Trivia

While directing Bing Crosby in L'habit ne fait pas le moine (1959), Bing mentioned to Tashlin how much he hated how he was caricatured in the Warner Bros. cartoon Swooner Crooner (1944). Tashlin laughed, and told Bing that not only did he direct that cartoon, he also animated the caricature in it!

One of the few directors to successfully make the transition from animation to live-action. One critic noted that he directed his cartoons like live-action films and his live-action films like cartoons.

He was 6' 2" and weighed nearly 300 pounds.

Introduced cinematic techniques to the animated cartoon, such as odd camera angles, montage and quickly paced editing (some shots lasting only five frames long).

Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

According to Tashlin, he was fired from his animator job at Warner Brothers in 1936 when producer Leon Schlesinger discovered that Tashlin was also drawing a successful daily comic strip, "Van Boring," that was running in the Los Angeles Times. Schlesinger demanded a cut of Tashlin's profits from the comic strip, Tashlin refused, and Schlesinger fired him.

From 1939-41 he worked as an animator at Walt Disney Studios, although he never got screen credit for any of the work he did.

Wrote and illustrated four children's books from 1946-52: "The Bear That Wasn't", "The Possum That Didn't", "The World That Isn't" and "The Turtle That Couldn't".

Began drawing comic strips for his junior high school newspaper in Astoria, Queens, NY, starting in 1927.

His first job was running errands for Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer at their studio in New York City's Times Square.

Wrote and drew a syndicated comic strip between 1934-38 based on his old boss from the Van Beuren animation studio, producer Amadee J. Van Beuren, called "Van Boring.".

His book "The Bear That Wasn't" was turned into an animated cartoon at MGM studios in 1967 (The Bear That Wasn't (1967)) by veteran cartoon director Chuck Jones. Jones and Tashlin were acquaintances from the Warner Bros. animation studio in the 1930s and 1940s.

He has directed two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Way of Peace (1947) and La blonde explosive (1957).

Moved to Los Angeles in 1933 and began working for Leon Schlesinger at Warner Brothers on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series.

Worked as a gag writer for comedian Charley Chase at the Hal Roach Studio in the mid-1930s.