Friz

Friz Freleng was not a disciple of the school of thought that animation must be over-the-top and outrageous.

His unit at Schlesinger/Warner Bros. created cartoons that are as entertaining as anyone else’s. You Ought To Be in Pictures, Bugs Bunny Rides Again, Back Alley Oproar, Little Red Riding Rabbit, Birds Anonymous, I could keep going and going. As a producer, his Pink Panther series was the class of 1960s theatrical animation.

Friz passed away in 1995, well after interest in old cartoons blossomed into books, fanzines and newspaper feature stories. There’s a wonderful chat with Friz and Jerry Beck in Animato 18 (Spring 1989), as well as a column of praise in the same issue by Harry McCracken. There are others interviews, of course, as Friz was called on to talk about Bugs Bunny’s 50th birthday, or a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, or The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie or various exhibitions of Warners animation art.

Here’s a feature story about him long before those days. It was published in the Kansas City Star, August 20, 1946. He wasn’t called “Friz” until he left Kansas City so that may be why the unbylined writer didn’t know how to spell it.

FUN IN A VISITOR’S PEN
ISADORE FRELENG, CARTOON CREATOR, RETURNS “HOME”
A Director for Warner Bros. Studio, the Master of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck Renews Friendship Here
One of a half-dozen cartoonists who left Kansas City in the early ‘20s to become animators and producers of pen and ink motion pictures, Isadore (Fritz) Fre1eng, returned to his home town this week for a visit.
As a director in the Warner Brothers cartoon studio Freleng created the popular “Looney Tune” series and now controls the antics of such “Merry Melodies” characters and Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.
ART IN SCHOOL PAPER FIRST

When Freleng lived here at 4543 Mercier street, he attended Westport high school. Some of his cartoons appeared in school publications during his 1919 to 1923 high school career. To earn pocket money he caddied at the Kansas City Country club and recalls that one of his fellow mashie-toters was now-famous professional golfer Jug McSpaden.
“After school I worked at Armour & Co. as a visitor’s guide for a while, then went out to United Film Service, Inc., at 2449 Charlotte street as an animator.”
It was here that Freleng became acquainted with Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse; U. B. Iwerks, creator of “Flip the Frog;” Fred Harmon [sic], originator of the Red Ryder” strip; Hugh Harmon, his brother, who, with Rudy Ising, another United man, later made the “Harmon-Ising” musical cartoons.
Disney was the first of the Kansas City group to strike out for Hollywood. Later, the others followed, all becoming Disney animators. In 1931, Freleng became associated with Warner Brothers, where he has been since.
PORKY PIG TO STARDOM.
Another Kansas Citian in the Warner office is Carl Stalling, musical director of the animated cartoon section, who formerly played the organ at the Isis theater here. “Bugs Bunny, the most popular character of ‘Merry Melodies,’ was created as a combined result of several directors and artists,” Freleng said. “I began Porky Pig in a ‘bit’ part in my third picture. He’s jumped to stardom since.”
Musicals, of the “Rhapsody In Rivets” and “Three Pigs in a Polka” type, where the action of the characters Is timed to the exact note of some well-known piece of music instead of to a set rhythmic tempo, are a Freleng innovation.
Friends at the Warner studio term Freleng the original “worry wart” because of his pessimistic view of each new picture. The slightly built, balding, blue-eyed man assures everyone that “this is my worst, and probably last, cartoon.” So far, the strips happily have proved Freleng wrong.

Several other features were printed by the Star about their native son. Let’s see what he had to say to the paper more than 40 years later. This was published April 11, 1989.

