In order to save ourselves the embarrassment of being fired, all of us were careful to write out our resignations before that fateful day when Leon strode into our projection room and sprawled on the gilt throne he had snatched from some early Warner pseudo-De Mille film or other. The rest of us, of course, still sat on beat-up splintery church pews from an early family film. The new Daffy Duck lit up the screen at Leon’s courteous command: “Roll the garbage!” The cartoon played to the studio audience, accompanied mainly by crickets, prayers, and silence. Then the lights went on and Leon leaped to his feet, glared around: “Jeethus Christh, that’s a funny voithe! Where’d you get that voithe?”
So Leon went to his grave, his riches gone with Nineveh and Tyre, but wherever the voice of the turtle-duck is heard throughout the land, Leon is enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen.
Our long relationship with Leon Schlesinger many of us supposed was more than adequate preparation for any new producer we might face, yet we were hardly prepared for Eddie Selzer.
Once chosen by Jack Warner to head up the Warner Bros. newest acquisition, Eddie, in order to establish his vast knowledge of animation, demanded to see every script before it went into production, imitating his chieftain, Jack Warner. Jack always demanded scripts, though it was never proven that he could read. So Eddie demanded scripts, and in his twelve-year tenure it never became apparent to his mouse-like brain that there were no scripts for animated cartoons. (Eddie was a mouse studying to be a rat, according to Wilson Mizner, who also pointed out that Eddie never strayed from the straight and narrow-minded path.) So, for those twelve dreadful years of his reign, he demanded the impossible: the sort of man, said one writer, who makes his way through life like an untipped waiter.
Christmas party, Leon Schlesinger studio, 1935(?)—C. Jones buttering up both Ray Katz and Friz Freleng
Unit A, 1942—left to right, standing: Unknown (or at least unremembered), Eugene Fleury, Phil Monroe, Lloyd Vaughan, Rudy Larriva, Roger Daly, Cathy (later DeLara), Bobe Cannon, unknown (but well remembered), Roy Laufenburger; front row: C. Jones, Abe Levitow, Ben Washam, Tony Sgroi, Mike Maltese, unknown, Edward Stacey Pierce III, Phil DeLara, Richard Kent Jones, Ken Harris, Art Heineman
Eddie, like the people in charge of network television today, hated and feared anything he had never seen before. Innovation, to him, was as a viper’s fang, and he kicked and bucked at every innovative idea.
We became quickly aware of this endearing trait at his first showing of one of my cartoons at the studio. Eddie watched with baleful, unblinking eyes, making only one comment: “There’s something new take it out.” No comma after “new”; it actually sounded like “Theresomethinewtakitout”—one word. What he was criticizing was the kind of French spoken by Pepé Le Pew. “Nobody’d laugh at that shit” was his creative contribution to the showing.
His edicts, too, were very helpful: “I don’t want any gags about Ike.” I’m sure this was a relief to Eisenhower, who no doubt lived in fear of our acerbic wit. Of course, Eddie hadn’t noticed that we almost never included contemporary or temporal humor in our films.
Yet, although Eddie told me there was nothing funny about a skunk talking French and fought its use, he gracefully accepted as his right the Oscar when Pepé Le Pew won in 1950.
He once appeared in the doorway of our story room while Mike Maltese and I were grappling with a new story idea. Suddenly a furious dwarf stood in the doorway: “I don’t want any gags about bullfights, bullfights aren’t funny!” Exactly the words he had used to Friz Freleng about never using camels. Out of that dictum came Sahara Hare, one of the funniest cartoons ever made, with the funniest camel ever made.
Having issued his angry edict, Eddie stormed back to his office. Mike and I eyed one another in silent wonderment. “We’ve been missing something,” Mike said. “I never knew there was anything funny about bullfighting until now. But Eddie’s judgment is impeccable. He’s never been right yet.” “God moves in wondrous ways, his story ideas to beget,” I replied.
Result: Bully for Bugs—one of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons our unit ever produced.
Perhaps his finest hour came at a story session.
Four or five of us were laughing over a storyboard when once again Eddie stood vibrating at the doorway, glaring malevolently at us and our pleasure and laughter. His tiny eyes steely as half-thawed oysters, his wattles trembling like those of a deflated sea cow. “Just what the hell,” he demanded, “has all this laughter got to do with the making of animated cartoons?”
In a lifetime search for a proper niche for producers on the ladder of living things, I was forced near the bottom to sphagnum moss, which seems to just sit there harmlessly, irritating no one, just quietly minding its own business. Obviously the producer, who might well be sued by poison oak in terms of irritability, belongs above sphagnum moss. A very short trip up the nether rungs of our ladder-of-life reveals the planarian worm. We must stop here, because the planarian worm seeks light, effectively putting it above the producers.
BEEP, BEEP (1952)—we had to wait three years to do a second Road Runner film; management wasn’t sure that this was a viable idea
Nevertheless, our producers served an occasional purpose—inadvertent, as in the case of Leon Schlesinger and Daffy Duck. Intentional, as in the case of Eddie Selzer and Bully for Bugs and Sahara Hare. But perhaps their most valuable service to us was as someone to actively dislike; creativity without opposition is like playing polo without
