Hasty But Tasty

After Warner Bros. shut down it's animation department in 1963, Director Friz Freleng still had to eat, and so did his top guys from his Warner's unit. So Friz partnered with David H. dePatie, and they formed their own company to make cartoons expressly for television. The aforementioned gents were the Producers, while the animators from the Freleng Unit Directed and animated the cartoons for several series, the longest-running of which were the several iterations of The Pink Panther Show for NBC. Here, we're discussing The Aardvark and the Ant. Friz didn't mind "borrowing" a gag from someone else at Warner's, such as Warner cartoon Director Robert McKimson's Portable Hole, from the Looney Tune "The Hole Idea" - a cartoon McKimson wrote, animated, and Directed HIMSELF! McKimson didn't mind, as HE Directed a number of dePatie-Freleng cartoons for DePatie-Freleng! As with most animated TV half-hours, The Pink Panther needed a second feature, and that was The Aardvark and the Ant. For TV animation, which was and IS seldom good, Freleng's product was better than most. The Aardvark and the Ant cartoons were almost always funny, with the BEST musicians ANYWHERE!