To live twenty-five years with a man who could direct such pictures was not easy, because at first I hadn’t the remotest idea how he did those great musicals. I know now; all you have to be is Friz Freleng.
A sampler of my favorite Freleng musical films in no particular order, but just as my fancy loves to dwell on them: RHAPSODY IN RIVETS, HOLIDAY FOR SHOESTRINGS, LIGHTS FANTASTIC, PIGS IN A POLKA, RHAPSODY RABBIT, MOUSE MAZURKA.
NOTE: If you’ve missed any of these Friz-directed films, you’ve lived a barren life:
THE FIGHTING 69TH ½, 1941; THE WABBIT WHO CAME TO SUPPER, 1942; LITTLE RED RIDING RABBIT, 1944; HOLIDAY FOR SHOESTRINGS, 1946; A HARE GROWS IN MANHATTAN, 1947; BUCCANEER BUNNY, 1948; HIGH DIVING HARE, 1949; MOUSE MAZURKA, 1949; HIS BITTER HALF, 1950; TWEETY’S S.O.S., 1951; BIRD IN A GUILTY CAGE, 1952; A STREET CAT NAMED SYLVESTER, 1953; DR. JERKYL’S HIDE, 1954; SAHARA HARE, 1955; HEIR CONDITIONED, 1955; TUGBOAT GRANNY, 1956; TWO CROWS FROM TACOS, 1956; TRICK OR TWEET, 1959; GOLDIMOUSE AND THE THREE CATS, 1960; REBEL WITHOUT CLAWS, 1961; THE LAST HUNGRY CAT, 1961; D’FIGHTIN’ ONES, 1961; MEXICAN CAT DANCE, 1963.
One of the oddities of the writers at Warner Bros. Cartoons was that they did not write; they translated their ideas through drawings known in the trade as story sketches. Thus, our stories were in visual form from the outset. This method drives most live-action writers into creative convulsions. First of all, they cannot draw—our writers seldom drew well, but they drew well enough—and second of all: how can anyone write without all those delicious adjectives, adverbs, and rich, beautiful prose? The only words allowed on story sketches are those relating to camera moves, to dialogue, or to ensuing movement.
A six-minute cartoon usually required about 150 story sketches assembled on a storyboard 8 × 4 feet. The writer and director working together as a writing team would turn out a story for a six-minute cartoon in five weeks.
The Writers
The great directors at Warner Bros./Schlesinger were hired because they had superb reputations elsewhere: Friz Freleng at Disney and Harman-Ising; Tex Avery at Walt Lantz/Universal; Frank Tashlin from Terrytoons—and these directors demanded great writers, under the threat that they would hold their breaths and turn blue unless they had their way. It seems obvious to me that all great artists possess two essential qualities: one, their individual artistry; and two, their demand to be surrounded by talent. So the directors usually got their way, the studio was soon awash with writers such as Warren Foster, Michael Maltese, Tedd Pierce, Rich Hogan, Bob Givens, David Monahan, and many others, but occasionally Leon Schlesinger in his effort to achieve failure in the face of success would slip one through without reference to his directors. Such an acquisition was the wonderful Alex Masianof, who did everything in the world well but write. He was charming, delightful, ebullient, and enthusiastic to the point of idiocy. “I have eet, I have eet!” Alex would cry, playing the part of both Curies on the discovery of radium. “So fonny!”—he gripped his stomach in a paroxysm of delight and gasped, choked, then snapped to heel-clicking attention; he had been a Russian cavalry officer before World War I:
The poosey ring the bell,
up jomped the little doggie,
Vhere is Mister Hen?
She’s out with the raccoon.
All those gathered looked dumbfounded. Alex took this for awe.
“You see how fonny? How thees kitty poosey ring the bell ho-ho in soch a fonny way? I tell you thees my frands weel be the fooniest of all theengs … Just you make the animation very fonny and everyone, everywhere, everythere weel laugh. Now you make fonny doggie, make fonny Mister Hen, and make very fonny the raccoon.”
Turning on a benign heel, he left the room, creatively satisfied. That is the kind of cartoons we would have produced if writers were left to Leon Schlesinger’s judgment.
Fortunately, the curious chemistry that brought such directors as Tex, Friz, Bob Clampett, and Frank Tashlin together also accumulated under their and my auspices three of the finest gag men/sketch artists/writers to ever grace this or any other studio: Mike Maltese, Tedd Pierce, and Warren Foster. Warren worked with Clampett, with Bob McKimson (who later became a director), and for most of his career with Friz Freleng. Tedd Pierce worked with Frank Tashlin, with me, and with Bob McKimson. Most of my life as a director I was fortunate enough to work with only two writers—the talented and funny Tedd Pierce and Michael Maltese.
Where do writers for animated cartoons come from? Very unlikely backgrounds.
Coyote realizing tardily the undependability of Acme products
TEDD PIERCE
(Edward Stacey Pierce III)
Ted Pierce, sans mustache … and extra “d” added later
In the heterogeneous patchwork world of the animated cartoon Edward Stacey Pierce the Third was the only scion.
SCION: [Webster’s] A descendant or heir; a detached shoot or twig.
If the Warner Bros. cartoon unit had been the Victorian Army of India, Edward Stacey Pierce the Third would have been our “Gentleman Ranker,” lamented by Kipling.
However, one would never have found Edward Stacey Pierce the Third weeping on his table down at Mory’s, no “Baa, baa, baa” would ever sully the precise regimental mustache that lolled elegantly beneath the splendor of the arched beauty of his slender eagle-beak.
Edward Stacey Pierce the Third looked like C. Aubrey Smith at twenty-two playing the role of the world’s foremost authority on the dry martini.
Never has a charming pixilated mind lurked beneath a more incongruous façade, because Edward Stacey Pierce the Third was a wonderful cartoon writer, gagman, story-sketch artist. He was Mickey Rooney in Ronald Colman’s body. He was, in fact, Edward Stacey Pierce the Third only in his mother’s hawk eyes. To
