List of Looney Tunes characters
Encyclopedia
This is an incomplete list of Looney Tunes
and Merrie Melodies
characters.
, who challenges Bugs Bunny to a game of golf, after he destroys his bagpipes.
He later made his second major role in the Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries episode, It's a Plaid, Plaid World.
He also made a cameo appearance in Space Jam, during the basketball playoff between the Monstars and the TuneSquad.
. Although the short, fat character calls the other one "Babbit", the tall, skinny one never addresses his partner by name; the name "Catstello" was invented later. In their first three cartoons, the "Babbit" character was voiced by Tedd Pierce
, and Mel Blanc
performed "Catstello". Later, Babbit is voiced by Billy West
, and Joe Alaskey
performs Catstello.
Originally, the pair were cats in pursuit of a small bird for their meal in the 1942 Bob Clampett
-directed cartoon A Tale of Two Kitties
, a cartoon notable for the first appearance of the bird character, who would eventually become Warner Brothers cartoon icon Tweety Bird. The hapless duo fail in every attempt to capture the bird, establishing the pattern that would be used time and again in future Tweety cartoons.
Three years later, Babbit and Catstello reappeared in the similarly named Tale of Two Mice, directed by Frank Tashlin
. Though their characterizations were the same, the two were now mice, living in a hole in the wall of a typical cartoon kitchen. Their goal in this cartoon was the cheese in the kitchen's refrigerator, the only obstacle being the resident housecat. Babbit attempts to coerce Catstello (often by beating him up) into going after the cheese solo, using various methods to get it (which involved Catstello getting hurt). However, in the end, it is Swiss cheese, which Babbit can't stand. Angrily, Catstello beats him up and begins force-feeding the cheese, uttering one of his archetype Lou Costello
's famous lines: "Oh — I'm a baaaaad boy!" (At one point in A Tale of Two Kitties
, he similarly remarks, "I'm a baaaaad pussycat!")
The characters make a very brief cameo appearance in canine form in Robert McKimson
's second Warner Brothers short 'Hollywood Canine Canteen' released in April 1946. They play the pets of the real Abbott and Costello
, Costello's dog, refers to Abbott's dog as 'Babbit'.
Finally, six months later in October 1946, Robert McKimson
returned to the pair in The Mouse-Merized Cat, wherein Babbit uses a book to hypnotize
Catstello. Babbit has Catstello believe he's a dog in order to scare off the cat so they can get to the food in the refrigerator. However, the cat soon studies hypnosis and is able to reverse Babbit's spell. This results in Catstello running back and forth between the two as they continue use hypnosis. Finally, Catstello becomes fed up with Babbit making him the fall guy, and turns the tables on both Babbit and the cat, hypnotizing them into believing they are, respectively, a cowboy and his trusty steed. Catstello trickes Babbit with his Yosemite Sam
like voice makes babbit utters a deliberately misworded variation on the Lone Ranger
's classic catchphrase — "Hi yo, Sliver, awaaayy!" — before he and the cat gallop away. The final scene shows Catstello eating cheese and reading a book on living alone, before turning to the audience and once again reciting "Oh — I'm a baaaaadd boy!"
The pair have made few appearances since then, mainly cameos in modern Warner Brothers animated projects such as The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
voiced by Jim Cummings
and Joe Alaskey.
and Buddy
.
Created by Leon Schlesinger, Beans made his first appearance in the Merrie Melodies
cartoon I Haven't Got a Hat
(1935), along with Porky Pig who would have a much longer run in the series. He then made a cameo in The Country Mouse, another Merrie Melodies short release that same year.
Before having a role in another cartoon, Beans was already seen in the "That's all folks!" closings in the last three Buddy shorts. Finally, six months following his debut film, Beans starred in A Cartoonist's Nightmare
which would be his first solo cartoon, followed by Hollywood Capers
. Beans then began appearing with characters from the cast of I Haven't Got a Hat.
Featured on screen in only a couple of years, Beans appeared in just 9 shorts. His swan song was Westward Whoa
in 1936. Before being retired completely, he made a brief appearance in Plane Dippy.
Beans was voiced at first by Billy Bletcher
and sometimes Tommy Bond
, and later by Will Ryan
.
. While similar in many ways to Yosemite Sam
—both are short in stature and temper—Blacque Jacque possesses his own unique characteristics, not the least of which is his comically thick French Canadian
accent, performed by Mel Blanc
. Also, like Yosemite Sam and many other villains, Blacque Jacque Shellacque does not have a high level of intelligence, preferring to use force instead of strategy to fight Bugs.
Blacque Jacque first appeared in Bonanza Bunny
, which takes place in the middle of the Klondike gold rush
. Blacque Jacque attempts to seize Bugs' bag of gold (actually "a bunch of rocks and some yellow paint," according to Bugs) through card cheating, trickery, and out-and-out threats, but Bugs outwits him as always and defeats him by replacing his bag of gold with gunpowder while poking a hole in the bag and tossing a lit match on it causing a massive explosion.
Blacque Jacque later clashed with Bugs in 1962's Wet Hare
, in which his illegal damming of a river ("Me feel like pezky little beav-aire
!") brings him into conflict with the rabbit—not only because he is committing a crime, but because he has blocked off the waterfall that Bugs uses as a shower. After demolishing several of Blacque Jacque's dams, Bugs turns the tables by damming the river upstream of Jacque's dam. Jacque, unsurprisingly, is enraged and wheels a small cannon along the riverbed to destroy Bugs' dam—but when he does he only reveals another dam further upstream. Jacque blows up several of Bugs' dams in succession and finally follows Bugs all the way to the "Grand Cooler Dam" (a pun on the name of the Grand Coulee Dam
). Jacque tries to blow it up with his cannon, but the dam is so massive and thick that the cannonball he launches ricochets back into the cannon's barrel and the recoiling force lands both Jacque and the cannon into the back of a waiting paddy wagon.
Blacque Jacque also appears as a common enemy in Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
.
's Pluto
.
and the then recent film version
about the pair's life that had been released by Warner Brothers They are a well-dressed rabbit male (Claude) and female (Bunny) who are always pulling off carrot heists, and their catch phrase is "We rob carrot patches", based on the film Bonnie and Clyde's "We rob banks". Bunny was voiced by Pat Woodell and Claude was voiced by veteran WB voice actor Mel Blanc
. They both speak with pronounced Southern accents.
They appeared in two cartoons produced by Warner Brothers Animation and released by Warner Brothers- Seven Arts in 1968, titled Bunny and Claude: We Rob Carrot Patches and The Great Carrot Train Robbery (the latter was held over to 1969). Both films were directed by Robert McKimson
, and were his first two cartoons he directed in his comeback to Termite Terrace.
Bunny and Claude were always chased by a stereotypical Southern sheriff
(also voiced by Mel Blanc, his voice sounded similar to Foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam
), whom would always pursuit them in his police cruiser, even though the gangster rabbits would always foil his plans.
(although he more closely resembles a vulture
or condor
) with black body feathers and a white tuft around his throat. His neck is long and thin, bending 90 degrees at an enormous adam's apple
. His neck and head are featherless, and his beak is large and yellow or orange, depending on the cartoon. Beaky bears a perpetual goofy grin, and his eyes look eternally half-asleep.
The character first appeared in the 1942 cartoon Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid
, directed
by Bob Clampett
. The cartoon's plot revolves around the hopeless attempts of the brainless buzzard, here called Killer, to catch Bugs Bunny
for his domineering Greek mother back at the nest. Beaky's voice was modeled after ventriloquist Edgar Bergen
's character Mortimer Snerd, earning Beaky the nickname "Snerd Bird." The voice itself was provided by voice actor
Kent Rogers
.
Clampett brought the character back in the 1945 film The Bashful Buzzard
, a cartoon that closely mirrors its predecessor, only this time featuring Beaky's hapless hunting without scenes of him chasing Bugs for food. Rogers reprised his role as the character's voice for the film, but he died in a Naval aviation training accident at Pensacola, Florida
before finishing all his dialogue, so Stan Freberg
was brought in to finish the work (as was Eddie Bartell, according to some sources).
Warner Brothers apparently thought they had something in the character, and Beaky was featured in much of the Looney Tunes merchandising
of the time. He also appeared in several issues of Dell Comics
' Looney Tunes series of comic book
s, usually paired with another minor player, Henery Hawk
.
Clampett left the studio in 1946, ending Beaky's career for a time. The character was eventually brought back in the 1950 Friz Freleng
film The Lions Busy, now voiced by the versatile Mel Blanc
. Freleng made the buzzard smarter, pitting him against a dim-witted lion named Leo. Bob McKimson also featured the character in a film that year, Strife with Father
. McKimson's Beaky is again back to his idiotic self, this time under the tutelage of his adoptive father, a sparrow
who is trying to teach Beaky how to survive in the wild.
Most recently Beaky Buzzard has had minor roles in various Warner Brothers projects, such as Tiny Toon Adventures
, where he plays the mentor of the character; Concord Condor, and the films Space Jam
(1996, as a team player) and 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action
as an Acme
pilot, and is voiced by Joe Alaskey
in both films. Beaky Buzzard appeared in the video game Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
and was used as an enemy in Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 4. He also appeared in the Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
in the episode "3 Days & 2 Nights of the Condor", where he was again voiced by Alaskey. Beaky's mother, who appeared in many of his original shorts, also appeared in an episode of the show (voiced by June Foray
). Beaky was put in one episode of Duck Dodgers
.
Beaky Buzzard appears in The Looney Tunes Show
opening.
characters used by animator
Chuck Jones
from 1940 to 1945. These cats were mostly similar in appearance and temperament, with black fur and anxious personalities. For example, in the 1943 film The Aristo-cat (the character's first speaking role), Jones paired his unnamed cat against the mind-manipulating mouse
duo, Hubie and Bertie
.
Jones redesigned the neurotic feline for the 1948 film Mouse Wreckers
(perhaps to distinguish him from Friz Freleng
's popular puss, Sylvester). The short is another Hubie and Bertie vehicle, only this time, the antagonist they antagonize is Claude, drawn as he would appear in all future cartoons: yellow, with a red shock of hair and a white belly (his exact markings would vary from cartoon to cartoon). In this as in all future Claude Cat cartoons, Jones' careful attention to personality is easily evident. Claude is a nervous and lazy animal. His attempts to protect his home from the manipulative mice Hubie and Bertie prove futile as the rodents torment him by (among other things) putting aquariums in all the windows to make Claude think he's underwater or by nailing his furniture to the ceiling. Jones set the mice on Claude once more in the 1950 film The Hypo-Chondri-Cat. This time, the miniature Machiavelli
s convince the neurotic Claude that he's dead. Claude would run afoul of the mice once more in 1951's Cheese Chasers
and against another mouse duo in Mouse Warming in 1952.
Jones added another idiosyncrasy to Claude's id in another 1950 film, Two's a Crowd. Here, Claude is scared out of his mind by a diminutive dog named Frisky Puppy, newly adopted by Claude's owners. The main theme, however, is jealousy
as Claude's attempts to oust the intruder repeatedly fail due to the cat's intense cowardice
- a running gag has Claude repeatedly shooting up and clinging to the ceiling after the pup playfully comes up behind him and barks. At the end, however Claude gets revenge by pulling the same trick causing the dog to comically leap up and cling to the ceiling. Jones repeated the scenario with slight variations in Terrier Stricken
in 1952 and No Barking in 1954 (the latter featuring a cameo by Tweety Bird).
In future cartoons, Jones recast Claude as a silent villain, still possessing his full set of neuroses
. This stage of the character's evolution is best exemplified by the 1954 film Feline Frame-Up
. Here, Claude convinces his owner that fellow pet Marc Antony
is trying to eat the precious kitten Pussyfoot. Marc Antony is tossed out, allowing Claude the run of the house. That is, until Marc Antony outwits the cat and makes him sign a confession admitting to his crimes.
Claude was played by voice actor Mel Blanc
and after classic films, Joe Alaskey
using a quirky, strangulated voice similar to that of Marvin the Martian
(but without Marvin's precise enunciation).
Jones retired Claude in the late 1950s. He was concentrating on other characters, such as Wile E. Coyote and Pepe le Pew
. Nevertheless, the character enjoys some popularity as one of Jones' more humorous, if forgotten, creations. In the 2006 Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas
, Claude Cat has a very brief cameo as an employee going home for Christmas.
Claude Cat appears in The Looney Tunes Show
opening.
(1942). He was voiced by Pinto Colvig
, the original voice actor of Goofy
.
woman, who is a girlfriend for Buddy
. Cookie may resemble the character Betty Boop
. She is has a black hair and a white shirt and black shoes. She also has a baby brother named Baby Elmer (not to be confused with Elmer Fudd
) who only made one appearance. In some shorts, Cookie has blond braided hair.
(whose design was very similar to that of The Pink Panther
, who first appeared on screen four years earlier, and Snagglepuss
) who wore a stylish green beret
and scarf. Unlike most other Looney Tunes characters, Cool Cat was unapologetically a product of his time. He spoke in 1960s-style beatnik
slang
and acted much like a stereotypical laid-back 1960s teenager — he was often seen strumming a guitar
or traveling cross-country in his dune buggy
. One cartoon — McKimson's Bugged by a Bee
— depicted him as an alumnus of "Disco Tech" playing varsity football
against the long-haired team from "Hippie
University"..
However, most of Cool Cat's cartoons dealt with his encounters with Colonel Rimfire (both voiced by Storch), a fussy, British-accented big-game hunter armed with a blunderbuss
. Rimfire essentially acted as the Elmer Fudd
to Cool Cat's Bugs Bunny
, but was used only by Lovy. Cool Cat bears the distinction of starring in the very last cartoon produced at the classic Warner Bros. Cartoons studio: Injun Trouble
in 1969. Shortly after this cartoon was produced, the venerable animation studio shut down for good.
His cartoons can easily be distinguished from most of the other Looney Tunes cartoons, for they feature an updated Looney Tunes logo with stylized animation, a 1967 remix of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by William Lava
, and featuring the then-current Warner Brothers-Seven Arts logo (a combination of a simple W and 7 inside a stylized shield outline).
Cool Cat made later appearances in the television series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
, including the 2000 direct-to-video
movie Tweety's High-Flying Adventure (Colonel Rimfire also appeared in the latter). He made brief cameos in most, if not all of the episodes, appearing on posters in the background, walking by in street scenes, etc. His appearances aren't entirely overlooked by the cast, for Tweety has once responded to Cool Cat's appearance with "We had to get him in this cartoon somewhere." He was voiced by Joe Alaskey
and Jim Cummings
in these later appearances.
Cool Cat and Colonel Rimfire are the only W-7 Arts characters to make any further appearances, beyond the classic era shorts, to date.
and later by Bill Farmer
, Frank Welker
and Jeff Bennett
) is a vampire
from the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes animated shorts.
The Count's first appearance was in the 1963 short, Transylvania 6-5000
. In this short, Bugs
goes to Transylvania
and looks for a telephone at what he thinks is a motel (but is in reality an ominous castle). At the castle, Bugs meets Count Blood Count and is given a room for the night (much to his chagrin) by the blood-thirsty vampire. Unable to sleep, Bugs skims through a magic book and reads it aloud. When the Count appears above the bed and tries to suck Bugs' blood, he turns into a bat when Bugs says "abracadabra". Later, when Bugs says "hocus pocus," the Count turns back to human form just outside the castle window, where he falls into the moat. Later, while wandering around the castle, Bugs sings the aforementioned magic phrases, turning the Count into a bat, then back to a vampire. When the Count states that he is a vampire, Bugs turns into an umpire. When the Count turns into a bat, Bugs turns into a baseball bat and hits him (despite the Count's bat form wearing glasses). The Count tries to crush Bugs with a piece of the floor only to turn into a bat and get crushed many times. Amused by the results, Bugs says random words which turn the Count into a whole range of things: "abraca-pocus" turns the Count into a being with his bat head and human form body, while "hocus-cadabra" does the opposite (the Count's human head with his bat form's wings). When Bugs says "Newport News," the Count turns into Witch Hazel
, another Looney Tunes character. Finally, through the incantation "Walla Walla Washington," Bugs turns the Count into a two-headed vulture. Seeing an opportunity to be rid of the vampire, Bugs calls over a female two-headed vulture from earlier in the episode (named Emily and Agatha). Emily and Agatha are immediately smitten with passion, while the Count is immediately smitten with fear, and the female vultures amorously chase the terrifed Count away into the distance, musing, "Isn't it romantic? I always said, four heads are better than one!" Soon, Bugs finds a telephone and calls for a ride home. While waiting, Bugs hums and accidentally turns his ears into a pair of bat wings. Bugs then changes his mind and decides to fly home, using his new bat-winged ears.
Count Blood Count would reappear many years later in various Looney Tunes-related media. He was used as the final boss in the video game Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters, and voiced by Joe Alaskey
. He was also used as an enemy in Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 4.
He appeared in the "Fang You Very Much" segment of the Tiny Toon Adventures
episode "Stuff That Goes Bump in the Night" attempting (with hilariously painful results) to suck the blood of series regular Elmyra Duff
only for any light to turn the Count into a bat.
He appeared in the The Oddball Couple
episode "Hotel Boo More", which was an almost exact copy of the Bugs Bunny's "Transylvania 6-5000" episode.
He appeared in an episode of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
called "Fangs for the Memories".
He most recently appeared as Count Muerte in an episode of Duck Dodgers
titled "I'm Gonna Get You, Fat Sucka" (voiced by Jeff Bennett), in which he aimed to suck the fat of the Eager Young Space Cadet
, in the end Eager Young Space Cadet manages to defeat him by getting him to eat a pound of garlic shaped like himself causing him to disintegrate. In the episode, his appearance was based on that of Count Orlok
, the vampire from the silent film Nosferatu, he also appeared in "Till Doom Do Us Part" as one of the members of The Legion of Duck Doom.
The Count's voice was sampled for the Gorillaz
track "Dracula", which features the lines "Rest is good for the blood!" and "I am a Vampire!".
and as a professional wrestler in 1951's Bunny Hugged
(directed by Chuck Jones
). He is voiced by Billy Bletcher
in Rabbit Punch
and John T. Smith in Bunny Hugged
. Crusher also appeared in a Tiny Toon Adventures
episode featuring two songs by They Might Be Giants
: Particle Man
(as a wrestler) and Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
(as a henchman).
Crusher also had a cameo role in Carrotblanca
as a doorman, and appeared in an episode in The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
. He also appeared in two episodes of Duck Dodgers
, voiced by John DiMaggio
. Crusher appeared on the web show "fast food" on looneytunes.com.
In the 2003 film, Looney Tunes Back in Action, The Crusher makes a cameo as one of the judges on DJ's stunt performance.
Crusher was a boss character in the Super NES video game Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage
.
The Crusher also appeared in The Looney Tunes Show
episodes Jailbird and Jailbunny, The Fish and Visitors and To Bowl or not to Bowl.
cartoon
fictional character
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes series of cartoons. Bob Clampett
minted the scenario that Charlie Dog would later inherit in his cartoon short Porky's Pooch
, first released on 27 December 1941. A homeless hound pulls out all the stops to get adopted by bachelor Porky Pig
. Mel Blanc
would provide the dog's gruff, Brooklyn
-Bugs Bunny
-like voice and accent which became Charlie's standard voice.
However, as he did for so many other Looney Tunes characters, Chuck Jones
took Clampett's hound and transformed him into something new. Jones first used the dog in Little Orphan Airedale
(4 October 1947) which saw Clampett's "Rover" renamed "Charlie." The film was a success, and Jones would create two more Charlie Dog/Porky Pig cartoons in 1949: Awful Orphan (29 January) and Often an Orphan
(13 August). Jones also starred Charlie without Porky in a couple of shorts: Dog Gone South (26 August 1950) which sees Yankee
Charlie searching for a fine gentleman of the Southern United States
, and A Hound for Trouble
(28 April 1951) which sends Charlie to Italy
where he searches for a master who speaks English
.
