Frank Tashlin

Frank Tashlin
Born	Francis Fredrick von Taschlein (1913-02-19)February 19, 1913 Weehawken, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	May 5, 1972(1972-05-05) (aged 59) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Other names	Frank Tash Tish Tash
Occupation(s)	Animator, comics artist, children's writer, illustrator, screenwriter, film director
Years active	1929–1972
Employer(s)	Fleischer Studios (1929–1930) Van Beuren Studios (1930–1933) Ub Iwerks Studio (1933–1935) Warner Bros. Cartoons (1933–1934, 1936–1938, 1942–1944) Walt Disney Productions (1938–1941) Screen Gems (1941–1942)
Spouses	Dorothy Hill ​ ​ (m. 1936; div. 1949)​ Mary Costa ​ ​ (m. 1953; div. 1966)​
Children	2

Frank Tashlin (born Francis Fredrick von Taschlein, February 19, 1913 – May 5, 1972), also known as Tish Tash and Frank Tash, was an American animator and filmmaker. He was best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated shorts for Warner Bros., as well as his work as a director of live-action comedy films.

Animator and brief career as cartoonist

The Chow Hound, Private Snafu cartoon directed by Frank Tashlin in 1944

Born in Weehawken, New Jersey, Tashlin drifted from job to job after dropping out of high school in New Jersey at age 13. In 1930, he began working for John Foster as a cartoonist on the Aesop's Fables cartoon series, then worked briefly for Amadee J. Van Beuren, but he was just as much a drifter in his animation career as he had been as a teenager. Tashlin joined Leon Schlesinger's cartoon studio at Warner Bros. as an animator in 1933, where he was known as a fast animator. He used his free time to start his own comic strip in 1934 called Van Boring, inspired by former boss Van Beuren, which ran for three years. He signed his comic strip "Tish Tash", and used the same name for his cartoon credits (at the time it was considered extremely unprofessional to use anything except one's birth name among animators, but Tashlin was able to get away with this due to the anti-Germanic feelings of that era). Tashlin was fired from the studio when he refused to give Schlesinger a cut of his comic strip revenues. He joined the Ub Iwerks studio in 1934. He moved to Hal Roach's studio in 1935 as a writer.

He returned to Schlesinger in 1936 as an animation director, where his diverse interest and knowledge of the industry brought a new understanding of camerawork to the Warners directors. "He used all different kinds of camera angles, montages, and pan shots, vertical and horizontal." He directed 16 or 17 shorts from 1936 to 1938. He was making $150 a week. At one point he had an argument with studio manager Henry Binder and resigned. In 1938, he worked for Disney in the story department, where he made 50 dollars a week.

Afterward, he served as production manager at Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems animation studio in 1941. He effectively ran the studio and hired many former Disney staffers who had left as a result of the Disney animators' strike. He launched The Fox and the Crow series, one of the better products of the studio. He was fired over an argument with the executives of Columbia.

Tashlin rejoined the Warner directors of "Termite Terrace" in 1942. One of his directorial efforts was Porky Pig's Feat (1943), the final black-and-white appearance of Porky Pig. He stayed with the studio during World War II and worked on numerous wartime shorts, including the Private Snafu educational films. Shortly after he left Warner Bros. in late 1944, he directed some stop-motion puppet films for John Sutherland in 1946. Robert McKimson took over his unit after his departure from the studio.

His only Bugs Bunny shorts were The Unruly Hare and Hare Remover. The latter was also his last credit at Warner Bros.

Martha Sigall described him as "Here today, gone tomorrow. Now you see him, now you don't. That was Frank Tashlin, who would be working at Leon Schlesinger's one day, and, suddenly, gone the next day."

Film director and writer

Tashlin moved on from animation in 1946 to become a gag writer for the Marx Brothers, Lucille Ball, and others, and as a screenwriter for stars such as Bob Hope and Red Skelton. His live-action films still echo elements of his animation background; Tashlin peppered them with unlikely sight gags, breakneck pacing, and unexpected plot twists.

Tashlin began his career directing feature films when he was asked to finish directing the 1951 film The Lemon Drop Kid starring Bob Hope.

Beginning with the 1956 film The Girl Can't Help It, with its satirical look at early rock and roll, Tashlin had a streak of commercial successes with the Martin and Lewis film Hollywood or Bust in 1956, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1957, which, like 1956's The Girl Can't Help It, starred actress and Playboy model Jayne Mansfield, and six of Jerry Lewis' early solo films (Rock-A-Bye Baby, The Geisha Boy, Cinderfella, It's Only Money, Who's Minding the Store?, and The Disorderly Orderly).

Moreover, in the 1950s Tashlin came to the approving attention of French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, in reviews that the director dismissed as "all this philosophical double-talk." Also, the broad, colorful satire of Madison Avenue advertising in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? earned the film a place on the National Film Registry in 2000. In 2014, his stop-motion animation short The Way of Peace was also added to the Registry.

In the 1960s, Tashlin's films lost some of their spark, and his career ended in the latter part of that decade, along with those of most of the stars with whom he had worked. His final film was The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell starring Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller in 1968.

Author

Tashlin wrote and illustrated three books, The Bear That Wasn't (1946), The Possum That Didn't (1950), and The World That Isn't (1951). These are often referred to as "children's books" although all contained satirical elements; The Bear That Wasn't was adapted as an animated cartoon by Tashlin's former Warner Bros. colleague, Chuck Jones, in 1967. Another children's story which Tashlin wrote in 1949 was recorded by Spike Jones: How the Circus Learned to Smile. Tashlin also wrote and self-published an instructional booklet entitled How to Create Cartoons (about cartoon drawing, not animation) in 1952.

