Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
Name	Hugh Harman
Birth date	August 31, 1903
Birth place	Pagosa Springs, Colorado, United States
Death date	November 25, 1982
Death place	Chatsworth, California, United States }}

Name	Rudolf Ising
Birth date	August 07, 1903
Birth place	Kansas City, Missouri, United States
Death date	July 18, 1992
Death place	Newport Beach, California, United States }}

Hugh Harman (August 31, 1903 – November 25, 1982) and Rudolf "Rudy" Ising (August 7, 1903 – July 18, 1992) were an American animation team best known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios. They are particularly celebrated for their 1939 antiwar MGM cartoon ''Peace on Earth'' and won an Oscar for the MGM cartoon ''The Milky Way'' in 1940.

Early history

Harman and Ising first worked in animation in the early 1920s at Walt Disney's studio in Kansas City. When Disney moved operations to California, Harman, Ising, and fellow animator Carmen Maxwell stayed behind to try to start their own studio. Their plans went nowhere, however, and the men soon rejoined Disney to work on his ''Alice Comedies'' and ''Oswald the Lucky Rabbit'' films. It was during this time, that Harman and Ising developed a style of cartoon drawing that would later be closely associated with, and credited to, Disney. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney which would later inspire Ub Iwerks to create a new character for Disney called Mickey Mouse.

When producer Charles Mintz ended his association with Disney, Harman and Ising went to work for Mintz, whose brother-in-law, George Winkler, set up a new animation studio to make the ''Oswald'' cartoons. The Oswald cartoons which Harman and Ising produced in 1928 and 1929 already show their distinctive style, which would later characterize their work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon series for Warner Bros. For example, in ''Sick Cylinders'' (1929) there are sequences which were later remade very closely in such Harman and Ising Warner Bros. efforts as ''Sinkin' in the Bathtub'' (1930) and ''Bosko's Holiday'' (1931). The Oswald cartoons that Harman and Ising worked on are completely different from the Oswald cartoons made before and after Disney and can easily be distinguished by anyone familiar with their work.

Warner Bros. and Van Beuren

Harman and Ising had long aspired to start their own studio, and had created and copyrighted the cartoon character Bosko in 1928. After losing their jobs at the Winkler studio, Harman and Ising financed a short Bosko demonstration film called ''Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid'', notable for being the first sound cartoon of the late-1920s "talkie" era with dialogue. The sound cartoon, which featured Bosko at odds with his animator – portrayed in live-action by Rudy Ising – impressed Leon Schlesinger, who paired Harman and Ising with Warner Bros. Schlesinger wanted the Bosko character to star in a new series of "talkie" cartoons he dubbed ''Looney Tunes''. The pair made ''Sinkin' in the Bathtub'' in 1930, and the cartoon did well. Harman took over direction of the ''Looney Tunes'' starring the character, while Ising took a sister series called ''Merrie Melodies'' that consisted of one-shot stories and characters.

The two animators broke off ties with Schlesinger later in 1933 over budget disputes with the miserly producer, and went to the Van Beuren studio, which was making cartoon for RKO Radio Pictures. There, they were offered a contract to produce the Cubby Bear cartoon series. Harman and Ising produced two cartoons for this series which were actually released. These cartoons show their distinctive style and are distinguished from the rest of the series, which was poorly animated. Harman and Ising were in the midst of making a third cartoon when a contractual dispute arose. The pair left Van Beuren, but kept the completed cartoon and finally released it in the 1940s.

MGM

Harman and Ising had maintained the rights to the Bosko character, and they signed a deal with MGM to start a new series of Bosko shorts in 1934. The two maintained the same division of work they had used at Warner Bros.: Harman worked on Bosko shorts, and Ising directed one-shots. They also tried unsuccessfully to create new cartoon stars for their new distributors. Their cartoons, though technically superior to those they had made for Schlesinger, were still music-driven shorts with little to no plot. When the new ''Happy Harmonies'' series ran significantly over-budget in 1937, MGM fired Harman and Ising and established its own in-house studio headed by Fred Quimby.

Harman and Ising still found some work as animation freelancers, directing, for example, the ''Silly Symphony'' series for Disney in 1938. When Disney later reneged on a deal he had made for two other Harman-Ising pictures, the animators sold the cartoons to Quimby at MGM. Quimby later agreed to hire the animators back to the studio. Ising created the character Barney Bear for MGM at this time, basing the sleepy-eyed character partially on himself. In 1939, Harman created his masterpiece, ''Peace on Earth'', a downbeat morality tale about two squirrels discovering the evils of humanity, which was nominated for an Oscar. Despite the success of this and other cartoons, MGM's production under Harman and Ising remained low.

