The Pink Phink

The Pink Phink
Original theatrical poster
Directed by	Friz Freleng Co-director: Hawley Pratt
Produced by	David H. DePatie Friz Freleng
Animation by	Don Williams Bob Matz Norman McCabe Laverne Harding
Backgrounds by	Thomas O'Loughlin
Color process	Deluxe
Production companies	DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (Marvel Animation)
Distributed by	United Artists
Running time	6' 46"

The Pink Phink is a 1964 animated short comedy film, directed by Friz Freleng and Hawley Pratt. It is the first animated short starring Blake Edwards' Pink Panther.

Plot

The Pink Panther and an unnamed painter (known as the "Little Man") compete over whether a house should be painted blue or pink. Each time the painter attempts to paint something blue, the panther thwarts him in a new way, and paints the object/area pink. At the end, the exasperated painter inadvertently turns the house and everything around it pink (first by repeatedly shooting at the elusive panther with a shotgun that the panther had poured pink paint into, and then by burying the panther's pink paint cans in the soil outside the house, where they "sprout"), and the panther moves in. But just before he moves in, he paints the white man completely pink. The painter gets upset and bangs his head against the mailbox outside. The Pink Panther then walks into the house as the sun (also turned pink) sets and the cartoon fades out.

Academy Award

The Pink Phink was the first Pink Panther animated short produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and by winning the 1964 Academy Award for Animated Short Film, it marked the first time that a studio won an Academy Award with its very first animated short.

Credits

• "The Pink Panther Theme": Henry Mancini
• Producers: David H. DePatie, Friz Freleng
• Director: Friz Freleng
• Co-Director: Hawley Pratt
• Story: John W. Dunn
• Animation: Don Williams, Bob Matz, Norman McCabe, LaVerne Harding
• Layout: Dick Ung
• Backgrounds: Tom O'Loughlin
• Film Editor: Lee Gunther
• Production Supervision: Bill Orcutt
• Music score: William Lava

Laugh track

A laugh track was added to the theatrical Pink Panther cartoons when they were broadcast as part of the Pink Panther Show aired on NBC, and this laugh track still appears on when the show is aired on the Spanish language Boomerang TV channel, and the France Channel Gulli. Most American broadcasts currently air minus the laugh track. The Pink Phink can be viewed in its original form with full titles and sans laugh track on The Official Pink Panther channel on YouTube.

Popular culture

• An episode of the animated series Dexter's Laboratory entitled "A Silent Cartoon" is a homage to this short; the short features Dexter (filling the role of the painter) trying to construct a blue laboratory, while an all-pink version of his sister Dee Dee finds clever ways to turn the blue lab into a completely pink lab.
• In the 2010 series Pink Panther and Pals, a scene from "A Pinker Tomorrow" in which the Pink Panther tricks the Little Man (Big Nose) to cover the outside of the house in paint, is an homage to the original short.

See also

• List of American films of 1964
• List of The Pink Panther cartoons

External links

• The Pink Phink at IMDb
• "The Pink Phink". DePatie-Freleng. Golden Age Cartoons. Archived from the original on Mar 9, 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)