Friz Freleng

 

Friz Freleng is probably the most famous name featured here; being a Looney Tunes director and co-founder of Depatie-Freleng Productions. He had a major role in the creation of many a famous character, including Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Pink Panther and Speedy Gonzales. He also hailed from Kansas City.

Friz, whose real name is Isadore, was born in Kansas City, Missouri on August 21st, 1905. Friz attended Westport High School, where he drew cartoons for The Weekly Crier (the school newspaper) from 1919 to 1923. While still in school, Freleng applied to be an office boy at the United Film Ad Service (previously called the Kansas City Slide Company), where Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks also worked. While working at United Film Ad Services, Freleng would get his nickname of "Friz", after a fictional congressman in a column in The Los Angeles Examiner that he resembled. In 1927, Freleng would go west to California to work at Walt Disney's new studio, working on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. In 1929, Freleng decided to go with Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising to work at their new studio, and helped with the development of their character Bosko. While waiting for the Bosko series to be picked up, Freleng moved to New York to work at Charles Mintz's New York studio (Mintz technically had a studio in California, he had taken over production of the Oswald cartoons from Disney in 1928 and founded another studio with most of Walt's animators, including Freleng) on Krazy Kat to earn money for his family back home. Freleng did not think very highly of the Mintz studio and its methods. He worked on a few cartoons at the studio, such as Farm Relief, released in December 1929. When the Bosko series was picked up by Leon Schlesinger Productions (which later became the animation department at Warner Bros.), Freleng left Mintz and New York to return to California.

Freleng would work on the first Looney Tunes starting in 1930, and they were fairly successful, but after Harman and Ising were fired in 1933, Schlesinger got Freleng to come to his studio as a director. For the next couple years, Freleng worked and directed Buddy cartoons. Buddy was, for the most part, a white version of Bosko, who was still owned by Harman and Ising. Buddy's cartoons were not received well, so in 1935, Freleng was asked to think of a new character. Freleng would create Porky Pig, who debuted in 1935's I Haven't Got a Hat. Porky would be the first true star at the studio, and numerous cartoons would star the character. Despite the success of Porky's cartoons, Freleng would leave Schlesinger in 1937 to work at MGM, strangely enough replacing Harman and Ising again. Freleng did not like working at MGM, despite being paid more than at Schlesinger . He was put in charge of an adaptation of "The Captain and the Kids", which he said wouldn't be successful. He was right, and the series was canned after only 15 cartoons. Freleng would return to Schlesinger in 1939, and would continue to work there until the studio shut down in 1963 (By then, Schlesinger had sold the studio to Warner Bros.) This 24 year run would result in some of the funniest and most beloved cartoons in history, and numerous characters that remain popular to this day. He would develop Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck with cartoons like Yankee Doodle Daffy and Rhapsody Rabbit, create new ones like Yosemite Sam (who was partially based on Freleng himself, also being a short, short-tempered redhead), Sylvester, teaming him up with Clampett's character Tweety, and redesigned Speedy Gonzales and Tweety to their more famous designs. He also directed some of the Private Snafu cartoons, which were shown to Army soldiers in World War II to teach them about avoiding being tricked by the enemy or avoiding disease. Some of the cartoons directed by Freleng, like 1957's Birds Anonymous, even won Oscars.

In 1963, Warner Bros. decided to close their animation studio. Freleng would team up with Warner Bros. executive David DePatie to form DePatie-Freleng. The studio would design the opening titles for the movie The Pink Panther, released later that year. The titles featured a new character named the Pink Panther. The movie was not about him, revolving around a bumbling detective trying to capture a jewel thief who's trying to steal a jewel called the Pink Panther. The film was so successful, that a cartoon series based on the titles was created, also produced by DePatie-Freleng. The Pink Panther cartoons would last until 1978, before moving to television until 1980. Other series created for theaters by the studio included The Ant & The Aardvark, The Inspector (based on the main character of the Pink Panther movies), Tijuana Toads, and Crazylegs Crane. DePatie-Freleng would also create various cartoons for television, like Super 6 and Super President. After creating a few adaptations of Marvel series, the studio was sold to Marvel in 1981. MGM maintains the rights to the various theatrical cartoons produced through United Artists. Freleng would remain in the industry until 1986, when he retired. Friz Freleng would pass away on May 26th, 1995 at the age of 88.

Sources

DeAngelo, Dory. “Friz Freleng.” The Pendergast Years, 1 Mar. 2018, https://pendergastkc.org/article/biography/friz-freleng.

Baxter, Devon. “Complimentary Mintz: Krazy Kat and Toby the Pup: 1929-31.” Complimentary Mintz: Krazy Kat and Toby the Pup: 1929-31 |, 12 Apr. 2017, https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/complimentary-mintz-krazy-kat-and-toby-the-pup-1929-31/.

Hartt, Reg. “Friz Freleng at Reg Hartt's Cineforum, Toronto, Canada, 1980.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbZwISKdfnQ. Accessed 23 Nov. 2021. 

“Friz Freleng.” Lambiek.net, https://www.lambiek.net/artists/f/freleng_friz.htm.