In these cartoons, Charlie Dog is defined by one desire: to find himself a master. To this end, Charlie is willing to pull out all the stops, from pulling "the big soulful eyes routine" to boasting of his pedigree ("Fifty percent Collie
! Fifty percent setter, Irish Setter
! Fifty Percent Boxer
! Fifty percent Doberman Pincher! Fifty percent pointer—there it is! There it is! There it is! But, mostly, I'm all Labrador Retriever
!") when reminded by others that he is not a Labrador retriever, his response would be, "If you'll find me a Labrador, I'll retrieve it for you." —though in reality, he is just a slick-talking mutt
who rarely realizes that his own aggressive obnoxiousness is sabotaging his appeal to any potential guardian.
Charlie makes a brief cameo appearance (via re-used animation from Often an Orphan) in the Bob McKimson-directed short Dog Tales
(1958). Jones shelved the Charlie Dog series of films in the 1950s, along with other characters he had introduced, such as The Three Bears and Hubie and Bertie
. He was turning his efforts to new characters, such as Pepé Le Pew
and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
. However, recent Warner Brothers merchandising and series and films such as episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures
, the film Space Jam
(1996) in the crowd scenes (here performed by Frank Welker), and Tweety's High-flying Adventure (2000) in Italy have brought Charlie back out of retirement.
The Frisky Puppy character that Jones paired with Claude Cat in several '50s shorts bears a close physical resemblance to Charlie.
Charlie Dog also appears in The Looney Tunes Show
opening.
, and made two subsequent Looney Tunes appearances in 1955's Feather Dusted
and 1960's Crockett-Doodle-Doo.
Egghead, Jr. is a large-headed and very intelligent baby chick and appeared in several shorts with bumptuous Foghorn Leghorn (also a character directed by McKimson and voiced by Blanc). The only child of Miss Prissy, a widow hen, Egghead
, Jr. was book
ish and never talked (though he mumbled when he counted playing hide-and-seek with Foghorn in Little Boy Boo). Foghorn would try to teach him to play games like baseball
and cowboys and Indians, with the intent that he act more like a typical boy, but invariably resulting in bodily injury for Foghorn.
It was previously noted that Egghead, Jr. was also in the 1959 cartoon A Broken Leghorn
, but this was the character Junior Rooster.
In 1991, Egghead Jr. appeared in the Tiny Toon Adventures
episode "Hog-Wild Hamton"; he's Hamton's
neighbor and he doesn't like being disturbed, so when a wild party takes place at Hamton's house and the guests refuse to keep the noise down, Egghead takes matters into his own hands. Egghead Jr. also makes a cameo in Star Warners. He makes a cameo watching Michael Jordan
bounce in Space Jam
. His most recent appearance was the Duck Dodgers episode "Corporate Pigfall."
female cartoon star, and was also Piggy's girlfriend. She made 2 appearances in You Don't Know What You're Doin! and Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land
.
Rudolf Ising
to feature a recurring character in the Merrie Melodies series of films. Goopy is a tall, lanky humanoid dog
with scruffy whiskers and long, expressive ears. In all of his animated appearances, Goopy is depicted as light colored, but in an early promotional drawing for his first cartoon, he had black fur. A month after Goopy Geer's first cartoon had been released, Walt Disney
released a cartoon with a character named Dippy Dawg
-- renamed "Goofy" in 1934, and notably referred to as "G. G. Geef" in 1950s shorts -- whose overall appearance was very similar to that of Goopy Geer. Due to the close proximity of the two cartoons' releases, there is little chance that either character was intended to be a copy of the other. Instead, both characters may have been inspired by earlier Ising drawings shown to Walt Disney, as with the Foxy - Mickey Mouse
similarity.
Like most other early sound-era cartoon characters, Ising's Goopy has little personality of his own. Instead, he sings and dances his way through a musical world in perfect syncopation. Ising only featured the character in three cartoons. In the first, "Goopy Geer
" (April 16, 1932), he plays a popular pianist
entertaining at a nightclub
. In Ising's other two Goopy films, both in 1932, he cast the dog first as a hillbilly
in "Moonlight for Two" (June 11, 1932), then as a court jester
in "The Queen Was in the Parlor" (July 9, 1932). All of these cartoons also feature Goopy's unnamed girlfriend who debuted without her gangly consort in the earlier Merrie Melodie "Freddy the Freshman
" (February 20, 1932). Goopy would make a cameo in the Bosko
cartoon "Bosko in Dutch" (January 14, 1933), but after Ising left Warner Brothers that same year, Goopy and other recurring Merrie Melodies characters were retired, to be later replaced by such recurring characters as Sniffles
the Mouse, Inki
and the Mynah Bird, the Curious Puppies, and, on two occasions, Porky Pig
(a character who was certainly more prevalent in the black and white Looney Tunes). Many of the Merrie Melodies nonetheless remained high-quality one-shot cartoons, until 1943, when the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies merged and became generic.
Goopy Geer had a small role in the 1990s animated series Tiny Toon Adventures
. In the episode "Two-Tone Town" (September 28, 1992), Goopy, reprising his role as the happy-go-lucky pianist from his first cartoon, meets the series' stars
when they visit the "black-and-white" part of town. His appearance in this cartoon is updated somewhat, and seems to be based on early promotional drawings where his fur is black, rather than his actual cartoon appearances.
to be a sidekick for Porky Pig
in the 1937 short Porky and Gabby
, directed by Ub Iwerks
, who briefly subcontracted to Leon Schlesinger Productions
, producers of the Looney Tunes shorts. The cartoon focuses on the title characters' camping trip, which is foiled by car trouble. Storyboard
artist Cal Howard
supplies Gabby's voice.
Gabby looks like Porky with a beard, horns, and scowl. The goat's chief characteristics are his irritability and short temper, traits that make him a natural foil for the shy, easy-going Porky. The concept didn't play out as well as the animators would have liked, however; audiences felt that the goat's behavior was too offensive to be funny. Gabby only appeared in two more cartoons. The first was Porky's Badtime Story
(Clampett's first cartoon as director
), where roommates Porky and Gabby are almost fired from their jobs for sleeping in and showing up late. They vow to get to sleep early that night, but various problems keep them awake all night. The cartoon was later remade in 1944 as Tick Tock Tuckered
, featuring Daffy Duck
in Gabby's role as Porky's co-star.
The third and final appearance of the character was in Get Rich Quick Porky, where Porky and Gabby dig for oil. Both Porky's Badtime Story and Get Rich Quick Porky were produced in 1937.
Recently uncovered storyboards show that Gabby Goat was originally planned to appear in the 1938 short Porky's Party
. However, that role was later filled by a penguin character with a similar personality.
, and he is the sidekick of Bugs Bunny
in the United States Army Air Forces
of the World War II era.
twins as well as Beans' nephews. Their names are a pun of the phrase "ham and eggs." The dogs made their debut in I Haven't Got a Hat. A year later, they reappeared in The Phantom Ship
where they are fully clothed. The two would also have the lead role in The Fire Alarm
. They had their final role in Westward Whoa
.
Both are voiced by Bernice Hansen.
, originally going to be eaten by Witch Hazel
.
featured in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes shorts. Her name is a pun on World War I
spy Mata Hari
. Hatta Mari first appeared in the 1944 Looney Tunes short "Plane Daffy
". She was seen as a villainous pigeon working for the Axis Powers
. Hatta Mari used her sultry, feminine wiles to lure male carrier pigeons into her grasp, then disposed of them. Daffy Duck
, a self-professed woman-hater (at least in this cartoon) was tempted into her home once she hiked up her skirt exposing her long curvaceous leg. The buxom beauty had lulled the woman-hater into a state of ease by her charm. At first Daffy was no match against the long passionate kisses she planted on his lips. However, he quickly realised it was a trap when he noticed her various Nazi paraphernalia, including swastika
earrings. Hatta Mari then went berserk, trying to kill Daffy and steal his secret message to the Allied Powers. In an attempt to keep it from her, Daffy swallowed the message, but Hatta Mari managed to get it anyway using an X-ray
machine. The message read "Hitler
is a stinker". Hitler, on a device that predicted the Picturephone of 1964, replied, "Hitler is a stinker? That's no military secret!" Hermann Göring
and Joseph Goebbels
, standing beside Hitler, would add, "Ja, everybody knows that!" just before they commit suicide by gunshot at the end of "Plane Daffy". After World War II
, most of the wartime cartoons went largely unseen for decades, and Hatta Mari was virtually forgotten.
However, she was briefly resurrected for an episode of the 1990-1992 animated series, Tiny Toon Adventures
. She appeared in the episode "New Character Day" during the segment The Return of Pluck Twacy. The episode was a sequel of sorts to the classic 1946 Daffy Duck cartoon the Great Piggy Bank Robbery
, where Daffy took the guise of "Duck Twacy", a parody of comic book action hero, Dick Tracy
. In this cartoon, Daffy's protege Plucky Duck
assumes the mantle of "Pluck Twacy" and is hired by his friend Shirley the Loon to find her missing aura
. The missing aura happens to be Hatta Mari, who has been hiding out in an eerie dilapidated mansion with a gang of hoodlums. Hatta Mari uses her feminine charms to seduce Plucky and then sics the numerous villains inside the house on him. One of these is "Ticklepuss", who was actually a character named "Sloppy Moe" from two other forgotten Clampett films, Injun Trouble and its color remake Wagon Heels
. Ticklepuss is a bizarre, barefooted, raggedy-looking blue-skinned man with a long beard (with no moustache) who unsuccessfully tries to tickle Twacy into submission.
According to the DVD commentary on Plane Daffy in the fourth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, the blond hair and buxom figure of Hatta Mari would later be a reality as seen in 1950s blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield
character
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Hector is a muscle-bound bulldog
with gray fur and walks pigeon-toed. His face bears a perpetual scowl between two immense jowls. He wears a black collar
with silver studs.
Hector (or a prototype) first appeared in 1945's Peck Up Your Troubles
, where he foils Sylvester's attempts to get a woodpecker. He made a second appearance in A Hare Grows in Manhattan
, leading a street gang composed of dogs in a Friz Freleng
-directed short; this is also the only short where the dog has numerous speaking lines. After those shorts, Hector is a minor player in several Tweety
and Sylvester
cartoons directed by Freleng in 1948 and throughout the 1950s. His usual role is to protect Tweety from Sylvester, usually at Granny
’s request. He typically does this through brute strength alone, but some cartoons have him outsmart the cat, such as 1954's Satan's Waitin'
, wherein Hector convinces Sylvester to use up his nine lives by pursuing Tweety through a series of extremely dangerous situations. In most of his appearances, the bulldog is nameless, though he is sometimes referred to as Spike. Freleng probably did not intend the character to be the same bulldog as the Spike he paired with Chester the Terrier in other cartoons.
Hector’s most prominent role was as a regular cast member in the animated series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
. In the cartoon, he plays Granny
's loyal guardian. The show makes Hector's low intelligence his Achilles heel
, as Sylvester is constantly outwitting him. Originally played by Mel Blanc
, Hector is currently played by voice actor
Frank Welker
.
Hector also appears in the video game Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters where he guards one of the time gears in Granwich. He is a member of the studio audience in Sheep, Dog, 'n' Wolf
.
Hector the Bulldog will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
voiced by Damon Jones
, taking the role as the nephew of Spike the Bulldog. He will appear in the upcoming episode "Inside Granny's Mansion". He will also serve as a friend of Tweety, an enemy of Sylvester, and a pet of Granny's.
. Appearing in a white dress and polka-dotted bow in her hair, Honey first appeared in the first Looney Tunes short, Sinkin' in the Bathtub
. She was originally voiced by an uncredited Rochelle Hudson
, who was only 14 years old at the time the series began.
his pet. He seems to be an actual snowman, as he melted when exposed to the sun too long. His character is a takeoff on Lennie Small in Of Mice And Men
. "George" refers to Lennie's friend George Milton in the novel (and movie).
Hugo appears in the episode The Abominable Snow Rabbit
when Bugs and Daffy Duck
run into him after accidentally traveling to the Himalaya Mountains. In Spaced Out Bunny
, it was shown that he was captured by Marvin the Martian
and brought to Mars
, where Marvin attempted to give Bugs to him as a pet. In both appearances, he was voiced by Mel Blanc
.
He later made a brief appearance in Tweety's High Flying Adventure
, this time voiced by Frank Welker
.
featured in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes shorts. His name is a pun on the term blabbermouth. Blabbermouse first appeared in the 1940 Looney Tunes short "Little Blabbermouse". In this short Little Blabbermouse goes on a tour with other mice around a Drug Store where the products live up to their names. The annoying non-stop talking mouse after much pestering the tour guide mouse and a close encounter with a cat gets a mouthful of Alum making him speak gibberish.
His second was the 1940 short "Shop, Look and Listen", which has basically a similar plot except the scene is a grocery shop, they do not encounter a cat and Little Blabbermouse ends up gift wrapped. Little Blabbermouse has never been featured in any future short.
magician (he usually preferred to be called a prestidigator, though he could never pronounce this correctly) who traveled around for work. Much of the humour of the character derived from the fact that, while he was often regarded as a cheap stage magician, he knew some very real and powerful magic tricks. His magic words were typically "Atascadero
Escondido
!" Merlin also has a sidekick, appropriately named Second Banana, which is a slang term for a magician's assistant.
Daws Butler
provided the voice of Merlin and Second Banana in the first short, Merlin the Magic Mouse; Larry Storch
performed the voices for the other four films. Merlin is loosely based on W. C. Fields
.
. She is also an ice-skater in Alpine Antics
. She then made her other appearance in Porky's Moving Day, where her house was almost going to drown.
She is confirmed to appear in The Looney Tunes Show
(as she appears in the main picture of all of the most main characters) and is going to be voiced by Roz Ryan
. Like her last appearance, she will serve as a teacher at Gossamer
's grade school.
while their boss (Danny Devito
) is at the moon.
, as well as being a movie director in Hollywood Capers
. He finally appeared in re-designed version in Plane Dippy, where he and Little Kitty finds a puppy, and they both teaches the puppy to do tricks.
in his debut short. Owl Jolson also appears in The Looney Tunes Show
.
, a Merrie Melodies animated
short
directed by Robert McKimson
, from a story by Tedd Pierce
. Animation was by Charles McKimson
, Herman Cohen, Rod Scribner
, and Phil De Lara.
Though Pete Puma made only two appearances, in Rabbit's Kin and in Pullet Surprise, he is often vividly remembered by cartoon fans, especially for his bizarre, inhaled, almost choking laugh, called "Ihhhhh"(based on comedian Frank Fontaine
's "Crazy Guggenheim" character). In Rabbit's Kin, Pete is chasing a young rabbit (named Buster Rabbit by some fans; and though he is called Buster at least once, in the cartoon Bugs repeatedly calls him 'Shorty'), who asks Bugs Bunny
for help. Bugs is eager to oblige, and subjects Pete to some of his trademark pranks.
Pete Puma's voice was used (though not by Freberg) in a Sylvester
cartoon titled Mouse and Garden, in 1960.
More recently, he has made occasional appearances on Tiny Toon Adventures
(as the Acme Looniversity janitor), episodes of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
, co-starred with Foghorn Leghorn in Pullet Surprise
(voiced again by Freberg in all of these appearances), made a cameo appearance in the crowd scenes of Space Jam
, Carrotblanca
(as a waiter), Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas
, and is a supporting character in the Looney Tunes comic books. Pete appears in The Looney Tunes Show
episode "Reunion" voiced by John Kassir
where he is shown to be a friend of Marvin the Martian
. He also appears in "Devil Dog", as a zookeeper. Then in "To Bowl or Not to Bowl" as Daffy's teammates. Also in "Sunday Night Slice" where he works at Speedy
's pizza restaurant, which was called Giradi's, and once again in "Working Duck".
, Priscilla was introduced as a new character voiced by Tara Strong
. She is seen as Porky Pig's daughter and also later in the film, probably Petunia's as well. She is very kind and also cute and wants to be friends with the manager of the store her father works at, "Daffy Duck
". At the end when Porky is about to say his famous line, "th-th-th-th-th...", Priscilla interrupts and says, "That's all folks" instead.
who wears a pair of shorts with buttons on the front. His coloration and dress are identical to those of the Walt Disney
character Mickey Mouse
before the advent of color film. John Kenworthy argues that, considering the fact that some sketches of mice which Hugh Harman had drawn in 1925 were the inspiration for the creation of Mickey Mouse, Harman and Ising never intended to copy Disney.
Piggy's name came from one of two brothers who were childhood classmates of Freleng's, nicknamed "Porky" and "Piggy".
Animator
Rudolf Ising
introduced Piggy as a second character after Foxy
to star in the Merrie Melodies series Ising was directing
for producer
Leon Schlesinger
. Nonetheless, Ising had only made two Piggy shorts in 1931 before he went on to create Goopy Geer. The animators who took over the Merrie Melodies cartoons dropped the Piggy character (as well as his girlfriend Fluffy) and turned the series into a string of one-shots.
Despite their clichéd lead character, Ising's two Piggy shorts are well received by some critics. The first is the 1931 short You Don't Know What You're Doin'!
. Here, Piggy visits a surreal
night club where he heckles and plays with the club's jazz
band. This was followed by Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land
, also in 1931. Here, Piggy plays a steamboat
captain who must rescue a drowning Uncle Tom
. Due to its stereotypical portrayal of the Uncle Tom character, the cartoon is included among the so-called "Censored 11", Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts that are withheld from circulation due to their heavy use of ethnic stereotype
s.
In 1936, animator Friz Freleng
redesigned Piggy for colour film. Piggy was given lighter, more Caucasian
-like colour with distinguishing birthmarks. The redesigned character appeared as a gluttonous child in a large family of pigs in At Your Service Madame (which gives his full name as Piggy Hamhock), where he leads his fellow siblings in foiling a bum's attempt to rob their mother. A year later he starred in Pigs Is Pigs
in which his gluttony takes center stage. This would be his final appearance. After that he was discarded with his character traits transferred for a time to Porky Pig
.
in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He debuted in 1949's Frigid Hare
and he re-appeared in 8 Ball Bunny
.
Playboy Penguin is a mute skating baby penguin that seeks Bugs Bunny for help. From his debut episode, an Eskimo tries to catch him until the little penguin found Bugs Bunny and wants him to help avoid the Eskimo hunter. Then, in his second episode with Bugs, the penguin either wants to go home in Antarctica or go to Hoboken to perform in the show.
Playboy Penguin also appears on The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
and Space Jam
. He also makes a cameo in the DS game, "Duck Amuck".
He will also appear in The Looney Tunes Show
episode, "Trip to the Frozen Iceland", where he is an inhabitant of Antarctica. He will go under the name Play Penguin, possibly an abbreviation of Playboy Penguin or changed due to the fact Playboy is the name of an adult magazine.
and wire-rimmed glasses. The other hens describe her as “old square britches”.
The premise of her cartoons are centered around the fact that the other hens are ridiculing Prissy. Her first appearance was in the 1950 short An Egg Scramble, the only cartoon featuring her and Porky Pig
, in which the other hens are making fun of the fact that she cannot lay an egg. Her next appearances are centered around Foghorn Leghorn. In Lovelorn Leghorn
(1951), she is set on finding a husband and in Of Rice and Hen
(1953) she is looking to have children. However, in Little Boy Boo
(1954) she is depicted as a widow with a child Egghead Jr. and with a much more extensive vocabulary than her trademark "yes". A Broken Leghorn
(1959) and Strangled Eggs
(1961), featuring Henery Hawk
. In these shorts, it is usually Foghorn who is pursuing Prissy for his own selfish needs.
Miss Prissy also appeared in The Looney Tunes Show
episode "The Foghorn Leghorn Story" voiced by Grey DeLisle
. She played as Mama Leghorn on the Movie The Foghorn Leghorn Story.
, who appeared in only one cartoon, Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too!
Rapid Rabbit, a small brown rabbit
(who's not to be confused with Rapid T. Rabbit), is every bit as fast as his name implies; a pantomime
character, he never says a word, but uses a bicycle horn to express himself. Quick Brown Fox, another pantomime character, is a fox
who wants to eat the fast-running rabbit, but consistently fails to catch him despite using a variety of traps and devices. The fox's name is derived from the popular pangram
, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
."
Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too! is a 1969 theatrically released cartoon, one of the last few cartoons of the Looney Tunes series (which, at that time, was owned by Warner Brothers-Seven Arts). It was a "chase" cartoon along the same lines as the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
cartoons; a predator tries and fails to catch his intended prey, despite using a number of ingenious or comically absurd traps. It was intended to be the first of a series of Rapid Rabbit cartoons which had been planned, but no more were produced as the animation department folded soon after its release.
Quick Brown Fox wants to make rabbit stew
, with the elusive Rapid Rabbit as the main ingredient. To this end, he tries several different traps — simple ones at first, but they gradually become ridiculously elaborate — and all of them fail to ensnare Rapid, and some of them end up hurting Quick. Finally, Quick sets up a trap that involves a cannon
and a sign that says "Free trip to the moon
," among other elements; not only does this trap fail to catch Rapid, but Quick winds up being shot to the moon!.
The duo will later appear in The Looney Tunes Show
voiced by Frank Welker
and Damon Jones
respectively. They will be called "Brown Fox" and "Rabbit".
who escapes from a dog pound, then meets Charlie Dog in a car. He only had two speaking lines, they were: "Yeah but..." then at the end he multiply says "Let me in!". The two speaking lines was most likely performed by voice actor Frank Graham
.
, Ralph, while attending school, daydreams about flying in the air like a bird, fighting off mocking numbers on a blackboard and Indians
(this scene was later edited because of some Native American stereotypes and some violence), dispatching a dangerous saber-tooth tiger shark, and finally punching out a huge opponent in the boxing ring and leaving the school for the day as Douglas MacArthur
. From A to Z-Z-Z-Z
was nominated for an Academy Award. Ralph appeared in a further Looney Tunes episode, Boyhood Daze, where he was sent up to his room for breaking a window with a baseball, wherein he indulged in similar daydreaming, and in the theatrically diverted TV pilot
Adventures of the Road-Runner
. In more recent years he has figured in issues of the DC Comics
Looney Tunes comic book as well.
A more mature Ralph Phillips was also featured as an Army recruit in two cartoons produced specifically as military recruitment promotions, 90 Day Wondering and Drafty, Isn't It?, both directed by Jones.
Ralph Phillips was voiced by child actor Dick Beals
. The older version was voiced by Warner Brothers' regular voice actor Mel Blanc
, in 90 Day Wondering, and by Daws Butler
, in Drafty, Isn't It?.
Ralph has a cameo as an unseen character
in the Chuck Jones-directed animated adaption
of The Phantom Tollbooth
. He calls the protagonist Milo near the start of the film (where he speaks with the voice of June Foray
and is referred to by name), and briefly speaks with Milo again just before the film ends.
, though some more recent translations call him "Tranquilino") is described as "the slowest mouse in all Mexico
" from the country side of Mexico, and is a cousin to Speedy Gonzales
, who is known as the fastest. However, he mentions to his cousin that while he may be slow in the feet, which he is best known for, he's not slow in "la cabeza" (the head). He speaks in a monotone voice and seems to never be surprised by anything. While he is the slowest mouse in all of Mexico he has been shown to have certain other (more extreme) methods of protecting himself.
Slowpoke only appeared in two cartoons alongside his cousin. The first, Mexicali Shmoes
(1959), ends with two lazy cats, Jose and Manuel, the former learning the hard way that Slowpoke carries a gun (though the gun bit has been edited out of this cartoon in recent years). The second, Mexican Boarders
(1962), revolves around Speedy trying to protect Slowpoke from Sylvester the Cat
, but in the end, Slowpoke demonstrates his ability to hypnotize
Sylvester into becoming his slave. The other mice comment at this point that "Slowpoke Rodriguez may be the slowest mouse in all Mexico, but he has the Evil Eye!". This short (which was later edited into Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales
) contains a possible allusion to a marijuana habit when Slowpoke sings La Cucaracha
. Despite his few appearances, "Lento Rodríguez" is an immensely popular character in Latin America
.
Slowpoke appears in the Robot Chicken
episode "Werewolf VS Unicorn." In a segment satirizing California's immigration issue, Arnold Schwarzenegger
criticizes him for taking an hour to fetch a glass of water. Schwarzenegger then orders Rodriguez's deportation, to which Rodriguez fears will cause his execution. Slowpoke also appears alongside Speedy in a commercial for Virgin Media
's broadband service in the UK.
Slowpoke also appears in The Looney Tunes Show
voiced by Frank Welker
.
. He has been shown as fiercely loyal to this region and deeply offended by anything that he feels reminds him of the North.
He referred to himself specifically by name in Mississippi Hare
(1949), following a game of poker
in which he lost (three queens to four kings) and proceeded to let off a barrage of gunfire. Sometimes he is shown playing a banjo
in classic Dixieland
style.
Among his foils are Bugs Bunny
(who defeated him) in Mississippi Hare and Charlie Dog (whom he defeated) in Dog Gone South (1950).
Shuffle played a prison
warden in the Tiny Toon Adventures
episode "Gang Busters".
.
. He starts off afraid of Pete Puma, but with coaxing from Bugs Bunny
he doesn't see Pete as much as threat anymore.
characters
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Spike is a burly, gray bulldog
who wears a red sweater, a brown bowler hat
, and a perpetual scowl. Chester is just the opposite, small and jumpy with yellow fur and brown, perky ears.
The characters starred in only two shorts, both directed
by animator
Friz Freleng
. The first of these films was 1952's Tree for Two. In it, Chester tells his idol Spike that he knows of a cat
that they can beat up. The cat is Freleng's own Sylvester, but every time Spike thinks he has the cat cornered, a runaway zoo black panther
appears in Sylvester's place, thrashing the dog instead. When Chester decides to have a go of it, however, Sylvester finds himself at the little dog's mercy. By the cartoon's end, Spike and Chester have switched roles; Spike is the fawning sycophant, and Chester the smug prizefighter.
The characters' second outing came in the 1954 film Dr. Jerkyl's Hyde. Spike (here called "Alfie" and with an English accent) is once again after Sylvester, only this time it is Sylvester himself who pummels the poor pooch, thanks to a potion that transforms him into a feline monster. Chester, of course, never sees this transformed Sylvester, thinking his buddy is being beaten by the tiny tomcat. The final loss of face for Alfie is his being thrashed by a fly
that has also been affected by the potion, as it occurs in front of Chester's eyes.
In both of these cartoons, Spike is performed by voice actor
Mel Blanc
, and Chester is performed by Stan Freberg
. In modern Warner Brothers media, Spike's voice is provided by Joe Alaskey
,
The pair also appear in the 1996 film Space Jam
as a pair of paramedics during the basketball game.
Another bulldog character appeared in other cartoons with Sylvester and Tweety
, but this character is not Spike; he is officially known as Hector the Bulldog. Several Tom and Jerry
cartoons produced by MGM
also featured a character named Spike the Bulldog (and his son, Tyke), Coincidentally, WB now owns the Tom & Jerry cartoons as well (through Turner Entertainment). This is another character, unrelated to the Spike used by Freleng.
Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
voiced by Joe Alaskey
and Stan Freberg
.
Animator
Chuck Jones
introduced the trio in the 1944 cartoon Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears
. In the short, Papa Bear tries to feed his starving family by having them act out their roles in the traditional fairy tale
from which they derive their name. Unfortunately for them, when they were out of porridge, Mama substitutes carrot soup for it, and the "Goldilocks" they lure turns out to be none other than Bugs Bunny
. For the bulk of the series, Voice actors Billy Bletcher
, Bea Benaderet
, and Stan Freberg
played Papa, Mama, and Junior, respectively. However, in the initial entry Mel Blanc
played Papa, and Kent Rogers
played Junior (Freberg assuming the role after Rogers's death in World War II
). After the classic shorts, Will Ryan
and Joe Alaskey
play Henry and Mama.
Jones' bears as introduced in the short are perhaps the first film satire
of the American nuclear family
and how its traditional roles were coming under increasing scrutiny in the 1940s. Papa is a loud-mouthed, short tempered know-it-all shrimp, while Junior is an oversized, bumbling buffoon. The two are constantly at each other, leaving Mama Bear as the innocent (and deadpan) middle-bear, although she often resorts to thwacking one of them with a rolled-up newspaper to keep the peace. As Jones himself was never shy to point out, this cartoon and others in the series anticipate the failings and foibles that would later make the sitcom All in the Family
such a success.
Jones brought back the Bears for his 1948 cartoon What's Brewin', Bruin?, this time sans Bugs. Here, alpha-male Papa Bear decides that it's time for the Bears to hibernate
. Like any good family should, Mama Bear and Junior Bear obey, but Mama's snoring
and Junior's creaky cradle keep Papa from getting the sleep he himself advocated. Junior's voice is here supplied by Stan Freberg
, who would retain the role for all future Three Bears cartoons, including Bee-Deviled Bruin and Bear Feat
, released on Looney Tunes Assorted Nuts
, both in 1949. Mama Bear made a cameo appearance in the 1950 Daffy Duck
short The Scarlet Pumpernickel
.
1951's A Bear for Punishment
, the last film in the series, is often considered the funniest, and it is perhaps the most satirical. This time, it's Father's Day
, and Mama and Junior's well-intended gifts do nothing but dishonor the perturbed Papa. Jones later stated that many of the scenarios in the short were derived from his own experiences.
Jones retired the Three Bears in 1951. The influence of the series would linger, however, as other studios copied or altered the idea. Aside from Norman Lear
's aforementioned All in the Family, Famous Studios
repeated Jones family scenario in their Baby Huey
series of cartoons. The Bears' cartoons most significant impact was perhaps on Jones himself, as these films (along with the Hubie and Bertie
and Charlie Dog shorts) represent some of Jones's earliest work.
Mama Bear of the Three Bears can be briefly spotted in a brief headshot during the final scene of the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit
.
In the early 1990s, the Three Bears were brought back and featured several times in the TV series Tiny Toon Adventures
. Most famously, they appeared in an updated "90's version" of the classic Three Bears fairy tale (with Elmyra
playing the part of Goldilocks), which parodied suburbia
and the mass commercialism
prevalent in American society. In the episode, "Prom-ise Her Anything", Mama Bear is seen as a lunch lady
. Papa Bear also appeared as the vendor in "Garage Sale of the Century" in Animaniacs
.
The Three Bears make a cameo appearance in Space Jam
, watching a basketball game.
In Looney Tunes: Back In Action
, the Bears are tourists in Paris
. They run into DJ Drake (Brendan Fraser
), whose trousers have rocketed off into the air leaving him in his underwear. DJ steals Papa Bear's trousers so he can save Jenna Elfman
from a villain.
Papa Bear will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
voiced by Will Ryan
.
cartoon
character
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of films. He made only one appearance in the short Bully for Bugs
. What makes him distinguishable from other bulls are his red eyes. Toro also made an appearance as a boss character in the 1930s era in Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
. He also appears in the films Space Jam
and Who Framed Roger Rabbit
.
Toro the Bull will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
voiced by Dee Bradley Baker
.
cartoon
character
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of films. Though he made only three theatrical appearances, Cecil is remarkable in that he is one of the very few characters who was able to beat Bugs Bunny
, and the only one to do so three times in a row and at the rabbit's own game.
Animator
Tex Avery
introduced Cecil in the short Tortoise Beats Hare
, released on March 15, 1941. Even from the cartoon's opening titles, Avery lets on that Bugs Bunny is about to meet his match. Bugs wanders onto the screen munching his obligatory carrot and absent-mindedly begins reading the title card, grossly mispronouncing most of the credits, such as əˈvɛrɪ for "Avery" rather than the correct ˈeɪvərɪ. When he finally gets to the title itself, he becomes outraged, tears apart the title card, and rushes to Cecil Turtle's house. He then bets the little, sleepy-eyed turtle
ten dollars that he can beat him in a race
.
Cecil accepts Bugs' bet, and the race begins several days later. Bugs races away at top speed just before finishing the shout of, "Get on your mark, get set, go!" Cecil quickly (for him, anyway) goes to a public telephone and calls up Chester Turtle. After talking to Chester about the bet, he tells him to call "the boys" (cousins), and tell them to be ready when he comes to their position, and to "give him the works". Chester calls the relatives, all of whom look and sound like Cecil (some have deeper voices, some have higher voices), and relays the message. As Bugs runs relentlessly toward the finish line, Cecil and the other turtles take turns showing up at just the right moment to baffle the bunny. In the end, Bugs is convinced he has won, only to see Cecil (or one of his kin) across the finish demanding the money. Bugs suggests that he has been tricked, and all nine turtles approach and reply, "It's a possibility!" Voice actor Mel Blanc
supplies Cecil's drowsy drawl, which is like a slowed-down version of Blanc's later characterization of Barney Rubble
.
"Tortoise Beats Hare" follows one of the many folk variants of the Aesop
fable
"The Tortoise and the Hare
" in which the faster beast is deceived by look-alikes placed along the course. More directly, it is Avery's parody
of the 1935 Disney
Silly Symphony, The Tortoise and the Hare
. Avery left Warner Brothers before he could produce any new cartoons featuring Cecil. However, he introduced a similar character in 1943 named Droopy. Droopy would even take some of his tricks from his slow-and-steady predecessor, such as using his relatives to help him outsmart a wolf.
Bob Clampett
took Avery's scenario and altered it for his film Tortoise Wins by a Hare
released on February 20, 1943. The title is an appropriate pun on "hair". Bugs again challenges Cecil to a race after viewing footage from their previous encounter two years earlier (which seems to depict Cecil as having won fairly instead of by cheating Bugs with his cousins). Bugs then goes to Cecil's tree home disguised as an old man (a parody of Bill Thompson
's "Old Timer" character from Fibber McGee and Molly
) to ask the turtle his secret. Cecil, not in the least bit fooled by the disguise remarks, "Clean livin', friend. Clean livin'...". And then reveals his streamlined shell lets him win, and produces a set of blueprints for his "air-flow chassis
". The turtle ends the conversation with the comment, "Oh, and another thing... Rabbits aren't very bright, either!" just before slamming the door in the enraged bunny's face. Not getting the hint that the turtle's story is a humbug
, Bugs builds the device and prepares for the race.
Meanwhile, the bunny mob
learns of the upcoming match-up and places all its bets on Bugs. ("In fact, we don't even think that the toitle will finish... Do we, boys?" "Duh, no, Boss, no!") The race begins, and Bugs still outpaces his reptilian rival. However, in his new get-up, the dim-witted gangsters mistake him for the turtle. Cecil reinforces this misconception by dressing in a gray rabbit suit and munching on some delicious carrot
s. The mobsters thus make the shelled Bugs' run a nightmare
, ultimately giving the race to Cecil (in an aside to the audience, as the rabbits cheer him, Cecil remarks, "I told you rabbits aren't very bright!"). When Bugs removes the chassis and sobbingly reveals that he's the rabbit, the rabbit gangsters remark, in mock-Bugsy style, "Ehhh, now he tells us!" and commit suicide
by shooting themselves with a single bullet that goes through the sides of all of their apparently soft heads. (The final gag is often cut when shown on basic cable television but can be found uncut on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection
: Volume 1.)
Cecil and Bugs would have one final match up in Friz Freleng
's cartoon, Rabbit Transit, released on May 10, 1947. The title is a play of Rapid Transit
. Unlike Tortoise Wins by a Hare, this cartoon presumes that Bugs and Cecil have never met before now. While relaxing in a steam bath, Bugs reads about the original fable and, as he did reading the credits of Tortoise Beats Hare, becomes incensed at the idea of a turtle outrunning a rabbit. Cecil, also in the steam bath, claims that he could outrun Bugs, prompting Bugs to challenge him to a race (again, as in Tortoise Beats Hare, although at least here Bugs receives some provocation). This time, Bugs and Cecil agree to no cheating
. Cecil, however, quickly reveals that his shell is now rocket propelled, allowing him to go a surprising combination between fast and slow. Bugs does his best to steal, dismantle, and destroy the device, but all to little effect. In the end, however, Bugs does manage to top the turtle and crosses the finish line first. Nevertheless, it is Cecil who has the last laugh when he rooks the rabbit into confessing to "doing 100 easy" -- in a 30-miles-per-hour zone. Bugs is taken away by the police to enjoy his victory—behind bars. Cecil closes out the cartoon by saying Bugs' famous line, "Ain't I a...um...stinker?" Iris-out.
The Warners directors retired Cecil after his third showdown with Bugs. Nevertheless, Cecil has made occasional cameos in later projects. He is seen briefly in the 1996 film Space Jam
and the 2003 DVD Looney Tunes: Reality Check, his voice now provided by Joe Alaskey
. He's also made cameo in an episode in The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
. He also features in some issues of the Looney Tunes comic book. His only notable Warner Brothers Animation Looney Tunes short cameo came in 1954's Devil May Hare
, which was directed by Robert McKimson
, Sr. and pitted Bugs against the Tasmanian Devil
, who made his debut here.
Cecil Turtle will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
voiced by Joe Alaskey
. Cecil also appears in The Looney Tunes Show
opening.
created and voiced by Tex Avery
for the 1940 cartoon, Of Fox and Hounds
. Willoughby is characterized by his below-average intelligence and overall gullibility. Willoughby later appears in other Warner Brothers animated shorts, including The Heckling Hare
(1941), The Crackpot Quail, Nutty News
(as the lead dog of a fox hunting party), The Hep Cat
— as Rosebud (1942) and Hare Force
— as Sylvester the Dog (1944). According to Chuck Jones
, the character was based on Lennie, from Of Mice and Men
(1941).
He will later appear in The Looney Tunes Show
as a friend of Barnyard Dawg
and will be voiced by Damon Jones
.
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
and Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
characters.
Angus MacCrory
A kilt-wearing Scotsman who appears in My Bunny Lies Over The SeaMy Bunny Lies over the Sea
My Bunny Lies over the Sea, a Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon, was released on December 14, 1948. This theatrical cartoon was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. Mel Blanc played both Bugs Bunny and the Scotsman...
, who challenges Bugs Bunny to a game of golf, after he destroys his bagpipes.
He later made his second major role in the Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries episode, It's a Plaid, Plaid World.
He also made a cameo appearance in Space Jam, during the basketball playoff between the Monstars and the TuneSquad.
Babbit and Catstello
Babbit and Catstello are Looney Tunes based on the comedic duo Abbott and CostelloAbbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...
. Although the short, fat character calls the other one "Babbit", the tall, skinny one never addresses his partner by name; the name "Catstello" was invented later. In their first three cartoons, the "Babbit" character was voiced by Tedd Pierce
Tedd Pierce
Tedd Pierce , was an American animated cartoon writer, animator and artist. Pierce spent the majority of his career as a writer for the Warner Bros. "Termite Terrace" animation studio, working alongside fellow luminaries such as Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. Pierce also worked as a writer at...
, and Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
performed "Catstello". Later, Babbit is voiced by Billy West
Billy West
William Richard "Billy" West is an American voice actor. Born in Detroit but raised in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, Billy launched his career in the early 1980s performing daily comedic routines on Boston's WBCN. He left the radio station to work on the short-lived revival...
, and Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
performs Catstello.
Originally, the pair were cats in pursuit of a small bird for their meal in the 1942 Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
-directed cartoon A Tale of Two Kitties
A Tale of Two Kitties
A Tale of Two Kitties is an American cartoon, released in 1942, notable for the first appearance of A yellow canary, who would come to be known as Tweety. It was directed by Bob Clampett, written by Warren Foster, and features music by Carl W. Stalling. It was also the first appearance of Babbit...
, a cartoon notable for the first appearance of the bird character, who would eventually become Warner Brothers cartoon icon Tweety Bird. The hapless duo fail in every attempt to capture the bird, establishing the pattern that would be used time and again in future Tweety cartoons.
Three years later, Babbit and Catstello reappeared in the similarly named Tale of Two Mice, directed by Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin, born Francis Fredrick von Taschlein, also known as Tish Tash or Frank Tash was an American animator, screenwriter, and film director.-Animator:...