Death

Tashlin died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after being stricken with a coronary thrombosis three days before at his Beverly Hills home. He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Filmography

Cartoon shorts

Year	Title	Notes
1936	Porky's Poultry Plant
	Little Beau Porky
	Porky in the North Woods
1937	Porky's Road Race
	Porky's Romance
	Porky's Building
	Porky's Railroad
	Speaking of the Weather
	The Case of the Stuttering Pig
	Porky's Double Trouble
	The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos
1938	Porky at the Crocadero
	Now That Summer Is Gone
	Porky the Fireman
	Have You Got Any Castles?
	Porky's Spring Planting
	The Major Lied 'Til Dawn
	Wholly Smoke
	Cracked Ice
	Little Pancho Vanilla
	You're an Education
1941	The Fox and the Grapes	First animated short with Screen Gems and Columbia
	The Tangled Angler
1942	A Hollywood Detour
	Under the Shedding Chestnut Tree
	Wacky Wigwams
	Woodman, Spare Me That Tree	Last animated short with Screen Gems and Columbia
1943	Porky Pig's Feat
	Scrap Happy Daffy
	The Goldbrick
	The Home Front
	Puss n' Booty	Last black and white Looney Tunes cartoon
1944	I Got Plenty of Mutton
	Swooner Crooner
	The Chow Hound
	Brother Brat
	Plane Daffy
	Booby Hatched
	The Stupid Cupid
1945	The Unruly Hare
	Behind the Meat-Ball	Uncredited
	Tale of Two Mice	Uncredited
	Nasty Quacks	Uncredited
1946	Hare Remover	Uncredited; last animated short with Warner Bros
1947	The Way of Peace	Also writer
1967	The Bear That Wasn't	Story only

Feature films

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Producer	Notes
1940	Pinocchio	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
1945	Delightfully Dangerous	No	Story	No	Story co-written with Irving Phillips and Edward Verdier
1946	A Night in Casablanca	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
	Monsieur Beaucaire	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
1947	Variety Girl	No	Yes	No	Co-written with Monte Brice, Edmund Hartmann and Robert L. Welch
1948	The Fuller Brush Man	No	Yes	No	Co-written with Devery Freeman
	One Touch of Venus	No	Yes	No	Co-written with Harry Kurnitz
	The Paleface	No	Yes	No	Co-written with Edmund Hartmann
1949	Miss Grant Takes Richmond	No	Yes	No	Co-written with Devery Freeman and Nat Perrin
	Love Happy	No	Yes	No	Co-written with Mac Benoff
	A Woman of Distinction	No	Yes	No	Additional dialogue
1950	The Good Humor Man	No	Yes	No
	Kill the Umpire	No	Yes	No
	The Fuller Brush Girl	No	Yes	No
1951	The Lemon Drop Kid	Uncredited	Yes	No	Co-written with Edmund Hartmann and Robert O'Brien
	My Favorite Spy	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
1952	The First Time	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with Jean Rouverol, Hugo Butler and Dane Lussier
	Son of Paleface	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with Joseph Quillan and Robert L. Welch
1953	Marry Me Again	Yes	Yes	No
1954	Red Garters	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
	Susan Slept Here	Yes	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
1955	5 Against the House	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
	Artists and Models	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with Hal Kanter and Herbert Baker
1956	The Lieutenant Wore Skirts	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with Albert Beich
	The Scarlet Hour	No	Yes	No	Co-written with Alford Van Ronkel and John Meredyth Lucas
	The Best Things in Life Are Free	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
	The Girl Can't Help It	Yes	Yes	Yes	Co-written with Herbert Baker
	Hollywood or Bust	Yes	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
1957	Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?	Yes	Yes	Yes
1958	Rock-A-Bye Baby	Yes	Yes	No
	The Geisha Boy	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with Rudy Makoul
1959	Say One for Me	Yes	Uncredited	Yes	Script revisions
1960	Cinderfella	Yes	Yes	No
1961	Snow White and the Three Stooges	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
1962	Bachelor Flat	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with Budd Grossman
	Gigot	No	Uncredited	No	Script revisions
	It's Only Money	Yes	No	No
1963	The Man from the Diner's Club	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with William Peter Blatty
	Who's Minding the Store?	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with Harry Tugend
1964	The Disorderly Orderly	Yes	Yes	No
1965	The Alphabet Murders	Yes	No	No
1966	The Glass Bottom Boat	Yes	No	No
1967	Caprice	Yes	Yes	No	Co-written with John Kohn
1968	The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell	Yes	Yes	No

Sources

• Sigall, Martha (2005). "The Boys of Termite Terrace". Living Life Inside the Lines: Tales from the Golden Age of Animation. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781578067497.
• Seife, Ethan de (16 April 2012). Tashlinesque: The Hollywood Comedies of Frank Tashlin. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 978-0-8195-7241-7. Retrieved 6 March 2023.

External links

• Frank Tashlin at IMDb
• Frank Tashlin Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• "Private SNAFU – The Home Front", 1943 cartoon directed by Tashlin, viewable online
• New York Times article
• Literature on Frank Tashlin
• How to Create Cartoons
• Frank Tashlin Lambiek Comiclopedia