Born: Isadore Freleng
Birthday: February 26, 1908
Location: Kansas City, MO, U.S.
Occupation: Animator, Director, Producer
Years active: 1923-1986
Died: May 26, 1995
Isadore “Friz” Freleng began his career in animation at the United Film Ad Service in Kansas City, Missouri where he met fellow animators Hugh Harman and Ub Iwerks. Freleng was invited to work as an employee for Iwerks’ friend, Walt Disney at the Laugh-O-Grams studio. In 1923, Walt Disney, moved to Hollywood and put out a call for his Kansas City colleagues to join him. Freleng followed and worked alongside the former Kansas City animators, as well as Carman Maxwell, and Rudolph Ising. He worked on the Alice Comedies and Universal Pictures’ Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series, but he left the studio in 1928, after Disney became overly critical of Freleng’s animation mistakes withheld his bonus. Freleng returned to his old job at the United Film Ad Service in Kansas.
Friz animated at Winkler Pictures when their studio began production of the Oswald series. After Winkler’s lost the Oswald contract in 1929, Friz teamed up with Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising (who had both left Disney) at Harman-Ising Productions. Together, they produced a pilot film starring a new character: “Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid”.
Uncertain about his future employment if Bosko failed generate enough interest in a cartoon series, Freleng moved to New York City. There he continued seeking a buyer for the Harman-Ising Bosko picture while working on Charles Mintz’ Krazy Kat films.
Unhappy living in New York, Freleng was patient until Bosko was finally sold to Leon Schlesinger to produce the series for Warner Bros. Freleng moved back to California when Harman-Ising asked him to work on the Bosko series. He became a prominent animator of the series and was promoted to direct the shorts.
When Harman, Ising, and their animators left WB for MGM in 1933, Schlesinger convinced Freleng to stay. Friz rapidly became Schlesinger’s top director, helming almost all the Merrie Melodies shorts and introducing the studio’s first true star, Porky Pig, in the film, I Haven’t Got a Hat.
For an increased salary, Freleng moved to Fred Quimby’s MGM cartoon studio briefly in 1937 to direct their new series Captain and the Kids. Friz was assigned as a junior director under Hugh Harman, but the series was too expensive and production ended within six months.
Freleng returned to Warner Bros. One of the first Looney Tunes animated shorts he directed his second go around was You Ought to Be in Pictures; a cartoon short which added animated characters to live-action footage of the Warner Bros. studio personalities.
As a director, Freleng gained the reputation of a tough taskmaster, but under his direction, his unit regularly produced great animated shorts. Friz was a violinist who timed his cartoons on musical bar sheets. He would time gags that best utilized each cartoon’s music composition.
The Warner Bros. Cartoons studio closed in 1963. During his two and a half decades with them Freleng directed 266 cartoons there, more than any other director in the studio. He introduced and/or redesigned several of the studio’s biggest stars, including Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Granny, and Speedy Gonzales. He also earned five Academy Awards and three Emmy Awards.
Freleng then took a position as story supervisor at Hanna-Barbera Productions for their debut feature, Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear!
His next ambitious venture was to form DePatie–Freleng Enterprises with his now-former boss, producer David H. DePatie; the last producer of the Warner Bros. cartoon division. Their new animation company even rented their old WB studio space to produce new cartoons. The Warner Bros. company even subcontracted DePatie–Freleng to produce cartoons under the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies banners for its studio between 1964 and 1967. Additionally, the new studio also created the opening titles for the feature film The Pink Panther followed by a Pink Panther short, The Pink Phink. That animated short won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), prompting the studio to produce an entire Pink Panther series.
The Pink Panther was followed several other new characters: The Inspector, The Ant and the Aardvark, Tijuana Toads, The Dogfather, Roland and Rattfink and Crazylegs Crane. These original DePatie–Freleng characters would remain in production through 1980.
By 1967, they moved their operations to Hayvenhurst Avenue in Van Nuys, California. The studio created the animated opening titles for the I Dream of Jeannie TV series. DePatie–Freleng also produced the special effects for the lightsaber blades of 1977’s Star Wars.
Although rising costs and the public’s declining interest in theatrical shorts in 1981 forced DePatie and Freleng to sell off their assets to Marvel Productions, Friz went on to serve as an executive producer for three 1980s Looney Tunes compilation features, The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, Bugs Bunny’s 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales, and Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island; linking golden-age shorts with new animated sequences in the early ‘80s.
The International Family Film Festival presented its first Lifetime Achievement of Excellence in Animation award to Freleng in 1994 a year before his passing. The award has since been dubbed the “Friz Award” in his honor.
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