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.
Began drawing comic strips for his junior high school newspaper in Astoria, Queens, New York, starting in 1927.
From 1939 to 1941, Tashlin worked as an animator at Walt Disney Studios, although he never got screen credit for any of the work he did.
He was 6' 2" and weighed nearly 300 pounds.
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.
His first job was running errands for Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer at their studio in New York City's Times Square.
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.
Introduced cinematic techniques to the animated cartoon, such as odd camera angles, montage and quickly paced editing (some shots lasting only five frames long).
Moved to Los Angeles in 1933 and began working for Leon Schlesinger at Warner Brothers on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series.
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.
While directing Bing Crosby in Say One for Me (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!
Worked as a gag writer for comedian Charley Chase at the Hal Roach Studio in the mid-1930s.
Wrote and drew a syndicated comic strip between 1934 and 1938 based on his old boss from the Van Beuren animation studio, producer Amadee J. Van Beuren, called "Van Boring."
Wrote and illustrated four children's books from 1946 to 1952: The Bear That Wasn't, The Possum That Didn't, The World That Isn't, and The Turtle That Couldn't.