Carl Stalling

Carl W. Stalling (November 10, 1891 – November 29, 1972) was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.

Biography

Stalling was born to Ernest and Sophia C. Stalling. His parents were from Germany; his father arrived in the United States in 1883. The family settled in Lexington, Missouri where his father was a carpenter. He started playing piano at six. By the age of 12, he was the principal piano accompanist in his hometown's silent movie house. For a short period, he was also the theatre organist at the St. Louis Theatre, which eventually became Powell Symphony Hall.

By his early 20s, he was conducting his own orchestra and improvising on the organ at the Isis Movie Theatre in Kansas City. During that time, he met and befriended a young Walt Disney who was producing animated comedy shorts in Kansas City. Stalling composed several early cartoon scores for Walt Disney, including Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho in 1928 (but not Steamboat Willie, Disney's first released sound short), and even spoke Mickey Mouse's first words in The Karnival Kid in 1929. Early discussions with Disney about whether the animation or the musical score should come first led to Disney creating the Silly Symphonies series of cartoons. These cartoons allowed Stalling to create a score that Disney handed to his animators. While there, Stalling pioneered the use of "bar sheets," which allowed musical rhythms to be sketched out simultaneously with storyboards for the animation.

Daffy Duck

Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character produced by Warner Bros. Styled as an anthropomorphic black duck, the character has appeared in cartoon series such as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, where he usually has been depicted as the best friend and occasional arch-rival of Bugs Bunny. Daffy was one of the first of the new "screwball" characters that emerged in the late 1930s to replace traditional everyman characters who were more popular earlier in the decade, such as Mickey Mouse and Popeye. Daffy starred in 133 shorts in the golden age, making him the third-most frequent character in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons, behind Bugs Bunny's 166 appearances and Porky Pig's 159 appearances.

Daffy was number 14 on TV Guide's list of top 50 best cartoon characters and was featured on one of the issue's four covers as Duck Dodgers with Porky Pig and the Powerpuff Girls (all of which are Time Warner-owned characters).

Origin and history

Daffy first appeared in Porky's Duck Hunt, released on April 17, 1937. The cartoon was directed by Tex Avery and animated by Bob Clampett. Porky's Duck Hunt is a standard hunter/prey pairing for which Leon Schlesinger's studio was famous, but Daffy (barely more than an unnamed bit player in this short) was something new to moviegoers: an assertive, completely unrestrained, combative protagonist. Clampett later recalled:

Leon Schlesinger

Leon Schlesinger (May 20, 1884 – December 25, 1949) was an American film producer, remembered for founding Leon Schlesinger Studios, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the Golden Age of American animation. He was also a distant relative of the Warner Brothers. As head of his own studio, Schlesinger served as the producer of Warner's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons from 1930, when Schlesinger assumed production from his subcontractors, Harman-Ising, to 1944, when Warner acquired the studio.

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 & Art Studio in 1919, where most of his business was producing title cards for silent films. As talking pictures ("talkies") replaced them 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 (1927). 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.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros., Warners, or simply WB) is an American entertainment company that produces film, television and music entertainment. As one of the major film studios, it is a division of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank, California. Warner Bros. has several subsidiary companies, including Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema, Castle Rock Entertainment, and DC Entertainment. Warner Bros. owns half of The CW Television Network.

History

Founding

The company's name originates from the four founding Warner brothers (born Wonskolaser or Wonsal before Anglicization):Harry (born Hirsz), Albert (born Aaron), Sam (born Szmul), and Jack (Itzhak, or to some sources, Jacob). They emigrated as small children with their parents to Canada from Krasnosielc which was located in the part of Congress Poland that had been subjugated to the Russian Empire following the eighteenth-century Partitions of Poland near present-day Ostrołęka.

Looney Tunes

Looney Tunes is an American animated series of comedy short films produced by Warner Bros. from 1930 to 1969 during the golden age of American animation, alongside its sister series Merrie Melodies. Drawing inspiration for its name from Walt Disney's then-concurrent musical series Silly Symphonies, Looney Tunes initially showcased Warner-owned musical compositions through the adventures of cartoon characters such as Bosko and Buddy.

Later, following the animation studio's addition of directors Tex Avery and Chuck Jones among others, as well as the voice actor Mel Blanc, Looney Tunes rose to greater fame for introducing such cartoon stars as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, the Tasmanian Devil and many others. These characters themselves are commonly referred to as the "Looney Tunes" (or "Looney Toons"). From 1942 to 1964, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were the most popular animated shorts in movie theaters, exceeding the works of Disney and other popular competitors including Fleischer Studios, Walter Lantz Productions, UPA, Terrytoons and MGM.