[5] After a brief stint at the Jam Handy Organization, Maltese was hired by Leon Schlesinger Productions in April 1937 as an in-betweener, and later a storyman due to everyone laughing at his jokes.

[7] The first cartoon he was credited for Warner's was The Haunted Mouse (1941) by Tex Avery, although he wrote rejected gags for The Timid Toreador.

[11][12] Some of his later Warner cartoons included Ali Baba Bunny, Robin Hood Daffy, the seminal What's Opera, Doc?

and Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century for Jones,[13][14] Rabbit Romeo and Fox-Terror for Robert McKimson and Person to Bunny (the final occasion Arthur Q. Bryan voiced Elmer Fudd) and Here Today, Gone Tamale (the only Speedy Gonzales cartoon he ever wrote) for Freleng.

He also is the writer of Chilly Willy's Academy Award-nominated theatrical short The Legend of Rockabye Point, directed by fellow Warner alumnus Tex Avery.

Maltese died on February 22, 1981, at Los Angeles's Good Samaritan Hospital after a six-month bout with cancer, aged 73.