Friz Freleng

Isadore "Friz" Freleng (August 21, 1905 – May 26, 1995), credited as I. Freleng early in his career, was an American animator, cartoonist, director, producer, and composer known for his work at Warner Bros. Cartoons on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from the 1930s to the early 1960s.

In total he created more than 300 cartoons.

He introduced and/or developed several of the studio's biggest stars, including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam (to whom he was said to bear more than a passing resemblance), Granny, and Speedy Gonzales.

The senior director at Warners' Termite Terrace studio, Freleng directed more cartoons than any other director in the studio (a total of 266), and is also the most officially-honored of the Warner directors, having won five Academy Awards and three Emmy Awards.

Freleng was born to Louis Mendel Freleng, a Polish Jewish immigrant from Kutno, and Elka (née Ribakoff) Freleng, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant from Odesa Oblast, in Kansas City, Missouri, where he attended Westport High School from 1919 to 1923 and where began his career in animation at the United Film Ad Service.

There, he made the acquaintance of fellow animators Hugh Harman and Ub Iwerks.

In 1923, Iwerks' friend, Walt Disney, moved to Hollywood and put out a call for his Kansas City colleagues to join him.

Freleng, however, held out until January 1927, when he finally moved to California and joined the Walt Disney studio.

He worked alongside other former Kansas City animators, including Iwerks, Harman, Carman Maxwell, and Rudolph Ising.

While at Disney, Freleng worked on the Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons for producers Margaret Winkler and Charles Mintz.

Friz said in an interview with Michael Barrier that Walt had shown patience and remorse in letters prior to joining him, but did not show that attitude after he joined Disney and instead Disney became abusive and harassed him.

In 1928, Freleng left the studio, due to Disney saying he "forfeited his bonus" along with comments on his animation mistakes.

Freleng moved back to Kansas to work at his old job at the United Film Ad Service.

Freleng soon teamed up with Harman and Ising (who had also left Disney's employ) to create their own studio.

The trio produced a pilot film starring a new Mickey Mouse-like character named Bosko.

Looking at unemployment if the cartoon failed to generate interest, Freleng moved to New York City to work on Mintz' Krazy Kat cartoons, all the while still trying to sell the Harman-Ising Bosko picture.

Freleng was very unhappy living in New York and made the best of it until another opportunity opened for him.

Bosko was finally sold to Leon Schlesinger, who would produce the series for Warner Bros. At first, Freleng was reluctant to return to California when Harman-Ising asked him to work on the series.

At the insistence of his Sister Jean, Freleng soon moved back to California to work on the Bosko series, ultimately released under the title Looney Tunes.

A prominent animator on the series, Freleng was eventually delegated co-directorial duties on shorts such as Bosko's Picture Show.

The young animator rapidly became Schlesinger's top director, helming the majority of the higher-budgeted Merrie Melodies shorts during the mid-1930s, and he introduced the studio's first true post-Bosko star, Porky Pig, in the film, I Haven't Got a Hat (1935).

Porky was a distinctive character, unlike Bosko or his replacement, Buddy.

As a director, Freleng gained the reputation of a tough taskmaster.

His unit, however, consistently produced high-quality animated shorts under his direction.

Harman and Ising (alongside their crew of animators) left Schlesinger's employ over disputes about budgets in 1933.

Schlesinger was left with no experienced directors and therefore lured Freleng away from Harman-Ising to successfully fix cartoons directed by Tom Palmer which Warner had rejected.

In September 1937, Freleng left Schlesinger after accepting an increase in salary to direct for the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio headed by Fred Quimby.

Freleng served as a director on The Captain and the Kids, an animated series adapted from the comic strip of the same name (an alternate version of the The Katzenjammer Kids).

In November 1938, Freleng became a "junior director" under Hugh Harman but quit after 6 months in April 1939.

Freleng happily returned to Warner Bros. in mid-April 1939 when his MGM contract ended.

One of the first Looney Tunes cartoon shorts directed by Freleng during his second tenure at the studio was You Ought to Be in Pictures, a cartoon short which blended animation with live-action footage of the Warner Bros. studio (and included staff such as story man Michael Maltese and Schlesinger himself).

The plot, which centers around Porky Pig being tricked by Daffy Duck into terminating his contract with Schlesinger to attempt a career in features, echoes Freleng's experience in moving to MGM.

Schlesinger's hands-off attitude toward his animators allowed Freleng and his fellow directors almost complete creative control and room to experiment with cartoon comedy styles, which allowed the studio to keep pace with the Disney studio's technical superiority.

Freleng's style quickly matured, and he became a master of comic timing.

Often working alongside layout artist Hawley Pratt, he also introduced or redesigned a number of Warner characters, including Yosemite Sam in 1945, the cat-and-bird duo Sylvester and Tweety in 1947, and Speedy Gonzales in 1955.

After Warner closed down the animation studio in 1963, Freleng and business partner David H. DePatie founded DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, which produced cartoons (including The Pink Panther Show), feature film title sequences, and Saturday-morning cartoons through the early 1980s.

The nickname "Friz" came from his friend, Hugh Harman, who initially nicknamed him "Congressman Frizby" after a fictional senator who appeared in satirical pieces in the Los Angeles Examiner, due to the character's strong resemblance to him.

Over time, this shortened to "Friz".

Friz Freleng directed the largest number of cartoons on the Censored Eleven, a group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons originally produced and released by Warner Bros. that were withheld from syndication in the United States by United Artists (UA) in 1968 because the use of ethnic stereotypes in the cartoons, specifically African stereotypes, was deemed too offensive for contemporary audiences.

David DePatie, when asked about the Japanese beetle in Blue Racer in 1996, said this about Friz's view on race, "It seems like poking fun at certain ethnic groups had always spelled success. Friz had always felt that way in his cartoons, especially with Speedy."