In 1941, Harman left MGM and started a new studio with Disney veteran Mel Shaw. The two took over Ub Iwerks' old studio in Beverly Hills, California, where they created training films for the Army. In 1942, Ising also quit MGM, in his case to join the military.

Later career and legacy

By 1951, Harman and Ising were back together and making industrial and commercial films such as the 1951 film "Good Wrinkles" made for the California prune industry.

In 1960, Harman-Ising produced a pilot episode for a made for TV cartoon series titled ''The Adventures of Sir Gee Whiz on the Other Side of the Moon''. The unsold pilot for the never produced series was profiled on episode 6 of ''Cartoon Dump.'' Rudy Ising was the voice of Sir Gee Whiz.

Harman and Ising are little known, even among some animation fans. Although they contributed to much of what would later be known as the Disney style, they have been dismissed as mere copycats. In reality, Harman and Ising never attempted to imitate Disney; they were attempting to make refined polished cartoons whose quality would shine in comparison to the work of others. Their repeated attempts to make quality cartoons and their refusal to be bound by budgets led to numerous disputes with their producers. Because of this, they were unable to create any enduring characters. Instead, they created studios that would later produce such characters.

Notes

External links

Hugh Harman's obituary in The New York Times

Hugh Harman educational health series

Category:1903 births Category:1982 deaths Category:1992 deaths Category:Articles about multiple people Category:American animators

de:Rudolf Ising es:Harman e Ising fr:Harman-Ising Studio ms:Harman dan Ising

Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
name	Leon Schlesinger
birth date	May 20, 1884
birth place	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
death date	December 25, 1949
death place	Los Angeles, California
spouse	}}

Leon Schlesinger (May 20, 1884 – December 25, 1949) was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.

Early life and career

Schlesinger was born in Philadelphia. After working at a theater as an usher, songbook agent, actor, and manager (including the Palace Theater in Buffalo, New York), he founded Pacific Title and Art in 1919, where most of his business was producing title cards for silent films. As talking pictures ("talkies") gained popularity in 1929 and 1930, Schlesinger looked for ways to capitalize on the new technology and stay in business. Some film historians claim that he helped finance the Warner brothers' first talkie, ''The Jazz Singer''. He then secured a contract with the studio to produce its brand-new ''Looney Tunes'' series, and he signed animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising to create these cartoons with their Bosko character as the star.

Schlesinger as businessman

Schlesinger was a shrewd businessman with a keen eye for talent. When Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. with Bosko in 1934, Schlesinger set up his own studio on the Warner Bros. Sunset Boulevard lot at the corner of Van Ness and Fernwood. He wooed animators away from other studios, including some of those who had departed with Harman and Ising including Bob Clampett. One of these was Friz Freleng, whom Schlesinger promoted to oversee production of ''Looney Tunes'' and to develop the sister series, ''Merrie Melodies''. Freleng's talent quickly shone through, and Schlesinger's hiring of Frederick "Tex" Avery, Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin further increased the quality of the studio's output. He later added Carl Stalling and Mel Blanc and collectively these men created such famous characters as Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny. Schlesinger largely took a "hands off" approach to the animation unit, allowing his directors freedom to create what they wished, provided that the resulting films do well in the theaters. Schlesinger sold Pacific Title & Art in 1935 to concentrate on his animation studio.

Business practices

Schlesinger's hard-nosed business practices cannot be overstated. His animators worked in a dilapidated studio (Avery's unit were briefly assigned to a bungalow they dubbed "Termite Terrace"), and Schlesinger briefly shut down the studio in mid-1941 when unionized employees demanded a pay raise. On another occasion, he boycotted the Academy Awards for what he claimed was preferential treatment for the Walt Disney and MGM cartoon studios. He also farmed some of the ''Looney Tunes'' out to his brother-in-law, Ray Katz, for tax breaks.

Schlesinger was also known (among his animators, at least) for his lisp. One oft-repeated "official" story states that Mel Blanc patterned the voices of both Daffy Duck and Sylvester the cat on Schlesinger. However, in Mel Blanc's autobiography, ''That's Not All Folks!'', he contradicts that conventional belief, writing "It seemed to me that such an extended mandible would hinder his speech, particularly on words containing an ''s'' sound. Thus 'despicable' became 'des''th''picable'." Daffy's slobbery, exaggerated lisp was developed over time, being barely noticeable in the early cartoons. In ''Daffy Duck and Egghead'', Daffy does not lisp at all, except in the separately-drawn set-piece of Daffy singing "The Merry Go Round Broke Down", in which just a slight lisp can be heard.

