Early Life and Career
Schlesinger was born in Philadelphia. After working at a theater as an usher, songbook agent, actor, and manager (including the Palace Theater in Buffalo, New York), he founded Pacific Title and Art in 1919, where most of his business was producing title cards for silent films. As talking pictures ("talkies") gained popularity in 1929 and 1930, Schlesinger looked for ways to capitalize on the new technology and stay in business. Some film historians claim that he helped finance the Warner brothers' first talkie, The Jazz Singer. He then secured a contract with the studio to produce its brand-new Looney Tunes series, and he signed animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising to create these cartoons with their Bosko character as the star.
Read more about this topic: Leon Schlesinger
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or career:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769,... he had said of them, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth’s embrace
May breed with him can fright my faith.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)