. Though their characterizations were the same, the two were now mice, living in a hole in the wall of a typical cartoon kitchen. Their goal in this cartoon was the cheese in the kitchen's refrigerator, the only obstacle being the resident housecat. Babbit attempts to coerce Catstello (often by beating him up) into going after the cheese solo, using various methods to get it (which involved Catstello getting hurt). However, in the end, it is Swiss cheese, which Babbit can't stand. Angrily, Catstello beats him up and begins force-feeding the cheese, uttering one of his archetype Lou Costello
Lou Costello
Louis Francis "Lou" Costello was an American actor and comedian best known as half of the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, with Bud Abbott...
's famous lines: "Oh — I'm a baaaaad boy!" (At one point in A Tale of Two Kitties
A Tale of Two Kitties
A Tale of Two Kitties is an American cartoon, released in 1942, notable for the first appearance of A yellow canary, who would come to be known as Tweety. It was directed by Bob Clampett, written by Warren Foster, and features music by Carl W. Stalling. It was also the first appearance of Babbit...
, he similarly remarks, "I'm a baaaaad pussycat!")
The characters make a very brief cameo appearance in canine form in Robert McKimson
Robert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
's second Warner Brothers short 'Hollywood Canine Canteen' released in April 1946. They play the pets of the real Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...
, Costello's dog, refers to Abbott's dog as 'Babbit'.
Finally, six months later in October 1946, Robert McKimson
Robert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
returned to the pair in The Mouse-Merized Cat, wherein Babbit uses a book to hypnotize
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...
Catstello. Babbit has Catstello believe he's a dog in order to scare off the cat so they can get to the food in the refrigerator. However, the cat soon studies hypnosis and is able to reverse Babbit's spell. This results in Catstello running back and forth between the two as they continue use hypnosis. Finally, Catstello becomes fed up with Babbit making him the fall guy, and turns the tables on both Babbit and the cat, hypnotizing them into believing they are, respectively, a cowboy and his trusty steed. Catstello trickes Babbit with his Yosemite Sam
Yosemite Sam
Yosemite Sam is an American animated cartoon character in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The name is somewhat alliterative and is inspired by Yosemite National Park...
like voice makes babbit utters a deliberately misworded variation on the Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....
's classic catchphrase — "Hi yo, Sliver, awaaayy!" — before he and the cat gallop away. The final scene shows Catstello eating cheese and reading a book on living alone, before turning to the audience and once again reciting "Oh — I'm a baaaaadd boy!"
The pair have made few appearances since then, mainly cameos in modern Warner Brothers animated projects such as The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
voiced by Jim Cummings
Jim Cummings
James Jonah "Jim" Cummings is an American voice actor who has appeared in almost 100 roles. He has appeared in classic animated movies such as Aladdin and The Lion King, as well as taking on roles in more current films, such as Bee Movie, Princess and the Frog, and Winnie the Pooh.-Personal...
and Joe Alaskey.
Beans the Cat
Beans the Cat was the third Looney Tunes cartoon character star after BoskoBosko
Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko is the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger's cartoon series, and is the star of over three dozen Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros...
and Buddy
Buddy (Looney Tunes)
Buddy is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes series of cartoons.-Looney Tunes:Buddy has his origins in the chaos that followed the severing of relations between animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising from producer Leon Schlesinger...
.
Created by Leon Schlesinger, Beans made his first appearance in the Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
cartoon I Haven't Got a Hat
I Haven't Got a Hat
I Haven't Got a Hat is a 1935 animated short film, directed by Isadore Freleng for Leon Schlesinger Productions as part of Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies series. Released by Warner Bros. on March 9, 1935, the short is notable for featuring the first appearance of several Warner Bros. cartoon...
(1935), along with Porky Pig who would have a much longer run in the series. He then made a cameo in The Country Mouse, another Merrie Melodies short release that same year.
Before having a role in another cartoon, Beans was already seen in the "That's all folks!" closings in the last three Buddy shorts. Finally, six months following his debut film, Beans starred in A Cartoonist's Nightmare
A Cartoonist's Nightmare
A Cartoonist's Nightmare is an episode of the animated cartoon series Looney Tunes. It stars Beans the Cat in his first solo film.-Plot:...
which would be his first solo cartoon, followed by Hollywood Capers
Hollywood Capers
Hollywood Capers is a short animated film of the Looney Tunes series. It stars Beans the Cat in another solo cartoon of the character. The film is also among those of the series that have fallen into the public domain.-Plot:...
. Beans then began appearing with characters from the cast of I Haven't Got a Hat.
Featured on screen in only a couple of years, Beans appeared in just 9 shorts. His swan song was Westward Whoa
Westward Whoa
Westward Whoa is an animated short film of the Looney Tunes series. It marks the final appearance of Ham and Ex, and the penultimate for Beans and Little Kitty. The film is also in the public domain.-Plot:...
in 1936. Before being retired completely, he made a brief appearance in Plane Dippy.
Beans was voiced at first by Billy Bletcher
Billy Bletcher
William "Billy" Bletcher was an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.-Career:...
and sometimes Tommy Bond
Tommy Bond
Thomas Ross "Tommy" Bond was an American actor. A native of Dallas, Texas, Bond was best known for his work as a child actor for two different nonconsecutive periods on Our Gang comedies, and also for being the first actor to portray the role of "Superman's pal" Jimmy Olsen on screen.-Early years...
, and later by Will Ryan
Will Ryan
Will Ryan is an American voice actor and producer–writer–composer, well-known for singing about the American West. In the late seventies he teamed up with Phil Baron as Willio and Phillio. They had regular gigs on television, radio and comedy clubs and universities throughout the US...
.
Blacque Jacque Shellacque
Blacque Jacque Shellacque was created by Robert McKimsonRobert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
. While similar in many ways to Yosemite Sam
Yosemite Sam
Yosemite Sam is an American animated cartoon character in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The name is somewhat alliterative and is inspired by Yosemite National Park...
—both are short in stature and temper—Blacque Jacque possesses his own unique characteristics, not the least of which is his comically thick French Canadian
French Canadian
French Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...
accent, performed by Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
. Also, like Yosemite Sam and many other villains, Blacque Jacque Shellacque does not have a high level of intelligence, preferring to use force instead of strategy to fight Bugs.
Blacque Jacque first appeared in Bonanza Bunny
Bonanza Bunny
Bonanza Bunny is a 1959 Bugs Bunny cartoon featuring French Canadian claim jumper Blacque Jacque Shellacque.-Plot:Set in 1896 Dawson City, Yukon, a snow-covered Bugs Bunny walks into the saloon with a bag full of gold nuggets...
, which takes place in the middle of the Klondike gold rush
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
. Blacque Jacque attempts to seize Bugs' bag of gold (actually "a bunch of rocks and some yellow paint," according to Bugs) through card cheating, trickery, and out-and-out threats, but Bugs outwits him as always and defeats him by replacing his bag of gold with gunpowder while poking a hole in the bag and tossing a lit match on it causing a massive explosion.
Blacque Jacque later clashed with Bugs in 1962's Wet Hare
Wet Hare
Wet Hare is a 1962 animated short film in the Looney Tunes series produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. In this cartoon, Bugs Bunny finds himself at odds with Blacque Jacque Shellacque, a ruthless lumberjack with a French Canadian accent who wants to control the water supply by building a series...
, in which his illegal damming of a river ("Me feel like pezky little beav-aire
Beaver
The beaver is a primarily nocturnal, large, semi-aquatic rodent. Castor includes two extant species, North American Beaver and Eurasian Beaver . Beavers are known for building dams, canals, and lodges . They are the second-largest rodent in the world...
!") brings him into conflict with the rabbit—not only because he is committing a crime, but because he has blocked off the waterfall that Bugs uses as a shower. After demolishing several of Blacque Jacque's dams, Bugs turns the tables by damming the river upstream of Jacque's dam. Jacque, unsurprisingly, is enraged and wheels a small cannon along the riverbed to destroy Bugs' dam—but when he does he only reveals another dam further upstream. Jacque blows up several of Bugs' dams in succession and finally follows Bugs all the way to the "Grand Cooler Dam" (a pun on the name of the Grand Coulee Dam
Grand Coulee Dam
Grand Coulee Dam is a gravity dam on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington built to produce hydroelectric power and provide irrigation. It was constructed between 1933 and 1942, originally with two power plants. A third power station was completed in 1974 to increase its energy...
). Jacque tries to blow it up with his cannon, but the dam is so massive and thick that the cannonball he launches ricochets back into the cannon's barrel and the recoiling force lands both Jacque and the cannon into the back of a waiting paddy wagon.
Blacque Jacque also appears as a common enemy in Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time is a Looney Tunes video game for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation, released in 1999. Aditionally, a sequel, Bugs Bunny and Taz: Time Busters was made for the same consoles.-Plot:...
.
Bruno
Bruno is a gray dog, and is Bosko's pet dog. He has a resemblance to DisneyThe Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
's Pluto
Pluto (Disney)
Pluto, also called Pluto the Pup, is a cartoon character created in 1930 by Walt Disney Productions. He is a light brown , medium-sized, short-haired dog. Unlike Goofy, Pluto is not anthropomorphic beyond some characteristics such as facial expression...
.
Bunny and Claude
Bunny and Claude are robbers, based on the real-life Bonnie and ClydeBonnie and Clyde
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934...
and the then recent film version
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
about the pair's life that had been released by Warner Brothers They are a well-dressed rabbit male (Claude) and female (Bunny) who are always pulling off carrot heists, and their catch phrase is "We rob carrot patches", based on the film Bonnie and Clyde's "We rob banks". Bunny was voiced by Pat Woodell and Claude was voiced by veteran WB voice actor Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
. They both speak with pronounced Southern accents.
They appeared in two cartoons produced by Warner Brothers Animation and released by Warner Brothers- Seven Arts in 1968, titled Bunny and Claude: We Rob Carrot Patches and The Great Carrot Train Robbery (the latter was held over to 1969). Both films were directed by Robert McKimson
Robert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
, and were his first two cartoons he directed in his comeback to Termite Terrace.
Bunny and Claude were always chased by a stereotypical Southern sheriff
Sheriff
A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....
(also voiced by Mel Blanc, his voice sounded similar to Foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam
Yosemite Sam
Yosemite Sam is an American animated cartoon character in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The name is somewhat alliterative and is inspired by Yosemite National Park...
), whom would always pursuit them in his police cruiser, even though the gangster rabbits would always foil his plans.
Beaky Buzzard
Beaky Buzzard is a buzzardBuzzard
A buzzard is one of several large birds, but there are a number of meanings as detailed below.-Old World:In the Old World Buzzard can mean:* One of several medium-sized, wide-ranging raptors with a robust body and broad wings....
(although he more closely resembles a vulture
Vulture
Vulture is the name given to two groups of convergently evolved scavenging birds, the New World Vultures including the well-known Californian and Andean Condors, and the Old World Vultures including the birds which are seen scavenging on carcasses of dead animals on African plains...
or condor
Condor
Condor is the name for two species of New World vultures, each in a monotypic genus. They are the largest flying land birds in the Western Hemisphere.They are:* The Andean Condor which inhabits the Andean mountains....
) with black body feathers and a white tuft around his throat. His neck is long and thin, bending 90 degrees at an enormous adam's apple
Adam's apple
The laryngeal prominence—commonly known as the Adam's Apple—is a feature of the human neck. This lump, or protrusion, is formed by the angle of the thyroid cartilage surrounding the larynx...
. His neck and head are featherless, and his beak is large and yellow or orange, depending on the cartoon. Beaky bears a perpetual goofy grin, and his eyes look eternally half-asleep.
The character first appeared in the 1942 cartoon Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid
Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid
Bugs Bunny Gets The Boid is a 1942 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Bob Clampett, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres by Warner Bros. Pictures. It marks the first appearance of Beaky Buzzard in a Warner Bros...
, directed
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
by Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
. The cartoon's plot revolves around the hopeless attempts of the brainless buzzard, here called Killer, to catch Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
for his domineering Greek mother back at the nest. Beaky's voice was modeled after ventriloquist Edgar Bergen
Edgar Bergen
Edgar John Bergen was an American actor and radio performer, best known as a ventriloquist.-Early life:...
's character Mortimer Snerd, earning Beaky the nickname "Snerd Bird." The voice itself was provided by voice actor
Voice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
Kent Rogers
Kent Rogers
Kent Rogers was a Hollywood impressionist who appeared in several live-action shorts and features and a voice actor for Warner Bros..-Career:...
.
Clampett brought the character back in the 1945 film The Bashful Buzzard
The Bashful Buzzard
The Bashful Buzzard is a 1945 7-minute animated cartoon directed by Robert Clampett. Beaky Buzzard is featured in this cartoon.-Plot:Beaky Buzzard is sent to bring home something to eat...
, a cartoon that closely mirrors its predecessor, only this time featuring Beaky's hapless hunting without scenes of him chasing Bugs for food. Rogers reprised his role as the character's voice for the film, but he died in a Naval aviation training accident at Pensacola, Florida
Pensacola, Florida
Pensacola is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle and the county seat of Escambia County, Florida, United States of America. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 56,255 and as of 2009, the estimated population was 53,752...
before finishing all his dialogue, so Stan Freberg
Stan Freberg
Stanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...
was brought in to finish the work (as was Eddie Bartell, according to some sources).
Warner Brothers apparently thought they had something in the character, and Beaky was featured in much of the Looney Tunes merchandising
Merchandising
Merchandising is the methods, practices, and operations used to promote and sustain certain categories of commercial activity. In the broadest sense, merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer...
of the time. He also appeared in several issues of Dell Comics
Dell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...
' Looney Tunes series of comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s, usually paired with another minor player, Henery Hawk
Henery Hawk
Henery Hawk is a cartoon character from the American Looney Tunes series, who appeared in twelve cartoons. His first appearance was The Squawkin' Hawk, directed by Chuck Jones and produced by Leon Schlesinger. Henery's next appearance was Walky Talky Hawky which also featured Foghorn Leghorn and...
.
Clampett left the studio in 1946, ending Beaky's career for a time. The character was eventually brought back in the 1950 Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
film The Lions Busy, now voiced by the versatile Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
. Freleng made the buzzard smarter, pitting him against a dim-witted lion named Leo. Bob McKimson also featured the character in a film that year, Strife with Father
Strife with Father
Strife with Father is a 1950 Merrie Melodies animated film directed by Bob McKimson, released in 1950, starring voice actor Mel Blanc as Beaky Buzzard.-Plot:A buzzard egg is mysteriously delivered to two sparrows, Gwendolyn and Monte...
. McKimson's Beaky is again back to his idiotic self, this time under the tutelage of his adoptive father, a sparrow
Sparrow
The sparrows are a family of small passerine birds, Passeridae. They are also known as true sparrows, or Old World sparrows, names also used for a genus of the family, Passer...
who is trying to teach Beaky how to survive in the wild.
Most recently Beaky Buzzard has had minor roles in various Warner Brothers projects, such as Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
, where he plays the mentor of the character; Concord Condor, and the films Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
(1996, as a team player) and 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a 2003 American live action/animated adventure comedy film directed by Joe Dante and starring Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Timothy Dalton, and Steve Martin. The film is essentially a feature-length Looney Tunes cartoon, with all the wackiness and surrealism typical...
as an Acme
Acme Corporation
The Acme Corporation is a fictional corporation that features prominently in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons as a running gag featuring outlandish products that fail catastrophically at the worst possible times...
pilot, and is voiced by Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
in both films. Beaky Buzzard appeared in the video game Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time is a Looney Tunes video game for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation, released in 1999. Aditionally, a sequel, Bugs Bunny and Taz: Time Busters was made for the same consoles.-Plot:...
and was used as an enemy in Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 4. He also appeared in the Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
in the episode "3 Days & 2 Nights of the Condor", where he was again voiced by Alaskey. Beaky's mother, who appeared in many of his original shorts, also appeared in an episode of the show (voiced by June Foray
June Foray
June Foray is an American voice actress, best known as the voice of many animated characters...
). Beaky was put in one episode of Duck Dodgers
Duck Dodgers (TV series)
Duck Dodgers is an American animated television series, based on the classic cartoon short Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, produced by Warner Bros. Animation from 2003 to 2005. The series aired on Cartoon Network and starred Daffy Duck as the titular character...
.
Beaky Buzzard appears in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
opening.
Claude Cat
Claude Cat (a pun on the homonym "clawed cat") had his origins in several other catCat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
characters used by animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
from 1940 to 1945. These cats were mostly similar in appearance and temperament, with black fur and anxious personalities. For example, in the 1943 film The Aristo-cat (the character's first speaking role), Jones paired his unnamed cat against the mind-manipulating mouse
Mouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
duo, Hubie and Bertie
Hubie and Bertie
Hubie and Bertie are animated cartoon mouse characters in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Though largely forgotten today, Hubie and Bertie represent some of animator Chuck Jones' earliest work that was intended to be funny rather than cute.-First film:Jones...
.
Jones redesigned the neurotic feline for the 1948 film Mouse Wreckers
Mouse Wreckers
Mouse Wreckers is a 1949 Looney Tunes short directed by Chuck Jones starring Hubie and Bertie in their first pairing with the redesigned Claude Cat . The short centers around Hubie and Bertie's attempts to move into a new home by chasing Claude out of the home...
(perhaps to distinguish him from Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
's popular puss, Sylvester). The short is another Hubie and Bertie vehicle, only this time, the antagonist they antagonize is Claude, drawn as he would appear in all future cartoons: yellow, with a red shock of hair and a white belly (his exact markings would vary from cartoon to cartoon). In this as in all future Claude Cat cartoons, Jones' careful attention to personality is easily evident. Claude is a nervous and lazy animal. His attempts to protect his home from the manipulative mice Hubie and Bertie prove futile as the rodents torment him by (among other things) putting aquariums in all the windows to make Claude think he's underwater or by nailing his furniture to the ceiling. Jones set the mice on Claude once more in the 1950 film The Hypo-Chondri-Cat. This time, the miniature Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...
s convince the neurotic Claude that he's dead. Claude would run afoul of the mice once more in 1951's Cheese Chasers
Cheese Chasers
Cheese Chasers is a 1951 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Hubie and Bertie in their final appearances of the Classic era. Also starring are Claude Cat and a bulldog predecessor to Marc Antony...
and against another mouse duo in Mouse Warming in 1952.
Jones added another idiosyncrasy to Claude's id in another 1950 film, Two's a Crowd. Here, Claude is scared out of his mind by a diminutive dog named Frisky Puppy, newly adopted by Claude's owners. The main theme, however, is jealousy
Jealousy
Jealousy is a second emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, particularly in reference to a human connection. Jealousy often consists of a combination of presenting emotions...
as Claude's attempts to oust the intruder repeatedly fail due to the cat's intense cowardice
Cowardice
Cowardice is the perceived failure to demonstrate sufficient mental robustness and courage in the face of a challenge. Under many military codes of justice, cowardice in the face of combat is a crime punishable by death...
- a running gag has Claude repeatedly shooting up and clinging to the ceiling after the pup playfully comes up behind him and barks. At the end, however Claude gets revenge by pulling the same trick causing the dog to comically leap up and cling to the ceiling. Jones repeated the scenario with slight variations in Terrier Stricken
Terrier Stricken
Terrier-Stricken is a Merrie Melodies cartoon short, released in 1952, which was written by Michael Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones. Frisky's barking at the worst possible moments get Claude into a heap of troublesome situations.-Story:...
in 1952 and No Barking in 1954 (the latter featuring a cameo by Tweety Bird).
In future cartoons, Jones recast Claude as a silent villain, still possessing his full set of neuroses
Neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
. This stage of the character's evolution is best exemplified by the 1954 film Feline Frame-Up
Feline Frame-Up
Feline Frame-Up is an animated short film in the Looney Tunes series produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc and released on February 13, 1954....
. Here, Claude convinces his owner that fellow pet Marc Antony
Marc Antony and Pussyfoot
Marc Antony and Pussyfoot are animated characters in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons...
is trying to eat the precious kitten Pussyfoot. Marc Antony is tossed out, allowing Claude the run of the house. That is, until Marc Antony outwits the cat and makes him sign a confession admitting to his crimes.
Claude was played by voice actor Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
and after classic films, Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
using a quirky, strangulated voice similar to that of Marvin the Martian
Marvin the Martian
Marvin the Martian is a fictional character appearing in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Marvin's likeness appears in miniature on the Spirit rover on Mars.-Conception and creation:...
