David DePatie’s animation career was concentrated on commercial work until he received a fortuitous call from director Blake Edwards.

The Pink Panther is clearly a phenomenon in the world of animation. He sprung to life as an animated title sequence for Blake Edward’s The Pink Panther in 1964. While other animation studios had decided theatrical cartoons were extinct, the Panther’s theatrical short debut ended up winning an Academy Award. After a healthy theatrical life, the Panther moved into TV with expected grace and ease becoming a staple of series and specials. In true superstar fashion, piles of merchandise and sponsor endorsements followed.

Now at 40, he is back in his full theatrical glory thanks to an amazing DVD set (The Pink Panther Collection, MGM Home Ent.). Along with five feature films, which offer some great animated main title sequences, there is a special disc containing four Pink Panther theatrical shorts as well as a mini-documentary on the creation of the Pink Panther animated character.

AWN recently spoke with one of the Panther’s fathers, David DePatie. Having had an interest in advertising and animation, DePatie started work at Warner Bros. as a film editor on features. When Warners opened up a TV commercial division, he joined it.

Since a number of the commercials were animated, DePatie began working with the animation department. Soon, DePatie was asked to handle animation as well as commercials. “I said of course, as I knew most of the animation talent already from having done commercials with them. As luck would have it, though, one year later I’m called to New York to meet the studio’s board of directors. They told me that the studio was getting out of the animation business and gave me a year to wrap up any productions currently in the pipeline.” It seems the studio felt it had more than enough shorts.

The Pink Panther has found new life in a recently released DVD retrospective.

DePatie decided it might be time to go into business for himself. “I knew the commercial end, and the writing end. What I wanted was an animation director.” DePatie had worked with all the Warner directors at that time, Jones, McKimson, etc., but his first choice was Friz Freleng. “Friz Freleng was a genius in his own right. He had a sense of timing that nobody I ever worked with could come near.”

In the beginning, DePatie-Freleng existed on mostly TV commercials. They worked on Charlie Tuna, Post Cereals, Exxon (the tiger) and Gilette razors (Sharpy). It all changed when DePatie got a call from Edwards.

“I knew Blake Edwards from my days at Warner Bros.,” remembered DePatie. “One day he calls me up and asks for a me to drop by his place. I go over and he hands me a script, The Pink Panther, and said ‘I feel I have to have an animated character of a pink panther. Could you design one?’“

“I put our whole crew on it and we came up with over 100 designs. I took them over to Blake’s home and spread them all out around the floor. Blake walked around the drawings for a while and suddenly pointed to one. ‘This is the one I want.” Edwards had chosen a drawing by Hawley Pratt of a pink panther sitting with a cigarette holder in his hand. Edwards began using the illustration on letterhead and cards and such.

“We thought, ‘that was that’, and went back to our commercials,” DePatie continued. “Several months later, I get another call from Edwards. This time, he tells me that he wants an animated main title of the character playing around with all the names in the credit. He wanted it fully animated. We went right to work.