted celebrity parties at their home at The Eldorado building in New York City.
[citation needed] The theme song, called "We Are the Men of Texaco", and written by Kling and Buddy Arnold, was the first time that a television program used music to promote a commercial advertiser's product.
In the decades that followed, "We are the Men of Texaco" and the way it was staged – sung by four gas station attendants (Kling's idea) – was licensed by Kling's heirs to filmmakers wishing to depict the impact of television's advent on the American family (like Barry Levinson's 1990s film Avalon).
Finally, in late 1969, Kling moved to Hollywood, California where he wrote for Joseph Barbera the filmed television show Love, American Style.
While on Burnett, producer Norman Lear offered Kling the position of head writer on a new emerging show called All in the Family.
In the 1980s, Kling wrote and created the program Rainbow Brite that he licensed, solely for television syndication broadcast only.
[1] Shortly after creating Rainbow Brite, Kling became ill with inoperable brain and lung cancer, eventually dying in Los Angeles on April 10, 1988.