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 cartoons such as The Pink Panther.

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 didn't 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 works, 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

• "Pancho's Hideaway" (1964)
• "Road to Andalay" (1964)
• "Zip Zip Hooray!" (1965, Adventures of the Road-Runner cut-down)
• "It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House" (1965)
• "Cats and Bruises" (1965)
• "Roadrunner a Go-Go" (1965, Adventures of the Road-Runner cut-down)
• "The Wild Chase" (1965)
• "Moby Duck" (1965)
• "Assault and Peppered" (1965)
• "Well Worn Daffy" (1965)
• "Suppressed Duck" (1965)
• "Corn on the Cop" (1965)
• "Rushing Roulette" (1965)
• "Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner" (1965, with Format Films)
• "Tease for Two" (1965)
• "Tired and Feathered" (1965, with Format Films)
• "Boulder Wham!" (1965, with Format Films)
• "Chili Corn Corny" (1965)
• "Just Plane Beep" (1965, with Format Films)
• "Hairied and Hurried" (1965, with Format Films)
• "Go Go Amigo" (1965)
• "Highway Runnery" (1965, with Format Films)
• "Chaser on the Rocks" (1965, with Format Films)
• "The Astroduck" (1966)
• "Shot and Bothered" (1966, with Format Films)
• "Out and Out Rout" (1966, with Format Films)
• "Mucho Locos" (1966)
• "The Solid Tin Coyote" (1966, with Format Films)
• "Mexican Mousepiece" (1966)
• "Clippety Clobbered" (1966, with Format Films)
• "Daffy Rents" (1966)
• "A-Haunting We Will Go" (1966)
• "Snow Excuse" (1966)
• "A Squeak in the Deep" (1966)
• "Feather Finger" (1966)
• "Swing Ding Amigo" (1966)
• "Sugar and Spies" (1966)
• "A Taste of Catnip" (1966)
• "Daffy's Diner" (1967)

Television shows

• The Road Runner Show (1966) (bridging sequences only)

TV Specials

• Bugs Bunny's Easter Special (1977)
• Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales (1979)
• Daffy Duck's Easter Egg-citement (1980)

Trivia

• All of the shorts produced from this studio have been restored, except for "Assault and Peppered", "Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner", "Snow Excuse", and "Feather Finger".

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