Leon Schlesinger (May 20, 1884 – December 25, 1949) was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.

Schlesinger was born in Philadelphia. After working at a theater as an usher, songbook agent, actor, and manager (including the Palace Theater in Buffalo, NY (source Buffalo News, April 15, 1944), he founded Pacific Title and Art in 1919, where most of his business was producing title cards for silent films. As talking pictures ("talkies") gained popularity in 1929 and 1930, Schlesinger looked for ways to capitalize on the new technology and stay in business. Legend claims that he helped finance the Warner brothers' first talkie, The Jazz Singer. He then secured a contract with the studio to produce its brand-new Looney Tunes series, and he signed animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising to create these cartoons with their Bosko character as the star.

Schlesinger was a shrewd businessman with a keen eye for talent. When Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. with Bosko in 1934, Schlesinger set up his own studio on the Warner Bros. lot on Sunset Boulevard. He wooed animators away from other studios, including some of those who had departed with Harman and Ising. One of these was Friz Freleng, who Schlesinger promoted to oversee production of Looney Tunes and to develop the sister series, Merrie Melodies. Freleng's talent quickly shone through, and Schlesinger's hiring of Frederick "Tex" Avery, Carl Stalling, and Frank Tashlin further increased the quality of the studio's output. He later added Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, and Mel Blanc, and collectively these men created such famous characters as Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny. Schlesinger largely took a "hands off" approach to the animation unit, allowing his directors freedom to create what they wished. The films only had to do well in the theaters. Schlesinger sold Pacific Title & Art in 1935 to concentrate on his animation studio.

Schlesinger's hard-nosed business practices cannot be overstated. His animators worked in a dilapidated studio (Avery's unit were briefly assigned to a bungalow they dubbed "Termite Terrace"), and Schlesinger briefly shut down the studio in 1941 and 1942 when unionized employees demanded a pay raise. On another occasion, he boycotted the Academy Awards for what he claimed was preferential treatment for Walt Disney Studios. He also farmed some of the Looney Tunes out to his brother-in-law, Ray Katz, for tax breaks. Schlesinger was also known (among his animators, at least) for his lisp. In fact, Mel Blanc patterned the voices of both Daffy Duck and Sylvester the cat on Schlesinger, something the producer never acknowledged noticing. Animators who worked with him also found him conceited and somewhat foppish, wearing too much cologne and dressing like a dandy.

Leon Schlesinger appeared as himself in Freleng's 1940 short You Ought to Be in Pictures, a short that combines live action with animation. In this short, Daffy Duck, angling to become the biggest star in the studio (Bugs Bunny had yet to make his debut), convinces Porky Pig that there is a bigger future in feature films than in cartoons. Porky takes his contention to "the boss" - Schlesinger himself.

Schlesinger remained head of the animation studio until 1944 when he sold his assets to Warner Bros. He continued to market the characters until his death from a viral infection on Christmas Day, 1949 at age 65. Schlesinger also produced a number of B-movie Westerns in the 1930s. After Warner Bros. bought Schlesinger's studio, Eddie Selzer assumed Schlesinger's position as producer.