(but without Marvin's precise enunciation).
Jones retired Claude in the late 1950s. He was concentrating on other characters, such as Wile E. Coyote and Pepe le Pew
Pepé Le Pew
Pepé Le Pew is a fictional character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, first introduced in 1945. A French skunk that always strolls around in Paris in the springtime, when everyone's thoughts are of "love", Pepé is constantly seeking "l'amour" of his own...
. Nevertheless, the character enjoys some popularity as one of Jones' more humorous, if forgotten, creations. In the 2006 Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas
Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas
Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas is a 2006 animated direct-to-video film starring the Looney Tunes and directed by Charles Visser and produced by Warner Bros. Animation...
, Claude Cat has a very brief cameo as an employee going home for Christmas.
Claude Cat appears in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
opening.
Conrad the Cat
Conrad the Cat starred in a few shorts in the 1940s all directed by Chuck Jones. He first appeared in the 1942 short The Bird Came C.O.D. before featuring in Porky's Cafe (1942) and Conrad the SailorConrad the Sailor
Conrad the Sailor is a 1942 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Chuck Jones. The title character, a.k.a. Conrad the Cat, is voiced by Pinto Colvig...
(1942). He was voiced by Pinto Colvig
Pinto Colvig
Vance DeBar "Pinto" Colvig was an American vaudeville actor, radio actor, newspaper cartoonist, prolific movie voice actor, and circus performer whose schtick was playing clarinet off-key while mugging....
, the original voice actor of Goofy
Goofy
Goofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
.
Cookie
Cookie was the flapperFlapper
Flapper in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior...
woman, who is a girlfriend for Buddy
Buddy (Looney Tunes)
Buddy is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes series of cartoons.-Looney Tunes:Buddy has his origins in the chaos that followed the severing of relations between animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising from producer Leon Schlesinger...
. Cookie may resemble the character Betty Boop
Betty Boop
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in...
. She is has a black hair and a white shirt and black shoes. She also has a baby brother named Baby Elmer (not to be confused with Elmer Fudd
Elmer Fudd
Elmer J. Fudd/Egghead is a fictional cartoon character and one of the most famous Looney Tunes characters, and the de facto archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He has one of the more disputed origins in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheon . His aim is to hunt Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring...
) who only made one appearance. In some shorts, Cookie has blond braided hair.
Cool Cat
Cool Cat was a tigerTiger
The tiger is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to and weighing up to . Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts...
(whose design was very similar to that of The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther (character)
The Pink Panther is the main and title character in the opening and closing credit sequences of every film in The Pink Panther series except for A Shot in the Dark and Inspector Clouseau. His popularity spawned a series of theatrical shorts, merchandise, a comic book, and television cartoons...
, who first appeared on screen four years earlier, and Snagglepuss
Snagglepuss
Snagglepuss is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character created in 1959, a pink anthropomorphic mountain lion voiced by Daws Butler. He is best known for his famous catchphrase, "Heavens to Murgatroyd!", along with phrases such as "Exit, stage left!" Snagglepuss was originally known as "Snaggletooth"...
) who wore a stylish green beret
Beret
A beret is a soft, round, flat-crowned hat, designated a "cap", usually of woven, hand-knitted wool, crocheted cotton, or wool felt, or acrylic fiber....
and scarf. Unlike most other Looney Tunes characters, Cool Cat was unapologetically a product of his time. He spoke in 1960s-style beatnik
Beatnik
Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
and acted much like a stereotypical laid-back 1960s teenager — he was often seen strumming a guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
or traveling cross-country in his dune buggy
Dune buggy
A dune buggy is a recreational vehicle with large wheels, and wide tires, designed for use on sand dunes or beaches. The design is usually a modified vehicle and engine mounted on an open chassis. The modifications usually attempt to increase the power-to-weight ratio by either lightening the...
. One cartoon — McKimson's Bugged by a Bee
Bugged by a Bee
Bugged by a Bee is a 1969 animated cartoon, released by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. It starred Cool Cat, and was the final cartoon from the 1930-1969 era to bear the Looney Tunes name, and the last from that era to be widely released...
— depicted him as an alumnus of "Disco Tech" playing varsity football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
against the long-haired team from "Hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
University"..
However, most of Cool Cat's cartoons dealt with his encounters with Colonel Rimfire (both voiced by Storch), a fussy, British-accented big-game hunter armed with a blunderbuss
Blunderbuss
The blunderbuss is a muzzle-loading firearm with a short, large caliber barrel, which is flared at the muzzle and frequently throughout the entire bore, and used with shot and other projectiles of relevant quantity and/or caliber. The blunderbuss could be considered to be an early form of shotgun,...
. Rimfire essentially acted as the Elmer Fudd
Elmer Fudd
Elmer J. Fudd/Egghead is a fictional cartoon character and one of the most famous Looney Tunes characters, and the de facto archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He has one of the more disputed origins in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheon . His aim is to hunt Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring...
to Cool Cat's Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
, but was used only by Lovy. Cool Cat bears the distinction of starring in the very last cartoon produced at the classic Warner Bros. Cartoons studio: Injun Trouble
Injun Trouble (1969 film)
Injun Trouble is a 1969 animated cartoon short in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Robert McKimson and featuring Cool Cat. It is noted for being the final cartoon in the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, ending a run which had lasted since 1930.This cartoon was the last...
in 1969. Shortly after this cartoon was produced, the venerable animation studio shut down for good.
His cartoons can easily be distinguished from most of the other Looney Tunes cartoons, for they feature an updated Looney Tunes logo with stylized animation, a 1967 remix of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by William Lava
William Lava
William "Bill" B. Lava was a musical composer and arranger who worked on the Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated cartoons from 1962 onwards, replacing the deceased Milt Franklyn. Lava's music was very different from that of Franklyn and previous composer Carl Stalling...
, and featuring the then-current Warner Brothers-Seven Arts logo (a combination of a simple W and 7 inside a stylized shield outline).
Cool Cat made later appearances in the television series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
, including the 2000 direct-to-video
Direct-to-video
Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...
movie Tweety's High-Flying Adventure (Colonel Rimfire also appeared in the latter). He made brief cameos in most, if not all of the episodes, appearing on posters in the background, walking by in street scenes, etc. His appearances aren't entirely overlooked by the cast, for Tweety has once responded to Cool Cat's appearance with "We had to get him in this cartoon somewhere." He was voiced by Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
and Jim Cummings
Jim Cummings
James Jonah "Jim" Cummings is an American voice actor who has appeared in almost 100 roles. He has appeared in classic animated movies such as Aladdin and The Lion King, as well as taking on roles in more current films, such as Bee Movie, Princess and the Frog, and Winnie the Pooh.-Personal...
in these later appearances.
Cool Cat and Colonel Rimfire are the only W-7 Arts characters to make any further appearances, beyond the classic era shorts, to date.
Count Blood Count
Count Blood Count (originally voiced by Mel BlancMel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
and later by Bill Farmer
Bill Farmer
William "Bill" Farmer is an American voice actor and comedian, best known for being the current voice of the Disney characters Goofy, Pluto and Horace Horsecollar.-Early life:...
, Frank Welker
Frank Welker
Franklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...
and Jeff Bennett
Jeff Bennett
Jeffrey Glenn "Jeff" Bennett is an American voice actor and musician, listed "among the top names in the voice-over field", best known as the voice of Johnny Bravo in the series of the same name...
) is a vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
from the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes animated shorts.
The Count's first appearance was in the 1963 short, Transylvania 6-5000
Transylvania 6-5000 (1963 film)
Transylvania 6-5000 is a short Merrie Melodies animated film directed by Chuck Jones and starring Bugs Bunny. Bugs demonstrates how to handle a pesky vampire with six simple magic incantations...
. In this short, Bugs
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
goes to Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
and looks for a telephone at what he thinks is a motel (but is in reality an ominous castle). At the castle, Bugs meets Count Blood Count and is given a room for the night (much to his chagrin) by the blood-thirsty vampire. Unable to sleep, Bugs skims through a magic book and reads it aloud. When the Count appears above the bed and tries to suck Bugs' blood, he turns into a bat when Bugs says "abracadabra". Later, when Bugs says "hocus pocus," the Count turns back to human form just outside the castle window, where he falls into the moat. Later, while wandering around the castle, Bugs sings the aforementioned magic phrases, turning the Count into a bat, then back to a vampire. When the Count states that he is a vampire, Bugs turns into an umpire. When the Count turns into a bat, Bugs turns into a baseball bat and hits him (despite the Count's bat form wearing glasses). The Count tries to crush Bugs with a piece of the floor only to turn into a bat and get crushed many times. Amused by the results, Bugs says random words which turn the Count into a whole range of things: "abraca-pocus" turns the Count into a being with his bat head and human form body, while "hocus-cadabra" does the opposite (the Count's human head with his bat form's wings). When Bugs says "Newport News," the Count turns into Witch Hazel
Witch Hazel (Looney Tunes)
Witch Hazel is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Disney, MGM, Famous Studios, and the Little Lulu comic book also had characters named Witch Hazel, and Rembrandt Films had one named Hazel Witch. This article is chiefly concerned...
, another Looney Tunes character. Finally, through the incantation "Walla Walla Washington," Bugs turns the Count into a two-headed vulture. Seeing an opportunity to be rid of the vampire, Bugs calls over a female two-headed vulture from earlier in the episode (named Emily and Agatha). Emily and Agatha are immediately smitten with passion, while the Count is immediately smitten with fear, and the female vultures amorously chase the terrifed Count away into the distance, musing, "Isn't it romantic? I always said, four heads are better than one!" Soon, Bugs finds a telephone and calls for a ride home. While waiting, Bugs hums and accidentally turns his ears into a pair of bat wings. Bugs then changes his mind and decides to fly home, using his new bat-winged ears.
Count Blood Count would reappear many years later in various Looney Tunes-related media. He was used as the final boss in the video game Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters, and voiced by Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
. He was also used as an enemy in Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 4.
He appeared in the "Fang You Very Much" segment of the Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
episode "Stuff That Goes Bump in the Night" attempting (with hilariously painful results) to suck the blood of series regular Elmyra Duff
Elmyra Duff
Elmyra Jessica Duff is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. She is one of the main characters from the show. Elmyra is voiced by Cree Summer in all of her appearances...
only for any light to turn the Count into a bat.
He appeared in the The Oddball Couple
The Oddball Couple
The Oddball Couple was an animated half hour Saturday morning show that ran on the ABC TV network from September 6, 1975 to September 3, 1977...
episode "Hotel Boo More", which was an almost exact copy of the Bugs Bunny's "Transylvania 6-5000" episode.
He appeared in an episode of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
called "Fangs for the Memories".
He most recently appeared as Count Muerte in an episode of Duck Dodgers
Duck Dodgers (TV series)
Duck Dodgers is an American animated television series, based on the classic cartoon short Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, produced by Warner Bros. Animation from 2003 to 2005. The series aired on Cartoon Network and starred Daffy Duck as the titular character...
titled "I'm Gonna Get You, Fat Sucka" (voiced by Jeff Bennett), in which he aimed to suck the fat of the Eager Young Space Cadet
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
, in the end Eager Young Space Cadet manages to defeat him by getting him to eat a pound of garlic shaped like himself causing him to disintegrate. In the episode, his appearance was based on that of Count Orlok
Count Orlok
Count Orlok is a fictional character portrayed by Max Schreck in the silent movie Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens...
, the vampire from the silent film Nosferatu, he also appeared in "Till Doom Do Us Part" as one of the members of The Legion of Duck Doom.
The Count's voice was sampled for the Gorillaz
Gorillaz
Gorillaz is an English musical project created in 1998 by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. This project consists of Gorillaz music itself and an extensive fictional universe depicting a "virtual band" of cartoon characters...
track "Dracula", which features the lines "Rest is good for the blood!" and "I am a Vampire!".
The Crusher
The Crusher is a brutish boxer in 1948's Rabbit PunchRabbit Punch
- Plot :The World's Championship Fight is about to begin in a gigantic boxing stadium near Bugs Bunny's hole. Tonight's fight features the battle between the Champ, "Battling McGook" , and his challenger "Dyspectic McPlaster". During the fight, Crusher does not even give his challenger a sporting...
and as a professional wrestler in 1951's Bunny Hugged
Bunny Hugged
Bunny Hugged is a 1950 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short, directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. Released in 1951, the short is essentially a re-working of Jones' 1948 short Rabbit Punch, substituting wrestling for boxing.-Plot:...
(directed by Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
). He is voiced by Billy Bletcher
Billy Bletcher
William "Billy" Bletcher was an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.-Career:...
in Rabbit Punch
Rabbit Punch
- Plot :The World's Championship Fight is about to begin in a gigantic boxing stadium near Bugs Bunny's hole. Tonight's fight features the battle between the Champ, "Battling McGook" , and his challenger "Dyspectic McPlaster". During the fight, Crusher does not even give his challenger a sporting...
and John T. Smith in Bunny Hugged
Bunny Hugged
Bunny Hugged is a 1950 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short, directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. Released in 1951, the short is essentially a re-working of Jones' 1948 short Rabbit Punch, substituting wrestling for boxing.-Plot:...
. Crusher also appeared in a Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
episode featuring two songs by They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years Flansburgh and Linnell were frequently accompanied by a drum machine. In the early 1990s, TMBG became a full band. Currently, the members of TMBG are...
: Particle Man
Particle Man
"Particle Man" is a song by alternative rock band They Might Be Giants. The song is the seventh track on the band's 1990 release, Flood. It has become one of their most popular songs, despite never being released as a single.- Lyrical content :...
(as a wrestler) and Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
"Istanbul " is a swing-style song, with lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy and music by Nat Simon. The tune is reminiscent of "Puttin' on the Ritz," written by Irving Berlin in 1929, but the song is said to be a response to "C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-I-N-O-P-L-E," recorded in 1928 by Paul Whiteman and His...
(as a henchman).
Crusher also had a cameo role in Carrotblanca
Carrotblanca
Carrotblanca is a 1995 8-minute Looney Tunes cartoon. It was originally shown in cinemas alongside The Amazing Panda Adventure and The Pebble and the Penguin...
as a doorman, and appeared in an episode in The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
. He also appeared in two episodes of Duck Dodgers
Duck Dodgers (TV series)
Duck Dodgers is an American animated television series, based on the classic cartoon short Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, produced by Warner Bros. Animation from 2003 to 2005. The series aired on Cartoon Network and starred Daffy Duck as the titular character...
, voiced by John DiMaggio
John DiMaggio
John William DiMaggio is an American voice actor. A native of North Plainfield, New Jersey, he is known for his gruff, deep voice and New Jersey accent, which he uses to voice mainly villains and anti-heroes.-Filmography:...
. Crusher appeared on the web show "fast food" on looneytunes.com.
In the 2003 film, Looney Tunes Back in Action, The Crusher makes a cameo as one of the judges on DJ's stunt performance.
Crusher was a boss character in the Super NES video game Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage
Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage
Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage is a Super NES action video game where the player controls Bugs Bunny as he fights traditional Looney Tunes villains in order to confront the main villain of the story, animator Daffy Duck...
.
The Crusher also appeared in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
episodes Jailbird and Jailbunny, The Fish and Visitors and To Bowl or not to Bowl.
Charlie Dog
Charlie Dog, Charlie the Dog or Charles the Dog is an animatedAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
fictional character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes series of cartoons. Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
minted the scenario that Charlie Dog would later inherit in his cartoon short Porky's Pooch
Porky's Pooch
Porky's Pooch is a 1941 public domain Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Bob Clampett.-Plot:A Scottie dog Sandy is starving. He asks his friend, Rover what he's doing in a car. Rover tells him how he got a master. In a flashback Rover goes up to Porky's apartment room while he's taking a bath. He...
, first released on 27 December 1941. A homeless hound pulls out all the stops to get adopted by bachelor Porky Pig
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
. Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
would provide the dog's gruff, Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
-Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
-like voice and accent which became Charlie's standard voice.
However, as he did for so many other Looney Tunes characters, Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
took Clampett's hound and transformed him into something new. Jones first used the dog in Little Orphan Airedale
Little Orphan Airedale
Little Orphan Airedale is a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Charles M. Jones and released on October 4, 1947. It was later reissued as a Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies short...
(4 October 1947) which saw Clampett's "Rover" renamed "Charlie." The film was a success, and Jones would create two more Charlie Dog/Porky Pig cartoons in 1949: Awful Orphan (29 January) and Often an Orphan
Often an Orphan
-Introduction:Often an Orphan is a 1949 cartoon in the Looney Tunes series. It stars Charlie Dog and Porky Pig and is the last Charlie Dog short to have Porky present in it. The cartoon deals with Charlie trying to get Porky to adopt him after his old owner dumps him at Porky's farm on a trip...
(13 August). Jones also starred Charlie without Porky in a couple of shorts: Dog Gone South (26 August 1950) which sees Yankee
Yankee
The term Yankee has several interrelated and often pejorative meanings, usually referring to people originating in the northeastern United States, or still more narrowly New England, where application of the term is largely restricted to descendants of the English settlers of the region.The...
Charlie searching for a fine gentleman of the Southern United States
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
, and A Hound for Trouble
A Hound for Trouble
A Hound For Trouble is a Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon short released on April 28, 1951 featuring Charlie Dog.-Plot:Kicked off the boat in Italy, Charlie forces himself upon a pizzeria owner...
(28 April 1951) which sends Charlie to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
where he searches for a master who speaks English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
In these cartoons, Charlie Dog is defined by one desire: to find himself a master. To this end, Charlie is willing to pull out all the stops, from pulling "the big soulful eyes routine" to boasting of his pedigree ("Fifty percent Collie
Collie
The collie is a distinctive type of herding dog, including many related landraces and formal breeds. It originates in Scotland and Northern England. It is a medium-sized, fairly lightly built dog with a pointed snout, and many types have a distinctive white pattern over the shoulders. Collies...
! Fifty percent setter, Irish Setter
Irish Setter
The Irish Setter , is a setter, a breed of gundog and family dog. The term Irish Setter is commonly used to encompass the show-bred dog recognized by the American Kennel Club as well as the field-bred Red Setter recognised by the Field Dog Stud Book....
! Fifty Percent Boxer
Boxer (dog)
Developed in Germany, the Boxer is a breed of stocky, medium-sized, short-haired dog. The coat is smooth and fawn or brindled, with or without white markings. Boxers are brachycephalic , and have a square muzzle, mandibular prognathism , very strong jaws and a powerful bite ideal for hanging on to...
! Fifty percent Doberman Pincher! Fifty percent pointer—there it is! There it is! There it is! But, mostly, I'm all Labrador Retriever
Labrador Retriever
The Labrador Retriever is one of several kinds of retriever, a type of gun dog. A breed characteristic is webbed paws for swimming, useful for the breed's original purpose of retrieving fishing nets. The Labrador is the most popular breed of dog by registered ownership in Canada, the United...
!") when reminded by others that he is not a Labrador retriever, his response would be, "If you'll find me a Labrador, I'll retrieve it for you." —though in reality, he is just a slick-talking mutt
Mixed-breed dog
A mixed-breed dog, also known as a mutt or mongrel, is a dog whose ancestry is generally unknown and that has characteristics of two or more types of breeds. A mixed-breed may be a cross-breed dog, a random-bred dog, or a descendant of feral or pariah dog populations...
who rarely realizes that his own aggressive obnoxiousness is sabotaging his appeal to any potential guardian.
Charlie makes a brief cameo appearance (via re-used animation from Often an Orphan) in the Bob McKimson-directed short Dog Tales
Dog Tales (1958 film)
Dog Tales is a 1958 Warner Brothers animated cartoon which consists of a series of blackout gags involving dogs Dog Tales is a 1958 Warner Brothers animated cartoon which consists of a series of blackout gags involving dogs Dog Tales is a 1958 Warner Brothers animated cartoon which consists of a...
(1958). Jones shelved the Charlie Dog series of films in the 1950s, along with other characters he had introduced, such as The Three Bears and Hubie and Bertie
Hubie and Bertie
Hubie and Bertie are animated cartoon mouse characters in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Though largely forgotten today, Hubie and Bertie represent some of animator Chuck Jones' earliest work that was intended to be funny rather than cute.-First film:Jones...
