Martha Sigall described him as, "Here today, gone tomorrow. Now you see him, now you don't. That was Frank Tashlin, who would be working at Leon Schlesinger's one day, and, suddenly, gone the next day." After several disputes with Schlesinger (suspended for 4 weeks with no pay), Avery left Warner Bros. in 1941 and went to work at MGM. Avery created Droopy in 1943 and many other characters during his 12-year career at MGM. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in August 1944. Edward Selzer was in turn named the new producer. By this time, Warner cartoons' top directors of the 1940s were Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and recently Robert McKimson, who took over Frank Tashlin’s unit after he left the studio. Their cartoons are now considered classics of the medium. They directed some of the most beloved animated shorts of all time, including (for Clampett) "Porky in Wackyland", "Wabbit Twouble", "A Corny Concerto", "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", "The Big Snooze", (for Freleng) "You Ought to Be in Pictures", "Rhapsody in Rivets", "Little Red Riding Rabbit", "Birds Anonymous", "Knighty Knight Bugs", (for Jones) "Rabbit Fire", "Duck Amuck", "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century", "One Froggy Evening", "What's Opera, Doc?", (for McKimson) "Walky Talky Hawky", "Hillbilly Hare", "Devil May Hare", "The Hole Idea" and "Stupor Duck". Besides McKimson being promoted to director in the mid 1940s, Arthur Davis took over after Clampett in mid-1945, after being was fired by Selzer. Clampett went to work on Beany and Cecil. Many well known recurring characters were created by Jones, Freleng, McKimson and Clampett, and most instantly became popular at this time. This included Tweety (1942), Sylvester the Cat (1945), Pepé Le Pew (1945), Yosemite Sam (1945), Foghorn Leghorn (1946), The Goofy Gophers (1947), Marvin the Martian (1948), Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (1949), Granny (1950), The Tasmanian Devil (1954), Speedy Gonzales (1953, 1955) and among others.