Frank Tashlin
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| Frank Tashlin | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 19, 1913 Weehawken, New Jersey |
| Died | May 5, 1972 |
Frank Tashlin (born Francis Fredrick von Taschlein, February 19, 1913 – May 5, 1972) was an American animator, screenwriter, and director.
[edit] Animator
Tashlin drifted from job to job after dropping out of high school in New Jersey at age 13. In 1930, he started working for Paul Terry as a cartoonist on the Aesop's Film 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 1932, where he was noted 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." 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.
In 1938, he worked for Disney in the story department. Afterward, he served as production manager at Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems animation studio in 1941. Tashlin rejoined the Warner directors of "Termite Terrace" in 1943. He stayed with the studio during World War II and worked on numerous wartime shorts, including the Private Snafu educational films.
[edit] Director
Tashlin quit animation for good in 1944 (although he briefly returned at MGM in the 1960's to produce The Bear That Wasn't, directed by Chuck Jones) to become a gag writer for the Marx Brothers and Lucille Ball (among others) as well as a screenwriter. (His role at Termite Terrace was taken over by Robert McKimson.) His live-action films still betray elements of his animation background; Tashlin peppers them with unlikely sight gags, breakneck pacing, and unexpected plot twists. During his career, he wrote films for Bob Hope and Red Skelton.
Beginning with the 1956 film The Girl Can't Help It, with its satirical look at early rock and roll, Tashlin hit a stride of commercial successes with the Martin and Lewis film Hollywood Or Bust in 1956, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1957, and four of Jerry Lewis' early solo films (Rock-A-Bye Baby, The Geisha Boy, Cinderfella, and It's Only Money.) Many of these have attained cult status. Rock Hunter's broad, colorful satire of Madison Avenue advertising was compared to the work of Preston Sturges, and Tashlin came to the approving attention of the French Cahiers du Cinéma in reviews that the director dismissed as "all this philosophical double-talk."
In the 1960s, Tashlin's films lost some of their spark, and his career ended in the latter part of that decade, along with that of most of the stars he had worked with. His final film was The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell starring Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller in 1968. His film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was placed in the National Film Registry in 2000.
