Warner Bros. Cartoons

History

1930–1933: Harman-Ising Productions

Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising originated the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated short subjects in 1930 and 1931, respectively. Both cartoon series were produced for Leon Schlesinger at Harman-Ising Productions in Hollywood, California, with Warner Bros. Pictures releasing the films to theaters. The first Looney Tunes character was the Harman-Ising creation Bosko, who competed with Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Max Fleischer's Bimbo. The first Merrie Melodies characters were Foxy, Piggy, and Goopy Geer. Outside of cartoons, Schlesinger also produced six Western films starring John Wayne in 1932 and 1933, which were lambasted by Wayne for their extremely low budgets. In 1933, Harman and Ising parted company with Schlesinger over financial disputes, taking all characters they established with them to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. To maintain his contract with Warner Bros., Schlesinger set up his own studio on the Warner Bros. lot on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The studio location was the former Vitaphone building at the corner of Van Ness and Fernwood.

1933–1944: Leon Schlesinger Productions

The Schlesinger studio got off to a slow start, hiring Harman-Ising staff such as Bob Clampett and Robert McKimson, as well as poaching staff from Walt Disney Productions; the studio continued their one-shot Merrie Melodies and introduced Buddy to serve as the new star of Looney Tunes. Harman-Ising alumnus Friz Freleng was poached to replace the studio's first director, Tom Palmer, after Palmer was fired for unsatisfactory work. The studio then formed the three-unit structure that it would retain throughout most of its history, with one unit headed by Freleng, one unit headed by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, and one by Earl Duvall, who was replaced by Jack King a year later.

In 1935, after Buddy proved to be unsuccessful, Freleng directed the Merrie Melodies cartoon I Haven't Got a Hat, which introduced the characters Beans and Porky Pig. While Beans was intended to be the series' new protagonist, he was quickly overshadowed by Porky and retired, in part due to the popularity of solo Porky cartoons directed by Universal Pictures alumnus Fred Avery and newly rejoined director Frank Tashlin, which established Porky as one of the studio's leading stars for decades. Schlesinger also gradually moved the Merrie Melodies cartoons from black and white, to two-strip Technicolor in 1934, and finally to full three-strip Technicolor in 1935. The Looney Tunes series would be produced in black-and-white for much longer, until 1943.

Because of the limited spacing conditions in the Schlesinger building at 1351 N. Van Ness on the Warner Sunset lot, Avery and his unit – including animators Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones – were moved into a small building elsewhere on the Sunset lot, which Avery and his team affectionately dubbed "Termite Terrace". Although the Avery unit moved out of the building after a year, moving into the Van Ness studio location, "Termite Terrace" later became a metonym for the classic Warner Bros. animation department in general, even for years after the building was abandoned, condemned, and torn down. During this period, four cartoons were outsourced to Animated Pictures; despite the quality being on par with the studio's output, Ub Iwerks disliked the experience and left midway, allowing Clampett to gain directorial experience while finishing two of the four cartoons. Schlesinger was so impressed by Clampett's work on these shorts that he opened a fourth unit for Clampett to lead. Its management was oversaw by Ray Katz due to tax reasons; this unit was not allowed to produce Technicolor cartoons to save costs.

1944–1963: Warner Bros. Cartoons

On July 1, 1944, Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. for $700,000; Warners renamed the company Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc., and Edward Selzer – who by Jones' and Freleng's accounts had no sense of humor or admiration of cartoons – was appointed by Warner Bros. as the new head of the cartoon studio after Schlesinger retired. Frank Tashlin left in September 1944, and Bob Clampett left in May 1945. Tashlin's Katz-managed unit was taken over by Robert McKimson. The remaining animators of Clampett's second unit were assigned to Arthur Davis. McKimson and Davis worked with lower budgets than Jones and Freleng.

In 1948, the studio moved to a larger building on the Sunset Boulevard lot. Davis' separate unit was dissolved in November 1947, and he became an animator for Freleng.

The four units became noted by their respective styles, mostly influenced by their budgets: Jones' cartoons, with the largest budgets, featured a more visual and sophisticated art style, and focused more on unique story telling and characterization over traditional gags; Freleng's cartoons, with a smaller budget than Jones, developed a conservative directorial style which uses sharp timing, jokes and use of music for comedic effect; McKimson's cartoons, also with a smaller budget, kept up the traditional screwball antics-based direction into the 50s, while trying to maintain a fully-animated style; and Davis' cartoons, with the smallest budget of the four units, prioritized being faithful to Clampett's animation style and gags.

Among the Warner Bros. cartoon stars who were created after Schlesinger's departure include Pepé Le Pew (1945, Odor-able Kitty by Jones), Sylvester (1945, Life with Feathers by Freleng), Yosemite Sam (1945, Hare Trigger by Freleng), Foghorn Leghorn (1946, Walky Talky Hawky by McKimson), Marvin the Martian (1948, Haredevil Hare by Jones), Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (1949, Fast and Furry-ous by Jones), Granny (1950, Canary Row by Freleng), Speedy Gonzales (1953, Cat-Tails for Two by McKimson) and The Tasmanian Devil (1954, Devil May Hare by McKimson). In later years, even more minor Looney Tunes characters such as Freleng's Rocky and Mugsy, Jones's Gossamer and Michigan J. Frog, and McKimson's Pete Puma have become significantly popular.

