The Pink Panther

Animated Character

The Pink Panther is the sly, lanky animated cat created by Friz Freleng and David DePatie. Often harried but rarely ruffled, the skinny feline was first created for the opening titles of the live-action film The Pink Panther (1964), which starred Peter Sellers as a bumbling French policeman pursuing an exotic diamond called the Pink Panther. The animated titles were so popular that DePatie and Freleng immediately set to work on a series of animated shorts, in the vein of Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse. The Panther cartoons had no dialogue, but were backed by variations on Henry Mancini's slithery, saxophone-y Pink Panther theme (also from the original film). In the 1970s the Pink Panther acquired his own Saturday-morning TV show and all the other trappings of cartoon stardom. Several sequels to the original live-action film also were made, and the two Pink Panthers ran in parallel universes for more than 15 years.

Extra credit: The Pink Panther appeared in a long-running series of ads for Owens Corning insulation... The first Pink Panther short, Pink Phink, was released late in 1964 and won an Oscar as the year's best animated short.

Other cartoon characters of film and TV fame: Fred Flintstone, Charlie Brown and Jessica Rabbit.