Shrunken Cinema/Termite Terrace/Chronology

From Eccentric Flower

A Short History of Warner Brothers Cartoons

Warner cartoons were founded with the idea of showcasing the Warner music library. This is evident in the names of its two cartoon series: "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies." The studio began getting interested in the idea of making cartoons around 1929, concurrent with two developments: Their acquisition of the Brunswick Records music library and the debut of Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies."

Warner, in essence, subcontracted their cartoon division to Leon Schlesinger. Schlesinger in turn initially contracted out to Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising, who had worked for Disney on the Alice shorts. Harman-Ising's cartoons for Schlesinger mostly starred Bosko, a character Harman had been developing since 1927. (Bosko's "pilot" cartoon, a demo called "Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid," is an extra on disc 4 of Golden Collection 1. It is almost certainly the oldest piece of film on any of these DVDs.)

In 1933 Harman and Ising broke with Schlesinger over budget disputes. Schlesinger was notoriously cheap. Harman had carefully retained copyrights on Bosko, and they took the character with them, leaving Schlesinger with no star. It was at this point that Schesinger moved to quarters on the Warner lot, Isadore "Friz" Freleng came in (he had been with Harman-Ising as an animator), and the films began being labelled as being from "Leon Schlesinger Productions." After floundering around with several interim characters (including "Buddy," a Bosko clone), it became clear they had a new winner in Porky Pig, starting from 1935 when he made his appearance (as part of a large ensemble) in I Haven't Got a Hat. Daffy Duck came along in 1937. Bugs Bunny began forming a personality from several "proto-Bugs" rabbits around 1940.

Around 1935, Fred "Tex" Avery arrived at the studio. Animators initially working under him in his unit included Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones. There was no space for Avery's unit in Schlesinger's building at 1351 Van Ness (or at least that's the official story - see Avery's bio for an alternative theory), so they were put in a temporary building in very poor repair, which was revealed to have termites. This building was dubbed "Termite Terrace," and even though they moved out a year later, "Termite Terrace" remained as a nickname for the Warner animation units in general.

At the time, the difference between series (apart from their theme songs - "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" for Looney Tunes and "Merrily We Roll Along" for Merrie Melodies) was that Looney Tunes were in black-and-white and mostly starred Porky or Daffy or both; Bugs and Elmer mostly appeared in Merrie Melodies, which were in color. Around 1942 Schlesinger began moving Looney Tunes over to color as well. One motivation for this may have been the "Blue Ribbon" rerelease series Warner began in 1943, which was limited to color shorts.

(The "Blue Ribbon" releases are easy to spot because they sever the original credits at the beginning of each cartoon and instead show a generic title card with a blue ribbon in the background, with no other credits. Golden Collection versions of the cartoons have attempted to restore the original credits whenever possible, but in some cases the original footage could not be found/restored.)

In 1944 Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner outright and retired; cartoons began to appear labelled as simply "A Warner Brothers Cartoon." By this point Avery had long left; Clampett left almost immediately after the sale - reportedly he did not get on nearly as well with the new boss, Ed Selzer, as he did with Schlesinger. Actually, Selzer appears to have been generally disliked. Schlesinger had been cheap, but tended to let the animators and writers do what they wanted; Selzer was not only cheap, but rigid and humorless, and did not seem to either care about or like cartoons very much.

In defense of Selzer, money had become very tight for short features. The advent of the U.S. v. Paramount decision in 1948 meant that studios could no longer "bundle" features and shorts together, making shorts a harder sell to theatres. This is also when the Warner cartoons began to shift emphasis from visual action to dialogue, because of limited animation budgets. Ironically, this is when the three animation units (writer Michael Maltese working primarily with director Chuck Jones; Warren Foster with Friz Freleng; and Tedd Pierce with Robert McKimson, in order of decreasing brilliance) produced some of their wittiest and most award-winning films.

The real end of the classic Warner cartoon era came in 1957, when Selzer retired, the three veteran storymen all left, and Warner began to focus on the possibilities of cartoons on television. In 1961 David DePatie took charge of the cartoon studio. In 1962 Jones was fired for violating his exclusivity clause (he had done a short for UPA); Freleng left to work for Hanna-Barbera; and DePatie was informed that the cartoon division was shutting down, primarily due to poor film attendance. The last short from Warner per se was released in 1964.

However, we're not quite done. In 1963 DePatie and Freleng founded their own studio (most famous for later originating the Pink Panther character), and in 1964 Warner subcontracted them to make cartoons. This arrangement lasted for three years and mostly produced mediocre results, primarily because most of the cartoons were directed by the mostly mediocre Robert McKimson. in 1967 Warner decided it wanted to make its own cartoons again. Shortly after this happened, the entire Warner operation was bought by Seven Arts Productions, and for a brief period, features as well as cartoons were labeled "Warner Bros-Seven Arts." Cartoons in this period are known more for their very 1960's-styled titles than for any actual quality. In 1969 Warner (which lost the "Seven Arts" after being purchased by Kinney National that same year) shut down its animation department for good. Since then Warner has made occasional animated features and shorts, but has had no dedicated animation department of its own.

Cartoons Listed by Year

I list cartoons by copyright date, not release date (unlike just about everyone else), and thus while I have attempted to keep them in order, this is not a strict release chronology. For example, I have to list "Scaredy Cat" before "My Bunny Lies Over the Sea" because the former is copyright 1947 and the latter 1948. However, in fact, "Scaredy Cat" was released just after "My Bunny," and both were released at the very end of 1948. If you would like a listing by release order, I highly recommend Dave Mackey's chronology with title cards.

1936

I Love to Singa

1938

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

1946

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1952

1954

Baby Buggy Bunny

1955

1956

1957

1958

Baton Bunny

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