Tweety - Freleng Takes Over

Freleng Takes Over

Clampett began work on a short that would pit Tweety against a then-unnamed, lisping black and white cat created by Friz Freleng in 1945. However, Clampett left the studio before going into full production on the short, and Freleng took on the project. Freleng toned Tweety down and gave him a cuter appearance, including large blue eyes and yellow feathers. Clampett mentions in Bugs Bunny: Superstar that the feathers were added to satisfy censors who objected to the naked bird. The first short to team Tweety and the cat, later named Sylvester, was 1947's Tweetie Pie, which won Warner Bros. its first Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).

Sylvester and Tweety proved to be one of the most notable pairings in animation history. Most of their cartoons followed a standard formula:

• The hungry Sylvester wanting to eat the bird, but some major obstacle stands in his way – usually Granny or her bulldog Hector (or occasionally, numerous bulldogs, or another cat who wants to eat Tweety).
• Tweety saying his signature lines "I tawt I taw a puddy tat!" and "I did! I did taw a puddy tat!" (Originally "I did! I taw a puddy tat!", but the extra "did" got inserted somehow). Eventually, someone must have commented on the grammar of "...did taw..."; in later cartoons, Tweety says "I did! I did tee a puddy tat!".
• Sylvester spending the entire film using progressively more elaborate schemes or devices to capture his meal, similar to Wile E. Coyote in his ongoing efforts to catch roadrunners. Of course, each of his tricks fail, either due to their flaws or, more often than not, because of intervention by either Hector the Bulldog or an indignant Granny (voiced by Bea Benaderet and later June Foray), or after Tweety steers the enemy toward them or another device (such as off the ledge of a tall building or an oncoming train).

In 1951, Mel Blanc (with Billy May's orchestra) had a hit single with "I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat", a song performed in character by Tweety and featuring Sylvester. In the lyrics Sylvester sings "I'd like to eat that Sweetie Pie when he leaves his cage", implying that Tweety's name is actually Sweetie Pie, altered in its pronunciation by Tweetie's rhotacism. Sylvester, who has his own speech issues involving the letters S and P, slobbers the "S" in "Sweetie Pie", just as he would the "S" sounds in his own name.

From 1945 until the original Warner Bros. Cartoons studio closed, Freleng had almost exclusive use of Tweety at the Warner cartoon studio (much like Yosemite Sam), with the exception of a brief cameo in No Barking in 1954, directed by Chuck Jones (that year, Freleng used Pepé Le Pew, a Jones character, for the only time in his career and the only time in a Tweety short, Dog Pounded).