Friz Gets A Director's Chair

Friz Freleng would have turned 121 today. Readers of this blog are knowledgeable enough that they don’t need me to go through his background.

However, we will give you a bit of a set-up from an interview by Jerry Beck in 1989 and published in that great magazine Animato!. Freleng explained he, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising and Ham Hamilton did a demo sound film starring Bosko after they were all dumped when Universal decided to take Oswald the rabbit away from their studio in Los Angeles. Freleng went back to New York to work for Charlie Mintz on Krazy Kat cartoons.

Then in 1930 Hugh and Rudy sold Leon Schlesinger on a Bosko series. Freleng left Mintz and returned from New York to animate on it.

Said Friz:

I stayed with Hugh and Rudy through the start of the Schlesinger era. When we lost the contract with Schlesinger [in 1933], we were doing work for Van Beuren, farm-out work. I stayed with Hugh, but I thought he was going nowhere. Not that I could see the future.
When Leon Schlesigner tempted me away from Hugh and Rudy when they went to MGM, I had a guilt complex about it. Schlesinger sent Ray Katz over to see me, called me every once in a while, and tempted me to come over. He had hired a guy by the name of Tom Palmer, and Jack King, a couple of guys from Disney. Guys who were not making it. . . .
And when I came over they let Tom Palmer go. . . . and I took all the drawings that he had made. Warner would not accept their cartoons, and Leon thought he was going out of business. He said, "I've got everything I've made in my lifetime dumped into this thing." So I took a lot of the drawings, and I retimed them, threw out a lot...

Palmer’s two cartoons were Buddy’s Day Out and I’ve Got to Sing a Torch Song. Freleng isn’t credited on either of them.



His directorial credit is on Buddy the Gob, released Jan. 13, 1934. It’s not exactly strong on story or gags but, as the studio discovered, there wasn't a whole lot they could do with Buddy; he's a watered-down version of the plucky Mickey Mouse in this cartoon. Freleng and whoever was in the story department tossed in a pop culture reference. The camera pans to the right from two Chinese dancers in a parade ...



I couldn’t tell you who is on the left, but the one on the right is Hot-cha-cha! Jimmy Durante. (Note: Strummer Petersen believes it's a poor drawing of Marie Dressler. Considering she was big at MGM, he's likely correct). We get a close-up of The Schnozz.



The plot involves Buddy jumping off his ship and rescuing a girl who is to be fed to a fire-breathing dragon. Of course, there’s a butt-violation gag.



As Bernie Brown plays Warren and Dubin's "Shanghail Lil" (from the 1933 Warners feature Footlight Parade) Buddy and the girl escape from an angry mob, cutting a wooden bridge after making it over to the opposite cliff.

One of the mob throws a spear at the heckling Buddy and misses.



The arrow develops a mind of its own. It turns around and, well, if one butt-violation gag is funny, then two are TWICE as funny, right?



And then. Well, nothing. That’s all, folks. Buddy appears just as stunned as the theatre audience that the cartoon just stops.



Before the year was over, Bugs Hardaway and Jack King took over the Looney Tunes with Buddy while Freleng concentrated on the Merrie Melodies. Besides a misbegotten stint at MGM in the late ‘30s, Freleng stuck with the Warners studio until just before it closed in 1963. You know all about a stop at Hanna-Barbera, and a studio with David DePatie and a panther and such, so we’ll skip that.

Buddy died about a year and a half after this cartoon appeared. It's safe to say Friz's directorial career went on slightly longer. And he was responsible for some of the most enjoyable cartoons ever made.