Animators who worked with Schlesinger also found him conceited and somewhat foppish, wearing too much cologne and dressing like a dandy.

Appearances in shorts

Leon Schlesinger appeared as himself in Freleng's 1940 short ''You Ought to Be in Pictures'', a short that combines live action with animation. In this short, Mel Blanc voices both Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, and all other voices are redubbed by Blanc too, except Schlesinger's. As with other Warner cartoon staffers, Schlesinger appeared in caricature form in such cartoons as ''Hollywood Steps Out'', ''Russian Rhapsody'' and ''Nutty News''.

Later life and career

Schlesinger remained head of the animation studio until 1944 when he sold his assets to Warner Bros. He continued to market the characters and headed Warners' Theater Services unit until his death from a viral infection on Christmas Day, 1949. Schlesinger also produced a number of B-movie Westerns in the 1930s. After Warner Bros. bought Schlesinger's studio, Eddie Selzer assumed Schlesinger's position as producer. Schlesinger was an avid racehorse fan and was a director of the Western Harness Racing Association. A United Press dispatch dated January 10, 1950 reported a director had been found to fill the vacancy caused by his death. He is interred in the Beth Olam Mausoleum inside the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

External links

References

Category:1884 births Category:1949 deaths Category:American film producers Category:Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery Schlesinger,Leon

ar:ليون شليسنجر ca:Leon Schlesinger de:Leon Schlesinger es:Leon Schlesinger fr:Leon Schlesinger it:Leon Schlesinger hu:Leon Schlesinger pl:Leon Schlesinger

Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
name	Friz Freleng
birth name	Isadore Freleng
birth date	August 21, 1905
birth place	Kansas City, Missouri, United States
death date	May 26, 1995
death place	Los Angeles, California, United States
restingplace	Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
spouse	Lily Freleng
children	Hope FrelengSybil Freleng
imdb id	0293989
awards	}}

Isadore "Friz" Freleng (August 21, 1905 – May 26, 1995) was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of cartoons from Warner Bros.

He introduced and/or developed several of the studio's biggest stars, including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the cat, Yosemite Sam (to whom he was said to bear more than a passing resemblance) 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 honored of the Warner directors, having won four Academy Awards. After Warners shut down the animation studio in 1963, Freleng and business partner David DePatie founded DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, which produced cartoons (notably ''The Pink Panther Show''), feature film title sequences, and Saturday morning cartoons through the early 1980s.

The nickname "Friz" came from how "frizzy" his hair was at one time.

Early career

Freleng was born in Kansas City, Missouri, where he began his career in animation at 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, put out a call for his Kansas City colleagues to join him. Freleng, however, held out until 1927, when he finally moved to California and joined the Disney studio. He worked alongside other former Kansas City animators, including Iwerks, Harman, Carmen 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.

Freleng soon teamed up with Harman and Ising to try 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. The cartoon finally sold to Leon Schlesinger, who soon secured Harman and Ising to star Bosko in the ''Looney Tunes'' series he was producing for Warner Bros. Freleng soon moved back to California to work with Harman and Ising once again.

Freleng as director

Early Schlesinger cartoons

Harman and Ising left Schlesinger's studio 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 Bros rejected. The young animator became Schlesinger's top director, and he introduced the studio's first true post-Bosko star, Porky Pig, in the 1935 film ''I Haven't Got a Hat''. The film is notable for being one of the earliest examples of characterization in a cartoon. Porky was a distinctive character, unlike Bosko or his replacement, Buddy.

MGM

In 1937, Freleng left Schlesinger's after accepting an increase in salary to direct for the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio headed by Fred Quimby. To Freleng's chagrin, he found he would be working on ''The Captain and the Kids'', adapted from the popular comic strip ''The Katzenjammer Kids''. The series failed to achieve much success, much as Freleng had predicted: Though skillfully animated, the characters could not compete with the "funny animals" that prevailed at the time.

Back with Schlesinger and Warner Bros.

Freleng happily returned to Warner Bros. when his contract ended in late 1939. One of the first ''Looney Tunes'' shorts directed by Freleng during his second tenure at the studio was ''You Ought to Be in Pictures'', a short which blended animation with live-action footage of the Warner Bros. studio (and of Schlesinger veterans such as story man Michael Maltese and even "Leon" 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.

