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1st Tier Director
Friz Freleng was the eldest WB director (he was 90 when he died) and the most experienced. He directed WB cartoons from 1933 to 1964, the longest stretch anybody had. Even if his early cartoons were Disney-imitations as was the norm with the studio, he seamlessly evolved with everyone else in the 40’s and adapted to the changing environment for the 50’s and 60’s. It’s possible he might have directed more cartoons than anyone, and in a way his experience makes him the guru of cartoons.
But for a long time, I dismissed Freleng’s cartoons as companions to Bob Clampett’s and Tex Avery’s films (I once relegated Chuck Jones to this category as well…thank God or MGM for that GA boxset). Despite the fact that he’d been there forever, he always seemed like a second rate director to me. I mean, he never did the extra embellishments Bob Clampett did, nor did he ever conjure something like the bra gag from Corny Concerto. He didn’t have Jones’ sense of atmosphere, or Tex Avery's gag-laden crainium. Heck, even Bob McKimson and Arthur Davis had more distinguishing features. Friz was always content to work with nothing more than the basics. I’d know a Friz cartoon if I saw one, but I’d be hard pressed to say what makes it special.
I owe Chuck Jones for being able to peg down what makes Freleng so good. His discussion about Friz in Chuck Amuck gave me the insight I needed. See, while Freleng always stuck to the basics and never did anything elaborate or gimmicky, he did the basics better than anyone. And that’s because he had a sharper sense of timing than anyone in the business. Jones, Clampett, and Avery were no slouches in timing, of course, and they certainly timed their cartoons in very creative ways, but Freleng’s sense of timing was the distinguishing feature of his cartoons. He made you feel it. His instincts were unparalleled when it came to sequencing and making everything last.
Freleng’s cartoons might have had a generic feeling to them, but thanks to his timing ability, even his most non-descript cartoons come alive. Even if he never had a unique identity like his contemporaries, he never did cartoons just to fill air-space, like some MGM cartoons I’ve seen that weren’t done by Avery or Hanna-Barberra and other conservative swill on these public domain tapes I have.
For all his skill at timing, Freleng’s cartoons don’t seem to have a point other than to hack out the material. He never did create his own special other-worldly aesthetic like Clampett, Avery, and Jones. Most of his gags are good, and Freleng and his crew had so many in their heads, but they’re often interchangeable between cartoons, independent of the plot, and recycled quite a bit. This remains in line with his general purpose approach.
Freleng is the grandmaster when it comes to the bare meat of cartoons, and the diversity he covered is respectable. In a certain way he perfected the bare bones for everyone else to build their own style around, but don’t forget that he made a lot classic cartoons as well. And thanks to his timing ability, he’s done fewer tedious cartoons than most directors.