Golden Age of American Animation - Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

In 1929 former Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising made a cartoon entitled Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid, and tried to sell it to a distributor in 1930. Warner Bros. who had previously tried an unsuccessful attempt to set up a cartoon studio in New York in order to compete with Disney, agreed to distribute the series. Under producer Leon Schlesinger's guide Harman and Ising created Looney Tunes (the title being variation on Disney's Silly Symphonies) starring their character Bosko. A second Harman-Ising series, Merrie Melodies, followed in 1931. Both series showed the strong influence of the early Disney films.

After disputes over money, Harman-Ising parted company with Schlesinger in 1933, taking Bosko with them. Schlesinger began his own cartoon operation under the new name Leon Schlesinger Productions, hiring Harman-Ising animator Friz Freleng and several others to run the studio. Schlesinger created a Bosko clone known as Buddy and answered to Disney's use of color in Silly Symphonies cartoons in 1934, and began making all future Merrie Melodies cartoons in color. However since Disney had an exclusive deal with Technicolor, Schlesinger was forced to use Cinicolor and Two Strip Technicolor until 1935 when Disney's contract with Technicolor expired.

In a 1935 Merry Melody directed by Friz Freeling entitled I Haven't Got a Hat was the first screen appearance of Porky Pig. Also in 1935, Schlesinger hired a new animation director who proceeded to revitalize the studio: Tex Avery. Schlesinger put Avery in charge of the low-budget Looney Tunes in a low run-down old building the animators named Termite Terrice. Under Avery, Porky Pig would replace the Buddy series and become the first Warner Bros. character to achieve star power . Also at Termite Terrice animator Bob Clampett redesigned Porky from a fat, chubby pig to a more cute and childlike character.

Unlike the other cartoon producers at the time, Avery had no intention of competing with Disney, but instead brought a new wacky, zany style of animation to the studio that would increase the Warner Bros. cartoons' popularity in the crowded marketplace. This was firmly established in 1937 when Tex Avery directed Porky's Duck Hunt. During production of the short lead animator Bob Clampett elaborated the exit of the Duck character by having him jump up and down on his head, flip around and holler off into the sunset. This created the character of Daffy Duck. After Daffy Duck was created, he would add even more success to Warner Bros cartoons and replaced Porky Pig as the studio's most popular animated character, and Bob Clampett took over Termite Terrice, while Tex Avery took over the Merry Melodies department.

The 1940 Academy Award-nominated cartoon A Wild Hare (directed by Avery) marked Bugs Bunny's official debut. Bugs Bunny quickly replaced Daffy as the studio's top star and by 1942 he had become the most popular character. Because of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, the Schlesinger studio now had risen to new heights, and Bugs quickly also became the star of the color cartoons Merrie Melodies, which had previously been used for one-shot character appearances. By 1942 Warners' shorts had now surpassed Disney's in sales and popularity.

After several disputes with Schlesinger, Avery left Warner Bros. and went to work at MGM. By this time Warners' cartoons directors of the 1940s were Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett. Their cartoons are now considered classics of the genre. Clampett in particular brought the six-minute animated cartoon to a level of wild surrealism, directing noted cartoons such as Porky in Wackyland in 1938, Tortoise Wins By a Hare in 1943 and Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs in 1943. Leon Schlesinger sold his studio outright to Warner Bros. in 1944 renaming the studio Warner Bros. Cartoons. In 1946, after a dispute between Clampett and the new head Eddie Selzer, Clampett left Warner Bros. and struck out on his own. He worked as one of the pioneers of children's programming in the newly-born field of television, where he created the popular Time for Beany television show.

Warner Bros. Cartoons closed their doors for five months in 1953. During this time, some of the driving forces like Chuck Jones left. The studio was never able to recover, and the decline would continue into the 1960s. Warner Bros shut down the Original Termite Terrace studio in 1963 and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises assumed production of the shorts, licensed by Warner Bros. After DePatie-Freleng ceased production of Looney Tunes in 1967, Bill Hendricks was put in charge of production of the newly-renamed Warner Bros.-Seven Arts animation studio, and hired veterans such as Alex Lovy and LaVerne Harding from the Walter Lantz studio, Volus Jones and Ed Solomon from Disney, Jaime Diaz who later worked on The Fairly OddParents as director, and David Hanan, who previously worked on Roger Ramjet. Hendricks brought only three of the original Looney Tunes veterans to the studio such as Ted Bonniscken, Norman McCabe and Bob Givens. The studio's one shot cartoons from this era were critically acclaimed. Cool Cat, Merlin the Magic Mouse, Norman Normal and Chimp and Zee were praised as being highly creative and having extremely clever writing and design that compensated for the extremely low budgets the crew had to work with by this time. Alex Lovy left the studio in 1968 and Robert McKimson took over. McKimson mostly focused on the recurring characters Alex Lovy had created and two of his own creation, Bunny and Claude. The last of the original Looney Tunes shorts produced was Bugged by a Bee and the last Merrie Melodies short was Injun Trouble, which shares its name with another Looney Tunes short from 1938. The Warner Bros.-Seven Arts studio finally shut down in 1969.

A decade later, after the success of the film, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, which consisted predominately of footage from the classic shorts by Jones, a new in-house studio to produce original animation opened its doors in 1980 named Warner Bros. Animation, which exists to this day.