Pink Phink.

Saturday Morning. Time for another "first episode" cartoon.

A year after getting his start in the animated credit sequence of the 1963 Blake Edwards comedy feature film, the Pink Panther hit the ground running with his first, highly stylized cartoon short, which actually won an Academy Award. This would be the start of a long and successful career in theatrical and TV animation.

Like most of his classic era appearances, Pink doesn't speak in this outing. But this is not an absolute rule for the character. In a couple cartoons, he did speak with a David Niven like voice. (Never mind him getting Max Headroom's voice on TV decades later.)

The colorful cat benefited immensely from Henry Mancini's famous theme music. The opening image, with the more quadrupedal version of the Panther using a gold cigarette holder, used to make me wonder if there were earlier cartoons featuring that more primitive design. But no. This is the first one!

.