. He was turning his efforts to new characters, such as Pepé Le Pew
Pepé Le Pew
Pepé Le Pew is a fictional character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, first introduced in 1945. A French skunk that always strolls around in Paris in the springtime, when everyone's thoughts are of "love", Pepé is constantly seeking "l'amour" of his own...
and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The characters were created by animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Bros., while the template for their adventures was the work of writer Michael Maltese...
. However, recent Warner Brothers merchandising and series and films such as episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
, the film Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
(1996) in the crowd scenes (here performed by Frank Welker), and Tweety's High-flying Adventure (2000) in Italy have brought Charlie back out of retirement.
The Frisky Puppy character that Jones paired with Claude Cat in several '50s shorts bears a close physical resemblance to Charlie.
Charlie Dog also appears in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
opening.
Dodsworth
Dodsworth is a fictional cat from the Merrie Melodies series. He is depicted as a larger lethargic cat with marking almost identical to Sylvester's.Egghead, Jr.
Egghead, Jr. debuted in 1954's Little Boy BooLittle Boy Boo
Little Boy Boo is a "Looney Tunes" cartoon animated short starring Foghorn Leghorn, Miss Prissy and Egghead Jr. Released June 5, 1954, the cartoon is directed by Robert McKimson...
, and made two subsequent Looney Tunes appearances in 1955's Feather Dusted
Feather Dusted
Feather Dusted is a Foghorn Leghorn animated short film from Warner Bros. released in 1955 and directed by Robert McKimson. Foghorn tries to play games with Egghead Jr., but finds that playing with Egghead Jr. can be dangerous.-Plot:...
and 1960's Crockett-Doodle-Doo.
Egghead, Jr. is a large-headed and very intelligent baby chick and appeared in several shorts with bumptuous Foghorn Leghorn (also a character directed by McKimson and voiced by Blanc). The only child of Miss Prissy, a widow hen, Egghead
Egghead
In the slang of the United States, egghead is an anti-intellectual epithet, directed at people considered too out-of-touch with ordinary people and too lacking in realism, common sense, virility, etc. on account of their intellectual interests. The British equivalent is boffin...
, Jr. was book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
ish and never talked (though he mumbled when he counted playing hide-and-seek with Foghorn in Little Boy Boo). Foghorn would try to teach him to play games like baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
and cowboys and Indians, with the intent that he act more like a typical boy, but invariably resulting in bodily injury for Foghorn.
It was previously noted that Egghead, Jr. was also in the 1959 cartoon A Broken Leghorn
A Broken Leghorn
A Broken Leghorn is a "Looney Tunes" cartoon animated short starring Foghorn Leghorn and Miss Prissy. Released September 26, 1959, the cartoon is directed by Robert McKimson. The voices were performed by Mel Blanc.-Plot:...
, but this was the character Junior Rooster.
In 1991, Egghead Jr. appeared in the Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
episode "Hog-Wild Hamton"; he's Hamton's
Hamton J. Pig
Hamton J. Pig is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is arguably the fourth main character on the show. Hamton is voiced by Don Messick. Hamton is a young male pig with blue overalls. He attends Acme Looniversity and lives in Acme...
neighbor and he doesn't like being disturbed, so when a wild party takes place at Hamton's house and the guests refuse to keep the noise down, Egghead takes matters into his own hands. Egghead Jr. also makes a cameo in Star Warners. He makes a cameo watching Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan
Michael Jeffrey Jordan is a former American professional basketball player, active entrepreneur, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats...
bounce in Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
. His most recent appearance was the Duck Dodgers episode "Corporate Pigfall."
Fluffy
Fluffy was the second Merrie MelodiesMerrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
female cartoon star, and was also Piggy's girlfriend. She made 2 appearances in You Don't Know What You're Doin! and Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land
Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land
Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Rudy Ising , produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres on November 28, 1931 by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation...
.
Frisky Puppy
Frisky Puppy is a young puppy who loves to play. He appeared in three cartoons, opposite Claude Cat, all directed by Chuck Jones. Frisky often sneaks up on Claude when Claude is trying to get rid of him, making the cat jump to the ceiling. With his loud barks and yelps, and obsessed with scratching himself because of fleas, Frisky seems to cause a lot of trouble for Claude. Since the puppy's first appearance, Two's a Crowd (1950), where Frisky was a present for the mistress of the house, Claude was always trying to get rid of Frisky, since the fact if Claude does not get along with the puppy then the cat will go. And it seems from the start that Claude hated Frisky, possibly due to Frisky's hyper active self. The Claude/Frisky storyline continued from Terrier Stricken (1952) to No Barking (1954).Goopy Geer
Goopy Geer was the last attempt by animatorAnimator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
Rudolf Ising
Harman and Ising
Hugh Harman and Rudolf "Rudy" Ising were an American animation team best known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios...
to feature a recurring character in the Merrie Melodies series of films. Goopy is a tall, lanky humanoid dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
with scruffy whiskers and long, expressive ears. In all of his animated appearances, Goopy is depicted as light colored, but in an early promotional drawing for his first cartoon, he had black fur. A month after Goopy Geer's first cartoon had been released, Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
released a cartoon with a character named Dippy Dawg
Goofy
Goofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
-- renamed "Goofy" in 1934, and notably referred to as "G. G. Geef" in 1950s shorts -- whose overall appearance was very similar to that of Goopy Geer. Due to the close proximity of the two cartoons' releases, there is little chance that either character was intended to be a copy of the other. Instead, both characters may have been inspired by earlier Ising drawings shown to Walt Disney, as with the Foxy - Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
similarity.
Like most other early sound-era cartoon characters, Ising's Goopy has little personality of his own. Instead, he sings and dances his way through a musical world in perfect syncopation. Ising only featured the character in three cartoons. In the first, "Goopy Geer
Goopy Geer (1932 cartoon)
Goopy Geer is a 1932 Merrie Melodies cartoon short, featuring the first appearance of the title character.-Synopsis:The customers in a nightclub clamor for Goopy Geer, who then comes out on the stage and entertains them by playing the piano, first with his fingers and his ears, later with his...
" (April 16, 1932), he plays a popular pianist
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
entertaining at a nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
. In Ising's other two Goopy films, both in 1932, he cast the dog first as a hillbilly
Hillbilly
Hillbilly is a term referring to certain people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas of the United States, primarily Appalachia but also the Ozarks. Owing to its strongly stereotypical connotations, the term is frequently considered derogatory, and so is usually offensive to those Americans of...
in "Moonlight for Two" (June 11, 1932), then as a court jester
Court jester
A jester, joker, jokester, fool, wit-cracker, prankster, or buffoon was a person employed to tell jokes and provide general entertainment, typically for a European monarch. Jesters are stereotypically thought to have worn brightly colored clothes and eccentric hats in a motley pattern...
in "The Queen Was in the Parlor" (July 9, 1932). All of these cartoons also feature Goopy's unnamed girlfriend who debuted without her gangly consort in the earlier Merrie Melodie "Freddy the Freshman
Freddy the Freshman
Freddy the Freshman is a 1932 animated short film, directed by Rudolph Ising for Harman-Ising Pictures as part of Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies series.-Synopsis:...
" (February 20, 1932). Goopy would make a cameo in the Bosko
Bosko
Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko is the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger's cartoon series, and is the star of over three dozen Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros...
cartoon "Bosko in Dutch" (January 14, 1933), but after Ising left Warner Brothers that same year, Goopy and other recurring Merrie Melodies characters were retired, to be later replaced by such recurring characters as Sniffles
Sniffles
Sniffles is an animated cartoon and comic-book character in the Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies series of cartoons and comics.-Character biography:...
the Mouse, Inki
Inki
Inki is the lead character in an animated cartoon series of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies short films by animator Chuck Jones....
and the Mynah Bird, the Curious Puppies, and, on two occasions, Porky Pig
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
(a character who was certainly more prevalent in the black and white Looney Tunes). Many of the Merrie Melodies nonetheless remained high-quality one-shot cartoons, until 1943, when the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies merged and became generic.
Goopy Geer had a small role in the 1990s animated series Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
. In the episode "Two-Tone Town" (September 28, 1992), Goopy, reprising his role as the happy-go-lucky pianist from his first cartoon, meets the series' stars
Babs and Buster Bunny
Babs and Buster Bunny are cartoon characters from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. They are the stars of the show— they both appear in the Tiny Toons logo, and the show usually begins and ends with their gags. Buster is voiced by Charlie Adler for most of the...
when they visit the "black-and-white" part of town. His appearance in this cartoon is updated somewhat, and seems to be based on early promotional drawings where his fur is black, rather than his actual cartoon appearances.
Gabby Goat
Gabby Goat was created by Bob ClampettBob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
to be a sidekick for Porky Pig
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
in the 1937 short Porky and Gabby
Porky and Gabby
Porky and Gabby is a 1937 animated cartoon short film, featuring Porky Pig and the first appearance of Gabby Goat. The cartoon was directed by Ub Iwerks, the creator of Mickey Mouse.-Plot:...
, directed by Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, creator of Mickey Mouse, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
, who briefly subcontracted to Leon Schlesinger Productions
Warner Bros. Cartoons
Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. was the in-house division of Warner Bros. Pictures during the Golden Age of American animation. One of the most successful animation studios in American media history, Warner Bros. Cartoons was primarily responsible for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical...
, producers of the Looney Tunes shorts. The cartoon focuses on the title characters' camping trip, which is foiled by car trouble. Storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
artist Cal Howard
Cal Howard
Cal Howard was an American cartoon story artist, "mostly remembered for his work at Walter Lantz and Warner Bros.".-External links:...
supplies Gabby's voice.
Gabby looks like Porky with a beard, horns, and scowl. The goat's chief characteristics are his irritability and short temper, traits that make him a natural foil for the shy, easy-going Porky. The concept didn't play out as well as the animators would have liked, however; audiences felt that the goat's behavior was too offensive to be funny. Gabby only appeared in two more cartoons. The first was Porky's Badtime Story
Porky's Badtime Story
Porky's Badtime Story is a Looney Tunes cartoon starring Porky Pig and Gabby Goat. The cartoon was directed by Robert Clampett.-Plot:Porky and Gabby always show up late to work. Their boss warns them that they will be fired if they continue being late...
(Clampett's first cartoon as director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
), where roommates Porky and Gabby are almost fired from their jobs for sleeping in and showing up late. They vow to get to sleep early that night, but various problems keep them awake all night. The cartoon was later remade in 1944 as Tick Tock Tuckered
Tick Tock Tuckered
Tick Tock Tuckered is a 1944 Looney Tunes cartoon. A color remake of the cartoon Porky's Badtime Story featuring Porky Pig and Gabby Goat, it was directed by the same director of the previous film: Bob Clampett.-Plot:...
, featuring Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
in Gabby's role as Porky's co-star.
The third and final appearance of the character was in Get Rich Quick Porky, where Porky and Gabby dig for oil. Both Porky's Badtime Story and Get Rich Quick Porky were produced in 1937.
Recently uncovered storyboards show that Gabby Goat was originally planned to appear in the 1938 short Porky's Party
Porky's Party
Porky's Party is a 1938 animated short movie directed by Bob Clampett, which starred Porky Pig and his dog, "Black Fury", as well as two characters named Penguin And Goosey, and an unnamed silkworm. In this short, Porky prepares for his birthday party, but antics ensue.-Plot:Porky is getting ready...
. However, that role was later filled by a penguin character with a similar personality.
Gremlin
The Gremlin is a character in the Merrie Melodies short Falling HareFalling Hare
Falling Hare is a 1943 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Robert Clampett, starring Bugs Bunny. The title is another play on words. The word "hair" and "hare". As "falling hair" refers to impending baldness, while in this cartoon's climax, the title turns out to be descriptive of Bugs' situation....
, and he is the sidekick of Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
in the United States Army Air Forces
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II, and the direct predecessor of the United States Air Force....
of the World War II era.
Ham and Ex
Ham and Ex are happy-go-lucky St. BernardSt. Bernard (dog)
The St. Bernard is a breed of very large working dog from the Italian and Swiss Alps, originally bred for rescue. The breed has become famous through tales of alpine rescues, as well as for its large size.-Appearance:The St. Bernard is a large dog...
twins as well as Beans' nephews. Their names are a pun of the phrase "ham and eggs." The dogs made their debut in I Haven't Got a Hat. A year later, they reappeared in The Phantom Ship
The Phantom Ship (cartoon)
The Phantom Ship is an animated short film and is part of the Looney Tunes series. It stars Beans the Cat, along with the St. Bernard pups Ham and Ex.-Plot:...
where they are fully clothed. The two would also have the lead role in The Fire Alarm
The Fire Alarm
The Fire Alarm is an animated short subject of the Looney Tunes films. It features Ham and Ex in their first and only film as star characters.-Storyline:...
. They had their final role in Westward Whoa
Westward Whoa
Westward Whoa is an animated short film of the Looney Tunes series. It marks the final appearance of Ham and Ex, and the penultimate for Beans and Little Kitty. The film is also in the public domain.-Plot:...
.
Both are voiced by Bernice Hansen.
Hansel and Gretel (Looney Tunes)
Hansel and Gretel have appeared in the short, Bewitched BunnyBewitched Bunny
Bewitched Bunny is a Looney Tunes cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. Jones created the character Witch Hazel which debuted in this episode. Witch Hazel later appeared in Broom-Stick Bunny , A Witch's Tangled Hare , and in A-Haunting We Will Go...
, originally going to be eaten by Witch Hazel
Witch Hazel (Looney Tunes)
Witch Hazel is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Disney, MGM, Famous Studios, and the Little Lulu comic book also had characters named Witch Hazel, and Rembrandt Films had one named Hazel Witch. This article is chiefly concerned...
.
Hatta Mari
Hatta Mari is an anthropomorphic pigeon and femme fataleFemme fatale
A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art...
featured in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes shorts. Her name is a pun on World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
spy Mata Hari
Mata Hari
Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida "M'greet" Zelle , a Dutch exotic dancer, courtesan, and accused spy who was executed by firing squad in France under charges of espionage for Germany during World War I.-Early life:Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born in Leeuwarden, Friesland,...
. Hatta Mari first appeared in the 1944 Looney Tunes short "Plane Daffy
Plane Daffy
- Synopsis :One after another of a company of carrier pigeons fall prey to the seductive wiles of "Queen of the Spies" Hatta Mari. The alarm is raised at pigeon headquarters when Pigeon 13 goes AWOL with the female Nazi spy bird, to whom he reveals all his secrets...
". She was seen as a villainous pigeon working for the Axis Powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
. Hatta Mari used her sultry, feminine wiles to lure male carrier pigeons into her grasp, then disposed of them. Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
, a self-professed woman-hater (at least in this cartoon) was tempted into her home once she hiked up her skirt exposing her long curvaceous leg. The buxom beauty had lulled the woman-hater into a state of ease by her charm. At first Daffy was no match against the long passionate kisses she planted on his lips. However, he quickly realised it was a trap when he noticed her various Nazi paraphernalia, including swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
earrings. Hatta Mari then went berserk, trying to kill Daffy and steal his secret message to the Allied Powers. In an attempt to keep it from her, Daffy swallowed the message, but Hatta Mari managed to get it anyway using an X-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
machine. The message read "Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
is a stinker". Hitler, on a device that predicted the Picturephone of 1964, replied, "Hitler is a stinker? That's no military secret!" Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
and Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
, standing beside Hitler, would add, "Ja, everybody knows that!" just before they commit suicide by gunshot at the end of "Plane Daffy". After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, most of the wartime cartoons went largely unseen for decades, and Hatta Mari was virtually forgotten.
However, she was briefly resurrected for an episode of the 1990-1992 animated series, Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
. She appeared in the episode "New Character Day" during the segment The Return of Pluck Twacy. The episode was a sequel of sorts to the classic 1946 Daffy Duck cartoon the Great Piggy Bank Robbery
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short, produced in early 1945, and released in 1946. It was directed by Robert Clampett, and features Daffy Duck in Clampett's penultimate Warner cartoon and final Daffy Duck cartoon, produced shortly before he left...
, where Daffy took the guise of "Duck Twacy", a parody of comic book action hero, Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy is a comic strip featuring Dick Tracy, a hard-hitting, fast-shooting and intelligent police detective. Created by Chester Gould, the strip made its debut on October 4, 1931, in the Detroit Mirror. It was distributed by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate...
. In this cartoon, Daffy's protege Plucky Duck
Plucky Duck
Plucky Allen Duck is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is also the titular character in Gary A. Lewis's Plucky Duck in the Summer Job. He is arguably the third main character on the show after Buster and Babs. Plucky is voiced by Joe...
assumes the mantle of "Pluck Twacy" and is hired by his friend Shirley the Loon to find her missing aura
Aura (paranormal)
In parapsychology and many forms of spiritual practice, an aura is a field of subtle, luminous radiation surrounding a person or object . The depiction of such an aura often connotes a person of particular power or holiness. Sometimes, however, it is said that all living things and all objects...
. The missing aura happens to be Hatta Mari, who has been hiding out in an eerie dilapidated mansion with a gang of hoodlums. Hatta Mari uses her feminine charms to seduce Plucky and then sics the numerous villains inside the house on him. One of these is "Ticklepuss", who was actually a character named "Sloppy Moe" from two other forgotten Clampett films, Injun Trouble and its color remake Wagon Heels
Wagon Heels
Wagon Heels is a 1945 Merrie Melodies short directed by Bob Clampett, a color remake of the 1938 Looney Tunes black-and-white short Injun Trouble. Because of its wildly stereotypical depiction of the Native American, it is seldom shown on television. All voices except narration are performed by Mel...
. Ticklepuss is a bizarre, barefooted, raggedy-looking blue-skinned man with a long beard (with no moustache) who unsuccessfully tries to tickle Twacy into submission.
According to the DVD commentary on Plane Daffy in the fourth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, the blond hair and buxom figure of Hatta Mari would later be a reality as seen in 1950s blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both in Hollywood and on the Broadway theatre...
Hector the Bulldog
Hector the Bulldog is an animated cartoonAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Hector is a muscle-bound bulldog
Bulldog
Bulldog is the name for a breed of dog commonly referred to as the English Bulldog. Other Bulldog breeds include the American Bulldog, Olde English Bulldogge and the French Bulldog. The Bulldog is a muscular heavy dog with a wrinkled face and a distinctive pushed-in nose...
with gray fur and walks pigeon-toed. His face bears a perpetual scowl between two immense jowls. He wears a black collar
Collar (animal)
An animal collar is a device that attached to the neck of an animal to allow it to be harnessed, tied up or for various other reasons.*Pet collar. A piece of material put around the neck of certain pet animals, such as dogs or cats, for control, identification, or other purposes. Identification...
with silver studs.
Hector (or a prototype) first appeared in 1945's Peck Up Your Troubles
Peck Up Your Troubles
Peck Up Your Troubles is a 1945 animated short featuring Sylvester directed by Friz Freleng.-Plot:Sylvester is determined to get a woodpecker that just moved in, high in a tree. He climbs, but the bird greases the tree; he starts to cut it down, but a mean dog stops him...
, where he foils Sylvester's attempts to get a woodpecker. He made a second appearance in A Hare Grows in Manhattan
A Hare Grows In Manhattan
A Hare Grows In Manhattan is a 1947 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny and a pack a of bulldogs...
, leading a street gang composed of dogs in a Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
-directed short; this is also the only short where the dog has numerous speaking lines. After those shorts, Hector is a minor player in several Tweety
Tweety
Tweety Bird is a fictional Yellow Canary in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons. The name "Tweety" is a play on words, as it originally meant "sweetie", along with "tweet" being a typical English onomatopoeia for the sounds of birds...
and Sylvester
Sylvester (Looney Tunes)
Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., Sylvester the Cat or simply Sylvester, is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic Tuxedo cat in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies repertory, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper...
cartoons directed by Freleng in 1948 and throughout the 1950s. His usual role is to protect Tweety from Sylvester, usually at Granny
Granny (Looney Tunes)
Granny is a co-star of many Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird animated shorts throughout the 1950s and 1960s, is a Looney Tunes character that was created by Tex Avery. She is the owner of Tweety . Granny's voice was first provided by Bea Benaderet from 1937 through 1953...
