DePatie-Freleng Enterprises

The corporate logo

The credit logo for DFE's Looney Tunes cartoons, which was originally "borrowed" from "Now Hear This".

DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, sometimes known as DFE, was an American animation studio founded in 1963 and dissolved in 1981. It is best known for making theatrical cartoons such as The Pink Panther, The Inspector, Roland and Rattfink, and The Ant and the Aardvark.

Background

From 1964 to 1967, DFE produced cartoons for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series after Warner Bros. had closed down its animation studio. Due to strict budgets and constrictions, the studio was only allowed to use certain characters such as Daffy Duck, Speedy Gonzales, Road Runner, and Wile E. Coyote. This era of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies is most known for the stylized opening and endings reused from Chuck Jones' "Now Hear This", without the sound effects, and with a reinterpretation of the famous "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" provided by William Lava. DePatie-Freleng would also outsource eleven Road Runner cartoons to Format Films, as well as animating the bridging sequences for The Road Runner Show.

After production of new Looney Tunes shorts shifted from outsourced production at DePatie-Freleng to in-house production at Warner Bros.-Seven Arts in 1967, twelve years later production of new Looney Tunes TV specials were outsourced to DePatie-Freleng once again for the last time; this time, the studio produced three original Looney Tunes TV specials; two focusing on Bugs Bunny and one focusing on Daffy Duck. Unlike the theatrical shorts which DePatie-Freleng produced between 1964-1967, the studio was allowed to use a larger selection of Looney Tunes characters, including characters that did not appear in the DFE era such as Bugs Bunny, Tweety, and Yosemite Sam.

DePatie-Freleng closed and was sold to Marvel in 1981. Marvel was bought out by Disney in 2009. Today, Disney owns some of the studio's work, with the exceptions of the Looney Tunes shorts from 1964-67, the Dr. Seuss specials, the The Pink Panther Show episodes and character trademarks, the Hasbro works, as well as a few others.

Filmography

Theatrical Shorts

1.  "Pancho's Hideaway" (1964)
2.  "Road to Andalay" (1964)
3.  "Zip Zip Hooray!" (1965)
4.  "It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House" (1965)
5.  "Cats and Bruises" (1965)
6.  "Roadrunner a Go-Go" (1965)
7.  "The Wild Chase" (1965)
8.  "Moby Duck" (1965)
9.  "Assault and Peppered" (1965)
10.  "Well Worn Daffy" (1965)
11.  "Suppressed Duck" (1965)
12.  "Corn on the Cop" (1965)
13.  "Rushing Roulette" (1965)
14.  "Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner" (1965)
15.  "Tease for Two" (1965)
16.  "Tired and Feathered" (1965)
17.  "Boulder Wham!" (1965)
18.  "Chili Corn Corny" (1965)
19.  "Just Plane Beep" (1965)
20.  "Hairied and Hurried" (1965)
21.  "Go Go Amigo" (1965)
22.  "Highway Runnery" (1965)
23.  "Chaser on the Rocks" (1965)
24.  "The Astroduck" (1966)
25.  "Shot and Bothered" (1966)
26.  "Out and Out Rout" (1966)
27.  "Mucho Locos" (1966)
28.  "The Solid Tin Coyote" (1966)
29.  "Mexican Mousepiece" (1966)
30.  "Clippety Clobbered" (1966)
31.  "Daffy Rents" (1966)
32.  "A-Haunting We Will Go" (1966)
33.  "Snow Excuse" (1966)
34.  "A Squeak in the Deep" (1966)
35.  "Feather Finger" (1966)
36.  "Swing Ding Amigo" (1966)
37.  "Sugar and Spies" (1966)
38.  "A Taste of Catnip" (1966)
39.  "Daffy's Diner" (1967)

Television shows

• The Road Runner Show (1966) (bridging sequences only)
• The Daffy Duck Show (1978)
• Sylvester and Tweety (1976)

TV Specials

• Bugs Bunny's Easter Special (1977)
• Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales (1979)
  •  "Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol"
  •  "Freeze Frame"
  •  "Fright Before Christmas"
• Daffy Duck's Easter Egg-citement (1980)
  •  "The Yolks on You"
  •  "The Chocolate Chase"
  •  "Daffy Flies North"

Notes

• All of the theatrical shorts produced from this studio have been restored, except for "Assault and Peppered", "Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner", "Snow Excuse", and "Feather Finger".
• Contrary to popular belief, none of the shorts actually completely reused the original animation or their original cels from the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio preceding it, with the exception of the Adventures of the Road-Runner cut-downs "Zip Zip Hooray!" and "Roadrunner a Go-Go". Due to legal restrictions from the contract where the original animation archives produced from the original studio couldn't be used, all reused animation was redrawn and recolored from their original reference material. Thus, there are slight differences between reused animation present in the studio's cartoons when compared to the original cartoons.

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