for Tweetie Pie from Shirley Temple at the 20th Academy Awards ceremony on March 20, 1948, Selzer said:In accepting this award, I'm naturally thrilled, but I accept it for the entire Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio. It might interest you to know that in production of this "Tweetie Pie," 85 percent of our personnel were directly connected with its construction. However, the one man who really should be up here getting this award and not me, is the director of the picture, Friz Freleng, who is in the audience. I can't pay him too great a tribute. Thank you. Selzer also forbade Robert McKimson from producing any future cartoons with the Tasmanian Devil in them after seeing the Devil's premiere short and deeming the creature far too grotesque to be a recurring character. Selzer changed his mind and allowed further Tasmanian Devil cartoons only upon discovering from Jack Warner that Taz was in fact a massive hit with audiences. Selzer's edict that "camels aren't funny" inspired Friz Freleng to disprove him by making Sahara Hare, a cartoon in which much of the comedy arises from Yosemite Sam's attempts to control his dim-witted camel. Chuck Jones and Mike Maltese created Bully for Bugs in direct response to Selzer's declaration that there was nothing funny about bullfighting. Edward Selzer was proud of his position as producer of the Looney Tunes series because of the joy the team's creations brought to so many. Although he loudly (and indelicately) declared that there was nothing funny about a skunk who spoke French, he proudly (yet hypocritically) accepted the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 1949 – for For Scent-imental Reasons, a Pepé Le Pew cartoon. Selzer retired in 1958, and John Burton became the head of Warner Bros. Cartoons. Death Edward Selzer died on February 22, 1970, after a long illness. Upon his death, some of his five Academy Award Oscar statues for the winning cartoons he produced were distributed to the crews behind the cartoons; the one for 1957's Birds Anonymous were given to voice artist Mel Blanc while the ones for Tweetie Pie and Speedy Gonzales were given to Freleng. References External links Toonopedia: Tasmanian Devil 1893 births 1970 deaths American film producers American animated film producers American people of German descent Warner Bros. Cartoons people Film producers from New York (state) Producers who won the Best Animated Short Academy Award