’s request. He typically does this through brute strength alone, but some cartoons have him outsmart the cat, such as 1954's Satan's Waitin'
Satan's Waitin'
Satan's Waitin' is a 1953 animated Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Friz Freleng, released in 1954, starring Sylvester and Tweety.-Synopsis:...
, wherein Hector convinces Sylvester to use up his nine lives by pursuing Tweety through a series of extremely dangerous situations. In most of his appearances, the bulldog is nameless, though he is sometimes referred to as Spike. Freleng probably did not intend the character to be the same bulldog as the Spike he paired with Chester the Terrier in other cartoons.
Hector’s most prominent role was as a regular cast member in the animated series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
. In the cartoon, he plays Granny
Granny (Looney Tunes)
Granny is a co-star of many Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird animated shorts throughout the 1950s and 1960s, is a Looney Tunes character that was created by Tex Avery. She is the owner of Tweety . Granny's voice was first provided by Bea Benaderet from 1937 through 1953...
's loyal guardian. The show makes Hector's low intelligence his Achilles heel
Achilles Heel
Achilles Heel may refer to:* Achilles' heel, a metaphor for a fatal weakness in spite of overall strength* Achilles Heel , music by Pedro the Lion* Achilles Heel , off Antarctica...
, as Sylvester is constantly outwitting him. Originally played by Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
, Hector is currently played by voice actor
Voice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
Frank Welker
Frank Welker
Franklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...
.
Hector also appears in the video game Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters where he guards one of the time gears in Granwich. He is a member of the studio audience in Sheep, Dog, 'n' Wolf
Sheep, Dog, 'n' Wolf
Sheep, Dog, 'n' Wolf is a puzzle-platform style game/stealth style game for PlayStation and Microsoft Windows, developed by Infogrames in France. Unlike a standard platformer, the game incorporates stealth and strategy.The game is based on the popular Warner Bros. series of cartoons Sam Sheepdog...
.
Hector the Bulldog will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
voiced by Damon Jones
Damon Jones
Damon Darron Jones is an American professional basketball player. A 6'3" point guard–shooting guard, he played college basketball for three years with the University of Houston Cougars before declaring early for the 1997 NBA Draft, but he went undrafted.-High school career:Jones played for...
, taking the role as the nephew of Spike the Bulldog. He will appear in the upcoming episode "Inside Granny's Mansion". He will also serve as a friend of Tweety, an enemy of Sylvester, and a pet of Granny's.
Honey
Honey was the female counterpart to BoskoBosko
Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko is the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger's cartoon series, and is the star of over three dozen Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros...
. Appearing in a white dress and polka-dotted bow in her hair, Honey first appeared in the first Looney Tunes short, Sinkin' in the Bathtub
Sinkin' in the Bathtub
Sinkin' in the Bathtub was the very first Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon short as well as the very first of the Looney Tunes series.The short was produced and directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, with animation by a very young Friz Freleng...
. She was originally voiced by an uncredited Rochelle Hudson
Rochelle Hudson
Rochelle Hudson was an American film actress from the 1930s through the 1960s. Hudson was a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1931.-Career:...
, who was only 14 years old at the time the series began.
Hugo the Abominable Snowman
Hugo is a large, rather naive, and easily fooled creature who really likes bunny rabbits. He likes to name his pets "George" and tried on two occasions to make Bugs BunnyBugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
his pet. He seems to be an actual snowman, as he melted when exposed to the sun too long. His character is a takeoff on Lennie Small in Of Mice And Men
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....
. "George" refers to Lennie's friend George Milton in the novel (and movie).
Hugo appears in the episode The Abominable Snow Rabbit
The Abominable Snow Rabbit
The Abominable Snow Rabbit is a six minute 1961 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon starring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The cartoon was directed by Chuck Jones and co-directed by Maurice Noble, with a story by Tedd Pierce. The cartoon's title is taken from the phrase and horror film The...
when Bugs and Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
run into him after accidentally traveling to the Himalaya Mountains. In Spaced Out Bunny
Spaced Out Bunny
Spaced Out Bunny is a Warner Bros. cartoon starring Bugs Bunny and Marvin the Martian. The cartoon was part of the television special Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over on CBS, which aired May 21, 1980....
, it was shown that he was captured by Marvin the Martian
Marvin the Martian
Marvin the Martian is a fictional character appearing in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Marvin's likeness appears in miniature on the Spirit rover on Mars.-Conception and creation:...
and brought to Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
, where Marvin attempted to give Bugs to him as a pet. In both appearances, he was voiced by Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
.
He later made a brief appearance in Tweety's High Flying Adventure
Tweety's High Flying Adventure
Tweety's High-Flying Adventure is a 2000 direct-to-video animated film produced by Tom Minton and James T. Walker, written by Tom Minton, Tim Cahill and Julie McNally, directed by James T. Walker, Karl Toerge and Charles Visser, starring Sylvester and Tweety...
, this time voiced by Frank Welker
Frank Welker
Franklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...
.
Little Blabbermouse
Little Blabbermouse is an anthropomorphic mouseMouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
featured in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes shorts. His name is a pun on the term blabbermouth. Blabbermouse first appeared in the 1940 Looney Tunes short "Little Blabbermouse". In this short Little Blabbermouse goes on a tour with other mice around a Drug Store where the products live up to their names. The annoying non-stop talking mouse after much pestering the tour guide mouse and a close encounter with a cat gets a mouthful of Alum making him speak gibberish.
His second was the 1940 short "Shop, Look and Listen", which has basically a similar plot except the scene is a grocery shop, they do not encounter a cat and Little Blabbermouse ends up gift wrapped. Little Blabbermouse has never been featured in any future short.
Merlin the Magic Mouse
Merlin the Magic Mouse was a nightclubNightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
magician (he usually preferred to be called a prestidigator, though he could never pronounce this correctly) who traveled around for work. Much of the humour of the character derived from the fact that, while he was often regarded as a cheap stage magician, he knew some very real and powerful magic tricks. His magic words were typically "Atascadero
Atascadero, California
Atascadero is a city in San Luis Obispo County, California, about equidistant from San Francisco and Los Angeles on U-S Highway 101. Atascadero is farther inland than most other San Luis Obispo County cities, and as a result, usually experiences warmer, drier summers and cooler winters than...
Escondido
Escondido, California
Escondido is a city occupying a shallow valley ringed by rocky hills, just north of the city of San Diego, California. Founded in 1888, it is one of the oldest cities in San Diego County. The city had a population of 143,911 at the 2010 census. Its municipal government set itself an operating...
!" Merlin also has a sidekick, appropriately named Second Banana, which is a slang term for a magician's assistant.
Daws Butler
Daws Butler
Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler was a voice actor originally from Toledo, Ohio. He worked mostly for Hanna-Barbera and originated the voices of many famous animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound.Daws Butler trained many working actors...
provided the voice of Merlin and Second Banana in the first short, Merlin the Magic Mouse; Larry Storch
Larry Storch
Lawrence Samuel "Larry" Storch is an American actor best known for his comic television roles, including voice-over work for top cartoon shows, including Mr...
performed the voices for the other four films. Merlin is loosely based on W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...
.
Miss Cud
Miss Cud is a cow and a School teacher in I Haven't Got a HatI Haven't Got a Hat
I Haven't Got a Hat is a 1935 animated short film, directed by Isadore Freleng for Leon Schlesinger Productions as part of Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies series. Released by Warner Bros. on March 9, 1935, the short is notable for featuring the first appearance of several Warner Bros. cartoon...
. She is also an ice-skater in Alpine Antics
Alpine Antics (1936 cartoon)
Alpine Antics is a short animated film of the Looney Tunes series and stars Beans the Cat. The film was shot in black and white but was later reissued in color.-Plot:...
. She then made her other appearance in Porky's Moving Day, where her house was almost going to drown.
She is confirmed to appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
(as she appears in the main picture of all of the most main characters) and is going to be voiced by Roz Ryan
Roz Ryan
Roz Ryan is an American actress. She has earned wide acclaim as an actress, singer and comedian.-Life and career:Ryan was born Rosalyn Bowen in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Gertrude and Thomas Bowen, who worked for the Board of Education. She is a 1969 graduate of Mackenzie High School...
. Like her last appearance, she will serve as a teacher at Gossamer
Gossamer (Looney Tunes)
Gossamer is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. The character is a hairy, red monster. His rectangular body is perched on two giant tennis shoes, and his heart-shaped face is composed of only two oval eyes and a wide mouth, with...
's grade school.
The Monstars(Mean Team)
The Monstars appear in the 1996 Movie Space Jam. They appear as rivals to the Tunesquad, but at the end they want to join the Looney TunesLooney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
while their boss (Danny Devito
Danny DeVito
Daniel Michael DeVito, Jr. , better known as Danny DeVito, is an American actor, comedian, director and producer. He first gained prominence for his portrayal of Louie De Palma on the ABC and NBC television series Taxi , for which he won a Golden Globe and an Emmy.DeVito and his wife, Rhea Perlman,...
) is at the moon.
Oliver Owl
Oliver Owl is a snooty owl who was first seen in I Haven't Got a HatI Haven't Got a Hat
I Haven't Got a Hat is a 1935 animated short film, directed by Isadore Freleng for Leon Schlesinger Productions as part of Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies series. Released by Warner Bros. on March 9, 1935, the short is notable for featuring the first appearance of several Warner Bros. cartoon...
, as well as being a movie director in Hollywood Capers
Hollywood Capers
Hollywood Capers is a short animated film of the Looney Tunes series. It stars Beans the Cat in another solo cartoon of the character. The film is also among those of the series that have fallen into the public domain.-Plot:...
. He finally appeared in re-designed version in Plane Dippy, where he and Little Kitty finds a puppy, and they both teaches the puppy to do tricks.
Owl Jolson
His first and only appearance was in the 1936 short "I Love To Singa". He was voiced by Tommy BondTommy Bond
Thomas Ross "Tommy" Bond was an American actor. A native of Dallas, Texas, Bond was best known for his work as a child actor for two different nonconsecutive periods on Our Gang comedies, and also for being the first actor to portray the role of "Superman's pal" Jimmy Olsen on screen.-Early years...
in his debut short. Owl Jolson also appears in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
.
Pete Puma
Pete Puma debuted in the November 15, 1952 Rabbit's KinRabbit's Kin
Rabbit's Kin is a Merrie Melodies short produced in 1951 and released on November 15, 1952. It was directed by Robert McKimson and written by Tedd Pierce. The animators who worked on this cartoon included Charles McKimson, Herman Cohen, Rod Scribner and Phil DeLara. The music was scored by Carl...
, a Merrie Melodies animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
short
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
directed by Robert McKimson
Robert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
, from a story by Tedd Pierce
Tedd Pierce
Tedd Pierce , was an American animated cartoon writer, animator and artist. Pierce spent the majority of his career as a writer for the Warner Bros. "Termite Terrace" animation studio, working alongside fellow luminaries such as Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. Pierce also worked as a writer at...
. Animation was by Charles McKimson
Charles McKimson
Charles Edson "Chuck" McKimson, Jr. was an American animator, best known for his work at Warner Bros. studio. He was the younger brother of animators Robert and Thomas McKimson. His father was a newspaperman who later become the editor of the Scandia Journal in Scandia, Kansas.McKimson was born...
, Herman Cohen, Rod Scribner
Rod Scribner
Roderick H. "Rod" Scribner was an American animator best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros.. His animation was one of the wildest things ever seen on screen during The Golden Age of American animation. He started as an animator for Ben...
, and Phil De Lara.
Though Pete Puma made only two appearances, in Rabbit's Kin and in Pullet Surprise, he is often vividly remembered by cartoon fans, especially for his bizarre, inhaled, almost choking laugh, called "Ihhhhh"(based on comedian Frank Fontaine
Frank Fontaine
Frank Fontaine was an American comedian and singer.Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is best known for his appearances on television shows of the 1950s and 1960s, including The Jackie Gleason Show, The Jack Benny Show, and The Tonight Show.One of his earliest appearances was on the radio show,...
's "Crazy Guggenheim" character). In Rabbit's Kin, Pete is chasing a young rabbit (named Buster Rabbit by some fans; and though he is called Buster at least once, in the cartoon Bugs repeatedly calls him 'Shorty'), who asks Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
for help. Bugs is eager to oblige, and subjects Pete to some of his trademark pranks.
Pete Puma's voice was used (though not by Freberg) in a Sylvester
Sylvester (Looney Tunes)
Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., Sylvester the Cat or simply Sylvester, is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic Tuxedo cat in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies repertory, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper...
cartoon titled Mouse and Garden, in 1960.
More recently, he has made occasional appearances on Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
(as the Acme Looniversity janitor), episodes of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
, co-starred with Foghorn Leghorn in Pullet Surprise
Pullet Surprise (film)
Pullet Surprise is a 1997 6-minute Looney Tunes short released in theaters with Cats Don't Dance. It was produced by Chuck Jones Film Productions. Since this cartoon was produced after the death of legendary Looney Tunes voice artist Mel Blanc, the voice of Foghorn Leghorn is supplied by Frank...
(voiced again by Freberg in all of these appearances), made a cameo appearance in the crowd scenes of Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
, Carrotblanca
Carrotblanca
Carrotblanca is a 1995 8-minute Looney Tunes cartoon. It was originally shown in cinemas alongside The Amazing Panda Adventure and The Pebble and the Penguin...
(as a waiter), Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas
Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas
Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas is a 2006 animated direct-to-video film starring the Looney Tunes and directed by Charles Visser and produced by Warner Bros. Animation...
, and is a supporting character in the Looney Tunes comic books. Pete appears in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
episode "Reunion" voiced by John Kassir
John Kassir
John Kassir is an American actor, voice artist, and comedian who is best known as the voice of the Crypt Keeper in HBO's, Tales from the Crypt franchise...
where he is shown to be a friend of Marvin the Martian
Marvin the Martian
Marvin the Martian is a fictional character appearing in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Marvin's likeness appears in miniature on the Spirit rover on Mars.-Conception and creation:...
. He also appears in "Devil Dog", as a zookeeper. Then in "To Bowl or Not to Bowl" as Daffy's teammates. Also in "Sunday Night Slice" where he works at Speedy
Speedy Gonzales
Speedy Gonzales is an animated caricature of a mouse in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He is portrayed as "The Fastest Mouse in all Mexico" with his major traits being the ability to run extremely fast and speaking with an exaggerated Mexican accent...
's pizza restaurant, which was called Giradi's, and once again in "Working Duck".
Priscilla Pig
In Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes ChristmasBah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas
Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas is a 2006 animated direct-to-video film starring the Looney Tunes and directed by Charles Visser and produced by Warner Bros. Animation...
, Priscilla was introduced as a new character voiced by Tara Strong
Tara Strong
Tara Lyn Strong is a Canadian actress, voice-over artist, singer, who is best known for her voice work in cartoons.-Early life and career:...
. She is seen as Porky Pig's daughter and also later in the film, probably Petunia's as well. She is very kind and also cute and wants to be friends with the manager of the store her father works at, "Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
". At the end when Porky is about to say his famous line, "th-th-th-th-th...", Priscilla interrupts and says, "That's all folks" instead.
Piggy
Piggy first appeared as a fat, black pigPig
A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...
who wears a pair of shorts with buttons on the front. His coloration and dress are identical to those of the Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
character Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
before the advent of color film. John Kenworthy argues that, considering the fact that some sketches of mice which Hugh Harman had drawn in 1925 were the inspiration for the creation of Mickey Mouse, Harman and Ising never intended to copy Disney.
Piggy's name came from one of two brothers who were childhood classmates of Freleng's, nicknamed "Porky" and "Piggy".
Animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
Rudolf Ising
Harman and Ising
Hugh Harman and Rudolf "Rudy" Ising were an American animation team best known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios...
introduced Piggy as a second character after Foxy
Foxy (cartoon character)
Foxy is an animated cartoon character featured in three 1931 animated shorts in the Merrie Melodies series distributed by Warner Bros. He was the creation of animator Rudolf Ising, who had worked for Walt Disney in the 1920s.-Concept and creation:...
to star in the Merrie Melodies series Ising was directing
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
for producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger 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.-Early life and career:...
. Nonetheless, Ising had only made two Piggy shorts in 1931 before he went on to create Goopy Geer. The animators who took over the Merrie Melodies cartoons dropped the Piggy character (as well as his girlfriend Fluffy) and turned the series into a string of one-shots.
Despite their clichéd lead character, Ising's two Piggy shorts are well received by some critics. The first is the 1931 short You Don't Know What You're Doin'!
You Don't Know What You're Doin'!
You Don't Know What You're Doin'! is a 1931 animated short subject directed by Rudy Ising and produced by Leon Schlesinger as part of the Merrie Melodies series from the Harman-Ising studios and distributed by Warner Brothers...
. Here, Piggy visits a surreal
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
night club where he heckles and plays with the club's jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
band. This was followed by Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land
Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land
Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Rudy Ising , produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres on November 28, 1931 by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation...
, also in 1931. Here, Piggy plays a steamboat
Steamboat
A steamboat or steamship, sometimes called a steamer, is a ship in which the primary method of propulsion is steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels...
captain who must rescue a drowning Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom is a derogatory term for a person who perceives themselves to be of low status, and is excessively subservient to perceived authority figures; particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people....
. Due to its stereotypical portrayal of the Uncle Tom character, the cartoon is included among the so-called "Censored 11", Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts that are withheld from circulation due to their heavy use of ethnic stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s.
In 1936, animator Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
redesigned Piggy for colour film. Piggy was given lighter, more Caucasian
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
-like colour with distinguishing birthmarks. The redesigned character appeared as a gluttonous child in a large family of pigs in At Your Service Madame (which gives his full name as Piggy Hamhock), where he leads his fellow siblings in foiling a bum's attempt to rob their mother. A year later he starred in Pigs Is Pigs
Pigs Is Pigs (1937 film)
Not to be confused with Pigs Is Pigs .Pigs Is Pigs, is a 1937 Merrie Melodies cartoon that featured Piggy and the Hamhock family, in what would be Piggy's final appearance in the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes repertory in the Golden Age of American animation.- Synopsis :Piggy Hamhock is always...
in which his gluttony takes center stage. This would be his final appearance. After that he was discarded with his character traits transferred for a time to Porky Pig
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
.
Playboy Penguin
Playboy Penguin is a character in the animated cartoon Looney Tunes, created by Chuck JonesChuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He debuted in 1949's Frigid Hare
Frigid Hare
Frigid Hare is a 1948 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short, released in 1949, and was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese...
and he re-appeared in 8 Ball Bunny
8 Ball Bunny
8 Ball Bunny is a Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. It was animated in 1949 and released theatrically on July 8, 1950.-Plot:...
.
Playboy Penguin is a mute skating baby penguin that seeks Bugs Bunny for help. From his debut episode, an Eskimo tries to catch him until the little penguin found Bugs Bunny and wants him to help avoid the Eskimo hunter. Then, in his second episode with Bugs, the penguin either wants to go home in Antarctica or go to Hoboken to perform in the show.
Playboy Penguin also appears on The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
and Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
. He also makes a cameo in the DS game, "Duck Amuck".
He will also appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
episode, "Trip to the Frozen Iceland", where he is an inhabitant of Antarctica. He will go under the name Play Penguin, possibly an abbreviation of Playboy Penguin or changed due to the fact Playboy is the name of an adult magazine.
Miss Prissy
Miss Prissy or Prissy is typically described as an old spinster hen, thinner than the other hens in the chicken coop, wearing a blue bonnetBonnet (headgear)
Bonnets are a variety of headgear for both sexes, which have in common only the absence of a brim. Bonnet derives from the same word in French, where it originally indicated a type of material...
and wire-rimmed glasses. The other hens describe her as “old square britches”.
The premise of her cartoons are centered around the fact that the other hens are ridiculing Prissy. Her first appearance was in the 1950 short An Egg Scramble, the only cartoon featuring her and Porky Pig
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
, in which the other hens are making fun of the fact that she cannot lay an egg. Her next appearances are centered around Foghorn Leghorn. In Lovelorn Leghorn
Lovelorn Leghorn
Lovelorn Leghorn is a 1950 cartoon short starring Foghorn Leghorn, the Barnyard Dawg, and Miss Prissy. It was released in 1951 by Warner Bros. and directed by Robert McKimson.-Plot:Miss Prissy is trying to land a husband and sets her sights on Foghorn....