Leon Schlesinger occupies an odd niche in Hollywood history. He was every bit a studio mogul but occupied a narrow - if extremely lucrative - corner of the industry, an animation company. He might have shared this corner with Walt Disney but the two men couldn't have been more different in their professional outlook, yet at one time or another each employed many of the same people and shared rabid anti-union attitudes and paid their talented staffs poorly. Unlike Disney, Schlesinger didn't set out to become a producer of animated cartoons, he owned the immodestly-named Leon Schlesinger Productions, which had evolved out of Pacific Art & Title, which was Warner Brothers' title card outfit back in the silent days. The company was not exclusive to Warner's, but Leon developed a particularly close friendship with Jack L. Warner and as legend has it, when the studio was up against the financial ropes, it was Schlesinger that helped finance Jazz Singer, The (1927). In 1929, Leon was approached by two unemployed 25-year old ex-Walt Disney animators, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, who had produced a novel 3-minute talkie cartoon, 'Bosko The Talk-ink Kid,' a plotless exercise made to demonstrate something Disney hadn't accomplished with his talkie-toon Steamboat Willie (1928): Bosko's voice was lip-synchronized. Harman and Ising had shopped the character and technique around town without any bites until they approached Schlesinger, who feared the vast majority of his rapidly dwindling title card business was about to be completely wiped out as studios converted over to sound. Animation was a natural move. On January 28, 1930 Schlesinger signed a contract with Harman and Ising to deliver a single cartoon within 60 days (!) with options for additional cartoons amounting to a year's production based on monthly delivery (!!). Leon then went to work on Jack Warner and landed a distribution deal and exercised his options. This middleman arrangement was to define Leon Schlesinger for the remainder of his career: unlike Disney he was no visionary--- Leon was simply out for money. At the beginning of his career as a cartoon mogul, he also found time to briefly act as a producer for Nat Levine's Mascot B-unit western division, Lone Star, devoted to John Wayne (I) "Singing Sandy" low-budget oaters. Back on the animation side, with no small amount of conceit, he wanted his name on everything, despite having no creative input. Leon was simply, and often ruthlessly, devoutly committed to making the most money based on the artistic genius of others. Harman and Ising frequently clashed with Schlesinger over production budgets and color production. Leon predictably balked at cutting into his profits for the sake of art. By 1933, the boys had enough of Leon, quit and quickly signed Bosko to a distribution deal with MGM. Leon was left, except for certain copyrights (the names Looney Tunes, and Merrie Melodies, for example) virtually high and dry - but not without a plan. Schlesinger, free of partners, quickly rallied. He got Warner's to lease him out a suitable space (nicknamed 'Termite Terrace') and formed his own studio. At the depth of the Great Depression, talent came cheap and Leon went about poaching select ex-Herman-Ising staff members such as Friz Freleng and Robert Clampett, along with hand-picked former Disney personnel, arguably the most important early key member of the team was Earl Duvall. Duvall created the first identifiable character of Schlesinger's new studio, a bland Caucasian Bosko-like kid named Buddy, who would appear in 23 cartoons until 1938. Schlesinger finally caved to color in 1934 with the 42nd Street (1933)-inspired Honeymoon Hotel, starring a variety of bugs. Schlesinger was acutely aware of Disney's domination of the animation industry - they had 3-strip Technicolor locked up exclusively through 1936 and it was an open secret there was a Disney animated feature in the works. He countered with every asset cheaply available: Warner's excellent music library and outstanding orchestra and his staff was not bound by Disney's rigid policy of realism. By comparison, Schlesinger's individual production units (each headed by legendary directors like Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin and Chuck Jones (I)) could be positively outrageous. 1936 saw the fortuitous hiring of ex-KGW Radio 'Hoot Owl' announcer Mel Blanc (hired to an exclusive contract some 4 years later) and an increasingly popular roster of new animated stars: Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and, especially Bugs Bunny (formally introduced in 1940). Fiercely anti-union, Schlesinger had few qualms over shutting his newly-unionized studio down twice in the early 1940's balking at his animator's demands for higher wages. Surprisingly, Leon didn't work for Warner's exclusively; he assigned units to work for animated segments of films for Paramount, RKO (Disney's distributor!) and Republic. Scheslinger himself remained as arrogant and egotistical as ever, decidedly non-creative while continuing to rail against spiraling costs, so this early golden age essentially happened despite him. Leon decided to sell his company to Warner Brothers in July, 1944 for $700,000.00 and in a measure of true Schlesinger generosity, he rewarded each of his directors a gold pen set and invited them to dinner at his mansion for the first and last time to celebrate their years together. The retired mini-mogul died on Christmas Day, 1949, his public reputation forever cemented by the words, 'A Leon Scheslinger Production' plastered on a multitude of classic cartoons.