Friz Freleng

Isadore "Friz" Freleng was born in Kansas City in 1905 to Louis Mendel Freleng, a Polish Jewish immigrant from Kutno, and Elka Ribakoff, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant from the Odesa region. At Warner Bros. he directed 266 cartoons, more than any other director at the studio, and introduced or developed Yosemite Sam, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety, Sylvester and Granny. He won five Academy Awards and three Emmys, the most decorated of the Looney Tunes directors. After Warner Bros. closed its animation studio in 1963 he founded DePatie–Freleng Enterprises with David DePatie, where the Pink Panther was created for the title sequence of the 1963 film and then given a series of his own.