LOS ANGELES - Larry Harmon, 83, a Toledo native who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a show business staple that delighted children for more than a half-century, died of congestive heart failure yesterday.

Though not the original Bozo, Mr. Harmon portrayed the popular clown in countless appearances and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations around the country. The TV stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos.

"You might say, in a way, I was cloning BTC [Bozo the Clown] before anybody else out there got around to cloning DNA," Mr. Harmon told the Associated Press in a 1996 interview.

"Bozo is a combination of the wonderful wisdom of the adult and the childlike ways in all of us," he said.

Pinto Colvig, who also provided the voice for Walt Disney's Goofy, was the first Bozo the Clown, a character created by writer-producer Alan W. Livingston for a series of children's records in 1946.

Mr. Livingston said he came up with the name Bozo after polling several people at Capitol Records.

Mr. Harmon would later meet his alter ego while answering a casting call to make personal appearances as a clown to promote the records.

He got that job and eventually bought the rights to Bozo. Along the way, he embellished Bozo's distinctive look: the orange-tufted hair, the bulbous nose, and outlandish red, white and blue costume.

"I felt if I could plant my size 83AAA shoes on this planet, [people] would never be able to forget those footprints," he said.

Susan Harmon, his wife of 29 years, said Mr. Harmon was the perfect fit for Bozo.

"He was the most optimistic man I ever met. He always saw a bright side; he always had something good to say about everybody," she said yesterday.

The business - combining animation, licensing of the character, and personal appearances - made millions as Mr. Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos over the years to represent him in local markets.

The version of Bozo ran on WGN-TV in Chicago for 40 years and was seen in many other cities after cable television hade WGN a superstation.

Bozo - portrayed in Chicago for many years by Bob Bell - was so popular that the waiting list for tickets to a TV show eventually stretched to a decade, prompting the station to stop taking reservations for 10 years.

On the day in 1990 when WGN began taking reservations again, it took just five hours to book the show for five more years.

The phone company reported more than 27 million phone call attempts had been made.

Mr. Harmon became caught up in a minor controversy in 2004 when the International Clown Hall of Fame in Milwaukee took down a plaque honoring him as Bozo and formally endorsed Mr. Colvig as the first.

Mr. Harmon denied ever misrepresenting Bozo's history. He said he was claiming credit only for what he added to the character - "What I sound like, what I look like, what I walk like" - and what he did to popularize Bozo.

"Isn't it a shame the credit that was given to me for the work I have done, they arbitrarily take it down, like I didn't do anything for the last 52 years," he told the AP at the time.

Mr. Harmon protected Bozo's reputation with a vengeance while embracing those who poked good-natured fun at the clown.

As Bozo's influence spread through popular culture, his very name became a synonym for clownish behavior.

On New Year's Day 1996, Harmon dressed up as Bozo for the first time in 10 years, appearing in the Rose Parade in Pasadena.

The crowd reaction, he recalled, "was deafening."

"They kept yelling, 'Bozo, Bozo, love you, love you.' I shed more crocodile tears for five miles in four hours than I realized I had," he said. "I still get goose bumps."

The world-famous clown was born in 1925 in Toledo's St. Vincent's Hospital and lived in Toledo until 1933, when his father's employer in the jewelry business moved the family to Cleveland.

The Harmons lived on Brentwood Avenue near Collingwood in the Old West End, and Larry attended Fulton Elementary. He later recalled memories of milk and bread deliveries to homes by horse and buggy.

In a 1996 interview with The Blade, Mr. Harmon said his interest in the entertainment industry began while in Toledo. He recalled a trip to the movies with his father to see The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson.

"He made the biggest impression on me of any star in my life, when I think about Toledo and getting my start, I think of him," he said during the interview.

Blade staff contributed to this report.

First Published July 4, 2008, 11:43 a.m.