After the verdict of the United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. anti-trust case in 1948 ended the practice of "block booking", Warner Bros. could no longer force theaters into buying their features and shorts together as packages; shorts had to be sold separately. Theater owners were only willing to pay so much for cartoon shorts, and as a result, by the late-1950s the budgets at Warner Bros. Cartoons became tighter. Selzer forced a stringent five-week production schedule on each cartoon. At least one director, Chuck Jones, cheated the system by spending more time on special cartoons such as What's Opera, Doc?, and less time on simpler productions such as Road Runner entries, and had his crew forge their time cards. With less money for full animation, the Warner Bros. writers — Michael Maltese, Tedd Pierce, and Warren Foster — began to focus more of their cartoons on dialogue. While story artists were assigned to directors at random during the 1930s and 1940s, by the 1950s each story man worked almost exclusively with one director: Maltese with Jones, Foster with Freleng, and Pierce with McKimson.

1964–1967: DePatie–Freleng Enterprises and Format Productions

David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng started DePatie–Freleng Enterprises in 1963, and leased the old Warner Bros. Cartoons studio as their headquarters. In 1964, Warner Bros. contracted DePatie–Freleng to produce more Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, an arrangement that lasted until 1967. The vast majority of these paired off Daffy Duck against Speedy Gonzales, and after a few initial cartoons directed by Freleng, Robert McKimson was hired to direct most of the remaining DePatie–Freleng Looney Tunes.

In addition to DePatie–Freleng's cartoons, a series of new shorts featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner was commissioned from an independent animation studio, Herbert Klynn's Format Productions. Veteran Warner animator Rudy Larriva, who had worked for years under Road Runner creator Chuck Jones, assumed directorial duties for these films, and a few other former associates of Jones (Bob Bransford, Ernie Nordli) came aboard. Even with the Jones connections, Larriva's Road Runner shorts were considered to be inferior and witless compared to Jones' by critics. McKimson also directed an additional two Road Runner shorts with the main DePatie–Freleng team, which are more highly regarded than Larriva's efforts.

After three years of outsourced cartoons, Warner Bros. decided to bring production back in-house. DePatie–Freleng had their contract terminated (they subsequently moved to new studios in the San Fernando Valley), and Format was commissioned to produce three "buffer" cartoons with Daffy and Speedy (again, directed by Rudy Larriva) to fill the gap until Warner Bros.'s own studio was up and running again.

1967–1969: Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Animation

The studio was originally founded in May 1966 as Warner Bros. Animation, after its contract with DePatie–Freleng Enterprises expired. The new cartoon studio was to be founded and headed by studio executive William L. Hendricks, and after an unsuccessful attempt at luring Bob Clampett out of retirement, former Walter Lantz Productions and Hanna-Barbera animator Alex Lovy was appointed director at the new studio. He brought his longtime collaborator, Laverne Harding to be the new studio's chief animator, and brought in Disney animator Volus Jones and Ed Solomon who also started at Disney as an assistant, which contributed to make cartoons from this era of the studio stylistically quite different from the studio's "Golden Age". Lovy also brought in animator Ted Bonnicksen and layout artist Bob Givens, both veterans of the original studio. Shortly after the studio opened, Warner Bros. Pictures was bought out by Seven Arts Associates, and the studio renamed Warner Bros.-Seven Arts.

Initially, Lovy's new team produced more Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales cartoons, but soon moved to create new characters such as Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse, and even occasional experimental works such as Norman Normal (1968), the only cartoon not to be in either series. Warner Bros.-Seven Arts intended to develop more original characters during Lovy's tenue, but most of them never went into fruition. Some of these character pitches included The Super Snooper (which was recently used on The Quick Draw McGraw Show and a Daffy Duck cartoon from 1952), a pirate character named Jolly Roger (who is described in retrospect as a clone of Yosemite Sam), a Tasmanian Devil-esque rival for Speedy named Butch Catsidy, a series based on the character Spooky from the Cool Cat cartoon Big Game Haunt (1968), and new a Road Runner and Coyote series starring the Bird Watcher, in a parody of nature documentaries. Other scrapped pitches included adaptations of Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops and Puff the Magic Dragon, and a television series based on Al Capp's Li'l Abner comics. A number of pitches however were retrofitted into either Cool-Cat/Merlin cartoons or as one-shots.

Lovy's cartoons were not well received, and many enthusiasts regard them (particularly his Daffy and Speedy efforts) as the worst cartoons ever produced by the studio. After a year, Alex Lovy left and returned to Hanna-Barbera along with Volus Jones, and Robert McKimson from DePatie–Freleng was hired to replace Lovy with Jim Davis taking over for Volus Jones. McKimson focused on using the characters that Lovy had created (and two of his own creation: Bunny and Claude). The studio's classic characters appeared only in advertisements (as for Plymouth Road Runner) and cartoon show bumpers. McKimson's films of the era have more adult-oriented humor than Lovy's. However, on October 10, 1969, Warner Bros. ceased production on all its short subjects and shut the studio down for good when Warner Bros.-Seven Arts was acquired by Kinney National Company. The back catalog of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts would remain a popular broadcast and syndication package for Warner Bros. Television well into the 2000s, by which time it had reacquired the distribution rights to the pre-August 1948 shorts it sold to Associated Artists Productions (known as a.a.p.) on June 11, 1956.

Warner Bros. Cartoons staff: 1933–1969

Studio heads

Leon Schlesinger (1933–1944)

Eddie Selzer (1944–1958)

John Burton (1958–1961)

David H. DePatie (1961–1964)

William L. Hendricks (1967–1969)

Music

Bernard B. Brown (1933–1936)

Norman Spencer (1933–1936)

Carl W. Stalling (1936–1958) (credited from 1946 to 1958 as Carl Stalling)

Eugene Poddany (1951)

Milt Franklyn (1954–1962)

John Seely (1958)

William Lava (1962–1964, 1967–1969) (credited until 1967 as Bill Lava)

Milt Franklyn (1936–1962)

Film (sound effects) editors

Treg Brown

Irvin Jay

Lee Gunther

Hal Geer