The Pink Panther’s Partner
Ex-Kansas Citian remains fond of famous creation
A portrait of Friz Freleng’s family would, of course, show the short, bespectacled Freleng flanked by his wife and children. But the picture also would have to include some world-famous offspring who live only in his imagination.
That sawed-off character with the droopy mustache and floppy ‘49ers hat? Yosemite Sam. That stuttering swine? Porky Pig. The feline with the saliva-slinging tongue and the canary with the oversize head? Sylvester and Tweety Bird, of course. And dominating them all would be the dapper Pink Panther, created by Freleng for the 1964 movie and still paying the family’s bills.
The 83-year-old animator, who has won five Oscars and three Emmys, has returned to his hometown of Kansas City for this year’s 25th anniversary festivities for the Pink Panther. The silver celebration is being undertaken by Hallmark Cards Inc., which licenses the Panther’s image for use on greeting cards, wrapping paper, toys, paper plates, napkins and other merchandise.
In Kansas City, Freleng will look up old friends and drive by his boyhood home in the 4500 block of Mercier Street and Westport High School, from which he graduated in 1923. It was at the old United Film Advertising Service at 24th and Charlotte streets that young Freleng met a co-worker named Walt Disney and began his career as an animator.
“United Film was a slide company that started making filmed ads to run in movie theaters,” Freleng recalled Monday in an interview. “Walt experimented with some animated films and got very excited about the idea of making animated shorts to sell to theaters. He figured California was the place to do it, since at that time all the animation was being done in New York.”
When Disney took off to realize his dream, Freleng took over Disney’s position, teaching himself the art of animation from a book checked out of the public library. Meanwhile, Disney was founding his studio and in 1927 summoned Freleng to join his stable of animators.
“I think I lasted nine months,” Freleng said, noting that he chafed under Disney’s dictatorial style. “I didn’t hold it against him. Walt was a genius, and a genius does what he wants. He doesn’t do what you want.”
Freleng returned to Kansas City but soon got an animation job on the Krazy Kat series in New York. Within a year he was back In Los Angeles an employee of the Warner Bros. studio, which had started its own animation department. There he stayed for 33 years.
“I did the first Looney Tune and the very last one. There were two cartoon series at Warner’s, Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies [sic]. They had the same animators and characters, but Merry Melodies were a promotional effort for Warner’s music publishing business. They were always musicals, and each cartoon’s title was based on a song.”
Although is considered the creator of Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester the Cat and Tweedy Bird [sic], he acknowledges that those characters had many fathers.
“The animators, the writers—we all did our own thing,” he explained. “We’d introduce a character and over the course of several films it would come to life.
“You can see it if you look at the old cartoons. In his first cartoon Porky hasn’t developed his whole personality, but all of us could see the possibilities. One guy would add a little of this to his personality, the next guy would add a little of that. It was like a football team cooperating. No one person could do it all. And everyone wanted his contribution to be better than anyone else’s. So we stole a little from Disney, stole a little from the guy next door, and the characters developed their own personalities.”
Today the Warner Bros. cartoons are relished for their anarchistic slapstick humor, but in the old days recognition was slow in coming. “For years and years Disney got all the accolades,” Freleng said. “Disney automatically walked away with the awards. Disney aimed for cuteness; we did slapstick. And we couldn’t beat Disney for artistic beauty. It wasn’t until 1947 that I won the first Oscar that a Warner’s animator ever got—for ‘Tweety Pie.’”
One reason the Warner’s cartoons have worn so well is that they weren’t made for kids, he said. “I made cartoons for an adult audience. It wasn’t like TV, where you know just what audience you’re aiming for. Our cartoons were meant to be seen in a theater, often by audiences that were totally adult.”
By the early ‘60s the heyday of the animated short was winding down. Cost-conscious theater owners were eliminating short subjects, cartoons and newsreels, thus allowing one more showing each day of the feature film. Warner Bros. folded its animation department and Freleng set up his own studio, directing animated commercials and industrial shorts.
Then director Blake Edwards approached Freleng about designing the title sequence for his 1964 comedy “The Pink Panther.”
“Of course, there was no character called the Pink Panther in the film,” Freleng said. “The Pink Panther was a stolen jewel. I had to find a way to personalize it on the screen.”
The obvious answer was to design a big pink cat. “When Blake saw the story board he loved it. He didn’t touch a frame. It was the longest title sequence ever seen on a film up to that time—seven minutes.
“I used to sit outside the box office where it was showing. People would walk up and want to know if the movie had begun. If they were told the title sequence had already run, they said they’d come back later. They wanted to see the cartoon. In fact, Time put the Pink Panther on the cover and said the titles were better than the film.”
Under the aegis of United Artists, Freleng’s studio between 1964 and 1979 made 192 Pink Panther shorts, all intended for theatrical play although they have since become staples of television programming. The character was wildly popular, but the cost of animation was such that when production on the short ended Freleng was $600,000 in debt.
“And then came TV syndication and merchandising,” Freleng said. “Now the Pink Panther is making a living for all of us.”
Asked to describe the Panther’s near-universal appeal, Freleng noted: “He’s a pantomimist, just like Charlie Chaplin. Most cartoons today are verbal—in fact the characters talk more than they move. But the Panther did nothing but move.
“Also, he is a mysterious creature. Henry Mancini’s music dictated a lot of that—very mysterioso. So that was a big part of the character. Also, the Panther was always thinking. The old Warner’s stuff was slapstick, but not the Panther. You always figured he was thinking how to outsmart someone.”

What was Friz Freleng’s legacy? It’s hard to say, as he wasn’t an innovator like Tex Avery or the people at UPA. But he developed a number of characters loved today and excelled in musical cartoons. His precise gag timing is admired. In short, he and his unit made an awful lot of animated shorts that people have laughed at for years and years. That’s “cartoony” for me.

A late P.S.: Paul Groh asks a legitimate question in the comments about Friz' nickname. Freleng claimed he was named after a "Congressman Frizby" character in the newspapers. I have no reason to think Freleng made this up.

In the late 1920s and through the 1930s, King Features Syndicate published a satirical grab-bag column by Ted Cook, originally called "Cook's Coo-Coos." He had several different characters, one of whom was a Congressman Horace W. Frisby (the middle name changed on a whim), who lived in the Washington Monument. The humour reminds me, and this is a little inadequate, of the surreality of Stoopnagle and Budd on radio. For example, one column had a request from Frisby for readers to send him bananas for sustenance because he lost his false teeth. Another was enactment of “Mash Prevention Week,” where he proposed to forbid policewomen from wearing lipstick and rouge, and forcing them to wear cotton stockings to stop them from getting unwanted advances. To the right is the best drawing of Frisby that I can find; it is from 1939.