Directorial achievements

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 famous Warner characters, including Yosemite Sam in 1945, the cat-and-bird duo, Sylvester and Tweety in 1947, and Speedy Gonzales in 1955.

Freleng and Chuck Jones would dominate the Warner Bros. studio in the years after World War II, Freleng largely concentrating on the above mentioned characters and Bugs Bunny. Freleng also continued to produce modernized versions of the musical comedies he animated in his early career, such as ''The Three Little Bops'' (1957) and ''Pizzicato Pussycat'' (1955). Freleng won four Oscars during his time at Warner Bros., for the films ''Tweetie Pie'' (1947), ''Speedy Gonzales'' (1955), ''Knighty Knight Bugs'' (1958) and ''Birds Anonymous'' (1957). And other Freleng cartoons such as ''Sandy Claws'' (1955), ''Mexicali Shmoes'' (1959), ''Mouse and Garden'' (1960), and ''The Pied Piper of Guadalupe'' (1961) were Oscar nominees.

Freleng was occasionally the subject of in-jokes in Warner cartoons, with billboards in the background of scenes advertising various products called "Friz" in ''Canary Row'', the "Friz Motel" in ''Racketeer Rabbit'', and "Frizby the Magician" in ''High Diving Hare'' as one of the acts Bugs is pitching.

DePatie-Freleng Enterprises

After the Warner studio closed in 1963, Freleng rented the same space from Warners to create cartoons with his now-former boss, producer Dave DePatie (the final producer hired by Warners to oversee the cartoon division), forming DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. When Warner Bros decided to reopen their cartoon studio in 1964, they did so in name only; DePatie-Freleng produced the cartoons into 1966.

While much of Freleng's post-Warner work is considered of lesser quality than his earlier achievements, the DePatie-Freleng studio's signature achievement was The Pink Panther. DePatie-Freleng was commissioned to create the opening titles for the 1963 film ''The Pink Panther'', for which layout artist and director Hawley Pratt and Freleng created a suave, cool cat character. The Pink Panther cartoon character became so popular that United Artists, distributors of ''The Pink Panther'', had Freleng produce a short cartoon starring the character, ''The Pink Phink'' (1964).

After ''The Pink Phink'' won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), Freleng and DePatie responded by producing a whole series of Pink Panther cartoons. Other original cartoon series, among them ''The Inspector'', ''The Ant and the Aardvark'', and ''Hoot Kloot'', soon followed. In 1969, ''The Pink Panther Show'', a Saturday morning anthology program featuring DePatie-Freleng cartoons, debuted on NBC. ''The Pink Panther'' and the other original DePatie-Freleng series would remain in production through 1980, with new cartoons produced for simultaneous Saturday morning broadcast and United Artists theatrical release.

DePatie-Freleng is credited with the creation of Frito-Lay's Chester Cheetah, on the Food Network show "Deep Fried Treats Unwrapped"; as well as creating the colored opening title sequence to ''I Dream of Jeannie''.

By 1967, DePatie and Freleng had moved their operations to the San Fernando Valley. Their studio was located on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Van Nuys. One of their projects featured Bing Crosby and his family called, ''Goldilocks'' and had songs by the Sherman Brothers. At their new facilities they continued to produce new cartoons until 1980, when they sold DePatie-Freleng to Marvel Comics, who renamed it Marvel Productions.

Later career

Freleng later served as an executive producer on three 1980s ''Looney Tunes'' compilation features, which linked together several of the classic shorts with new animated sequences. The Freleng-produced compilation features were ''The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie'' (1981), ''Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales'' (1982), and ''Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island'' (1983).

In 1986, Freleng stepped down and gave his position at Warner Bros. to his secretary at the time, Kathleen Helppie-Shipley, who ended up being the second-longest producer of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies franchise, only behind Leon Schlesinger.

Death

On May 26, 1995, Friz died of natural causes in Los Angeles, California, aged 89. The WB animated TV series ''Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries'' and the ''Looney Tunes'' cartoon ''From Hare to Eternity'' (which was the last one directed by Chuck Jones) were both dedicated to his memory.

Notes

External links

Category:1906 births Category:1995 deaths Category:People from Kansas City, Missouri Category:Animated film directors Category:American animators Category:Directors of Best Animated Short Academy Award winners Category:Animated film producers

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