(1951), she is set on finding a husband and in Of Rice and Hen
Of Rice and Hen
Of Rice and Hen is a "Looney Tunes" cartoon animated short starring Foghorn Leghorn, Miss Prissy and The Barnyard Dog. The title is a play on John Steinbeck's 1937 novel Of Mice and Men...
(1953) she is looking to have children. However, in Little Boy Boo
Little Boy Boo
Little Boy Boo is a "Looney Tunes" cartoon animated short starring Foghorn Leghorn, Miss Prissy and Egghead Jr. Released June 5, 1954, the cartoon is directed by Robert McKimson...
(1954) she is depicted as a widow with a child Egghead Jr. and with a much more extensive vocabulary than her trademark "yes". A Broken Leghorn
A Broken Leghorn
A Broken Leghorn is a "Looney Tunes" cartoon animated short starring Foghorn Leghorn and Miss Prissy. Released September 26, 1959, the cartoon is directed by Robert McKimson. The voices were performed by Mel Blanc.-Plot:...
(1959) and Strangled Eggs
Strangled Eggs
Strangled Eggs is a "Merrie Melodies" cartoon animated short starring Foghorn Leghorn, Miss Prissy and Henery Hawk. Released March 18, 1961, the cartoon is directed by Robert McKimson. The voices were performed by Mel Blanc.-Plot:...
(1961), featuring Henery Hawk
Henery Hawk
Henery Hawk is a cartoon character from the American Looney Tunes series, who appeared in twelve cartoons. His first appearance was The Squawkin' Hawk, directed by Chuck Jones and produced by Leon Schlesinger. Henery's next appearance was Walky Talky Hawky which also featured Foghorn Leghorn and...
. In these shorts, it is usually Foghorn who is pursuing Prissy for his own selfish needs.
Miss Prissy also appeared in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
episode "The Foghorn Leghorn Story" voiced by Grey DeLisle
Grey DeLisle
Grey DeLisle is an American voice actress, singer-songwriter, and comedienne. To date, she has released four solo albums and has featured on the tribute album Anchored in Love: A Tribute to June Carter Cash and film soundtrack of Loggerheads...
. She played as Mama Leghorn on the Movie The Foghorn Leghorn Story.
Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit
Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit were a pair of Warner Brothers cartoon characters, created by Robert McKimsonRobert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
, who appeared in only one cartoon, Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too!
Rapid Rabbit, a small brown rabbit
Rabbit
Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...
(who's not to be confused with Rapid T. Rabbit), is every bit as fast as his name implies; a pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
character, he never says a word, but uses a bicycle horn to express himself. Quick Brown Fox, another pantomime character, is a fox
Fox
Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...
who wants to eat the fast-running rabbit, but consistently fails to catch him despite using a variety of traps and devices. The fox's name is derived from the popular pangram
Pangram
A pangram , or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding...
, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is an English-language pangram, that is, a phrase that contains all of the letters of the alphabet. It has been used to test typewriters and computer keyboards, and in other applications involving all of the letters in the English alphabet...
."
Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too! is a 1969 theatrically released cartoon, one of the last few cartoons of the Looney Tunes series (which, at that time, was owned by Warner Brothers-Seven Arts). It was a "chase" cartoon along the same lines as the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The characters were created by animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Bros., while the template for their adventures was the work of writer Michael Maltese...
cartoons; a predator tries and fails to catch his intended prey, despite using a number of ingenious or comically absurd traps. It was intended to be the first of a series of Rapid Rabbit cartoons which had been planned, but no more were produced as the animation department folded soon after its release.
Quick Brown Fox wants to make rabbit stew
Stew
A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been cooked in liquid and served in the resultant gravy. Ingredients in a stew can include any combination of vegetables , meat, especially tougher meats suitable for slow-cooking, such as beef. Poultry, sausages, and seafood are also used...
, with the elusive Rapid Rabbit as the main ingredient. To this end, he tries several different traps — simple ones at first, but they gradually become ridiculously elaborate — and all of them fail to ensnare Rapid, and some of them end up hurting Quick. Finally, Quick sets up a trap that involves a cannon
Cannon
A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...
and a sign that says "Free trip to the moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
," among other elements; not only does this trap fail to catch Rapid, but Quick winds up being shot to the moon!.
The duo will later appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
voiced by Frank Welker
Frank Welker
Franklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...
and Damon Jones
Damon Jones
Damon Darron Jones is an American professional basketball player. A 6'3" point guard–shooting guard, he played college basketball for three years with the University of Houston Cougars before declaring early for the 1997 NBA Draft, but he went undrafted.-High school career:Jones played for...
respectively. They will be called "Brown Fox" and "Rabbit".
Rags McMutt
Rags McMutt is the apricot colored dog in the 1947 short Little Orphan AiredaleLittle Orphan Airedale
Little Orphan Airedale is a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Charles M. Jones and released on October 4, 1947. It was later reissued as a Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies short...
who escapes from a dog pound, then meets Charlie Dog in a car. He only had two speaking lines, they were: "Yeah but..." then at the end he multiply says "Let me in!". The two speaking lines was most likely performed by voice actor Frank Graham
Frank Graham
Francis or Frank Graham may refer to:*Frank Graham , New York sportswriter*Frank D. Graham , writer of Audel guides*Frank Porter Graham , Democratic Senator from North Carolina, 1949–1950...
.
Ralph Phillips
Ralph Phillips is an imaginative boy who likes to daydream about all kinds of things he sees around him. For example, in From A to Z-Z-Z-ZFrom A to Z-Z-Z-Z
From A to Z-Z-Z-Z is a 1953 animated cartoon short by Chuck Jones in the Looney Tunes series. It was released by Warner Bros. in 1954.-Plot:The cartoon begins with an exterior shot of a school classroom. Through the windows, children are visible at their desks. They are learning arithmetic by rote...
, Ralph, while attending school, daydreams about flying in the air like a bird, fighting off mocking numbers on a blackboard and Indians
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
(this scene was later edited because of some Native American stereotypes and some violence), dispatching a dangerous saber-tooth tiger shark, and finally punching out a huge opponent in the boxing ring and leaving the school for the day as Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...
. From A to Z-Z-Z-Z
From A to Z-Z-Z-Z
From A to Z-Z-Z-Z is a 1953 animated cartoon short by Chuck Jones in the Looney Tunes series. It was released by Warner Bros. in 1954.-Plot:The cartoon begins with an exterior shot of a school classroom. Through the windows, children are visible at their desks. They are learning arithmetic by rote...
was nominated for an Academy Award. Ralph appeared in a further Looney Tunes episode, Boyhood Daze, where he was sent up to his room for breaking a window with a baseball, wherein he indulged in similar daydreaming, and in the theatrically diverted TV pilot
Television pilot
A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...
Adventures of the Road-Runner
Adventures of the Road-Runner
Adventures of the Road-Runner is an animated film, directed by Chuck Jones and co-directed by Maurice Noble and Tom Ray. It was the intended pilot for a TV series starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, but was never picked up until four years later when Warner Bros. Television produced The...
. In more recent years he has figured in issues of the DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
Looney Tunes comic book as well.
A more mature Ralph Phillips was also featured as an Army recruit in two cartoons produced specifically as military recruitment promotions, 90 Day Wondering and Drafty, Isn't It?, both directed by Jones.
Ralph Phillips was voiced by child actor Dick Beals
Dick Beals
Richard "Dick" Beals is an American voice actor. He has performed many voices in his career, which spans from the early 1950s into the 21st century...
. The older version was voiced by Warner Brothers' regular voice actor Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
, in 90 Day Wondering, and by Daws Butler
Daws Butler
Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler was a voice actor originally from Toledo, Ohio. He worked mostly for Hanna-Barbera and originated the voices of many famous animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound.Daws Butler trained many working actors...
, in Drafty, Isn't It?.
Ralph has a cameo as an unseen character
Unseen character
In fiction, an unseen character is a character that is never directly observed by the audience but is only described by other characters. They are a common device in drama and have been called "triumphs of theatrical invention". They are continuing characters — characters who are currently in...
in the Chuck Jones-directed animated adaption
The Phantom Tollbooth (film)
The Phantom Tollbooth is a 1970 American live-action/animated film based on Norton Juster's 1961 children's book The Phantom Tollbooth. This film was produced by Chuck Jones at MGM Animation/Visual Arts. Jones also directed the film, save for the live action bookends directed by fellow Warner Bros....
of The Phantom Tollbooth
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Phantom Tollbooth is a children's adventure novel and modern fairy tale published in 1961, written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer. It tells the story of a bored young boy named Milo who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth one afternoon and, having nothing better to do,...
. He calls the protagonist Milo near the start of the film (where he speaks with the voice of June Foray
June Foray
June Foray is an American voice actress, best known as the voice of many animated characters...
and is referred to by name), and briefly speaks with Milo again just before the film ends.
Roxy
Roxy was a female cartoon character from 1931, and also serves to be as Foxy's love interest.Slowpoke Rodriguez
Slowpoke Rodríguez ("Lento Rodríguez" in SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, though some more recent translations call him "Tranquilino") is described as "the slowest mouse in all Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
" from the country side of Mexico, and is a cousin to Speedy Gonzales
Speedy Gonzales
Speedy Gonzales is an animated caricature of a mouse in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He is portrayed as "The Fastest Mouse in all Mexico" with his major traits being the ability to run extremely fast and speaking with an exaggerated Mexican accent...
, who is known as the fastest. However, he mentions to his cousin that while he may be slow in the feet, which he is best known for, he's not slow in "la cabeza" (the head). He speaks in a monotone voice and seems to never be surprised by anything. While he is the slowest mouse in all of Mexico he has been shown to have certain other (more extreme) methods of protecting himself.
Slowpoke only appeared in two cartoons alongside his cousin. The first, Mexicali Shmoes
Mexicali Shmoes
Mexicali Shmoes is a 1959 Looney Tunes cartoon short directed by Friz Freleng. Voice actors are Mel Blanc as the voices of cats Jose and Manuel and Speedy Gonzales plus an uncredited Tom Holland as the voice of Slowpoke Rodriguez....
(1959), ends with two lazy cats, Jose and Manuel, the former learning the hard way that Slowpoke carries a gun (though the gun bit has been edited out of this cartoon in recent years). The second, Mexican Boarders
Mexican Boarders
Mexican Boarders is a 1962 Looney Tunes cartoon short directed by Friz Freleng. Voice actors are Mel Blanc , Daws Butler as the narrator, and an uncredited Tom Holland as the voice of Slowpoke Rodriguez.The cartoon has Sylvester trying to catch Speedy in a house they share in Mexico...
(1962), revolves around Speedy trying to protect Slowpoke from Sylvester the Cat
Sylvester (Looney Tunes)
Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., Sylvester the Cat or simply Sylvester, is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic Tuxedo cat in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies repertory, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper...
, but in the end, Slowpoke demonstrates his ability to hypnotize
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...
Sylvester into becoming his slave. The other mice comment at this point that "Slowpoke Rodriguez may be the slowest mouse in all Mexico, but he has the Evil Eye!". This short (which was later edited into Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales
Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales
Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales is a 1982 Looney Tunes film with a compilation of classic Warner Bros. cartoon shorts and animated bridging sequences, hosted by Bugs Bunny...
) contains a possible allusion to a marijuana habit when Slowpoke sings La Cucaracha
La Cucaracha
"La Cucaracha" is a traditional Spanish folk corrido that became popular in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. It has additionally become a verse played on car horns.-Origins:...
. Despite his few appearances, "Lento Rodríguez" is an immensely popular character in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
.
Slowpoke appears in the Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...
episode "Werewolf VS Unicorn." In a segment satirizing California's immigration issue, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
criticizes him for taking an hour to fetch a glass of water. Schwarzenegger then orders Rodriguez's deportation, to which Rodriguez fears will cause his execution. Slowpoke also appears alongside Speedy in a commercial for Virgin Media
Virgin Media
Virgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...
's broadband service in the UK.
Slowpoke also appears in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
voiced by Frank Welker
Frank Welker
Franklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...
.
Colonel Shuffle
Colonel Shuffle is a character in the Looney Tunes stable, based in the Southern United StatesSouthern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
. He has been shown as fiercely loyal to this region and deeply offended by anything that he feels reminds him of the North.
He referred to himself specifically by name in Mississippi Hare
Mississippi Hare
Mississippi Hare is a Looney Tunes cartoon short produced in 1947 by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese, released in 1949.-Plot:In the story, Bugs Bunny, asleep in a cotton field, is picked up by his cottony tail and bundled into a shipment put on a riverboat going down the Mississippi River...
(1949), following a game of poker
Poker
Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...
in which he lost (three queens to four kings) and proceeded to let off a barrage of gunfire. Sometimes he is shown playing a banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
in classic Dixieland
Dixieland
Dixieland music, sometimes referred to as Hot jazz, Early Jazz or New Orleans jazz, is a style of jazz music which developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century, and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s.Well-known jazz standard songs from the...
style.
Among his foils are Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
(who defeated him) in Mississippi Hare and Charlie Dog (whom he defeated) in Dog Gone South (1950).
Shuffle played a prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
warden in the Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
episode "Gang Busters".
Sleepy LaGoon
He's a duck that looks like a kid version of Daffy Duck and has a strong baritone voice. He only appeared in the animated short Yankee Doodle DaffyYankee Doodle Daffy
Yankee Doodle Daffy is a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short released in 1943, directed by Friz Freleng and written by Tedd Pierce...
.
Shorty
Shorty (aka Buster Bunny) is the fast talking little brown hare in Rabbit's KinRabbit's Kin
Rabbit's Kin is a Merrie Melodies short produced in 1951 and released on November 15, 1952. It was directed by Robert McKimson and written by Tedd Pierce. The animators who worked on this cartoon included Charles McKimson, Herman Cohen, Rod Scribner and Phil DeLara. The music was scored by Carl...
. He starts off afraid of Pete Puma, but with coaxing from Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
he doesn't see Pete as much as threat anymore.
Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier
Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier are animated cartoonAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
characters
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Spike is a burly, gray bulldog
Bulldog
Bulldog is the name for a breed of dog commonly referred to as the English Bulldog. Other Bulldog breeds include the American Bulldog, Olde English Bulldogge and the French Bulldog. The Bulldog is a muscular heavy dog with a wrinkled face and a distinctive pushed-in nose...
who wears a red sweater, a brown bowler hat
Bowler hat
The bowler hat, also known as a coke hat, derby , billycock or bombin, is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown originally created in 1849 for the English soldier and politician Edward Coke, the younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester...
, and a perpetual scowl. Chester is just the opposite, small and jumpy with yellow fur and brown, perky ears.
The characters starred in only two shorts, both directed
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
by animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
. The first of these films was 1952's Tree for Two. In it, Chester tells his idol Spike that he knows of a cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
that they can beat up. The cat is Freleng's own Sylvester, but every time Spike thinks he has the cat cornered, a runaway zoo black panther
Black panther
A black panther is typically a melanistic color variant of any of several species of larger cat. Wild black panthers in Latin America are black jaguars , in Asia and Africa they are black leopards , and in North America they may be black jaguars or possibly black cougars A black panther is...
appears in Sylvester's place, thrashing the dog instead. When Chester decides to have a go of it, however, Sylvester finds himself at the little dog's mercy. By the cartoon's end, Spike and Chester have switched roles; Spike is the fawning sycophant, and Chester the smug prizefighter.
The characters' second outing came in the 1954 film Dr. Jerkyl's Hyde. Spike (here called "Alfie" and with an English accent) is once again after Sylvester, only this time it is Sylvester himself who pummels the poor pooch, thanks to a potion that transforms him into a feline monster. Chester, of course, never sees this transformed Sylvester, thinking his buddy is being beaten by the tiny tomcat. The final loss of face for Alfie is his being thrashed by a fly
Fly
True flies are insects of the order Diptera . They possess a pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax...
that has also been affected by the potion, as it occurs in front of Chester's eyes.
In both of these cartoons, Spike is performed by voice actor
Voice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
, and Chester is performed by Stan Freberg
Stan Freberg
Stanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...
. In modern Warner Brothers media, Spike's voice is provided by Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
,
The pair also appear in the 1996 film Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
as a pair of paramedics during the basketball game.
Another bulldog character appeared in other cartoons with Sylvester and Tweety
Tweety
Tweety Bird is a fictional Yellow Canary in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons. The name "Tweety" is a play on words, as it originally meant "sweetie", along with "tweet" being a typical English onomatopoeia for the sounds of birds...
, but this character is not Spike; he is officially known as Hector the Bulldog. Several Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry are the cat and mouse cartoon characters that were evolved starting in 1939.Tom and Jerry also may refer to:Cartoon works featuring the cat and mouse so named:* The Tom and Jerry Show...
cartoons produced by MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
also featured a character named Spike the Bulldog (and his son, Tyke), Coincidentally, WB now owns the Tom & Jerry cartoons as well (through Turner Entertainment). This is another character, unrelated to the Spike used by Freleng.
Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
voiced by Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
and Stan Freberg
Stan Freberg
Stanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...
.
The Three Bears
The Three Bears are a family that consists of Papa Bear (sometimes called Henry), Mama Bear, and Junior Bear (sometimes spelled Junyer or Joonyer).Animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
introduced the trio in the 1944 cartoon Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears
Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears
Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears is a Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon short released in 1944, directed by Chuck Jones and written by Tedd Pierce...
. In the short, Papa Bear tries to feed his starving family by having them act out their roles in the traditional fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
from which they derive their name. Unfortunately for them, when they were out of porridge, Mama substitutes carrot soup for it, and the "Goldilocks" they lure turns out to be none other than Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
. For the bulk of the series, Voice actors Billy Bletcher
Billy Bletcher
William "Billy" Bletcher was an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.-Career:...
, Bea Benaderet
Bea Benaderet
Bea Benaderet was an American actress born in New York City and raised in San Francisco, California. She is best remembered for her wide variety of television work, which included a starring role in the 1960s television series Petticoat Junction and Green Acres as Shady Rest Hotel owner Kate...
, and Stan Freberg
Stan Freberg
Stanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...
played Papa, Mama, and Junior, respectively. However, in the initial entry Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
played Papa, and Kent Rogers
Kent Rogers
Kent Rogers was a Hollywood impressionist who appeared in several live-action shorts and features and a voice actor for Warner Bros..-Career:...
played Junior (Freberg assuming the role after Rogers's death in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
). After the classic shorts, Will Ryan
Will Ryan
Will Ryan is an American voice actor and producer–writer–composer, well-known for singing about the American West. In the late seventies he teamed up with Phil Baron as Willio and Phillio. They had regular gigs on television, radio and comedy clubs and universities throughout the US...
and Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
play Henry and Mama.
Jones' bears as introduced in the short are perhaps the first film satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
of the American nuclear family
Nuclear family
Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...
and how its traditional roles were coming under increasing scrutiny in the 1940s. Papa is a loud-mouthed, short tempered know-it-all shrimp, while Junior is an oversized, bumbling buffoon. The two are constantly at each other, leaving Mama Bear as the innocent (and deadpan) middle-bear, although she often resorts to thwacking one of them with a rolled-up newspaper to keep the peace. As Jones himself was never shy to point out, this cartoon and others in the series anticipate the failings and foibles that would later make the sitcom All in the Family
All in the Family
All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...
such a success.
Jones brought back the Bears for his 1948 cartoon What's Brewin', Bruin?, this time sans Bugs. Here, alpha-male Papa Bear decides that it's time for the Bears to hibernate
Hibernation
Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in animals, characterized by lower body temperature, slower breathing, and lower metabolic rate. Hibernating animals conserve food, especially during winter when food supplies are limited, tapping energy reserves, body fat, at a slow rate...
. Like any good family should, Mama Bear and Junior Bear obey, but Mama's snoring
Snoring
Snoring is the vibration of respiratory structures and the resulting sound, due to obstructed air movement during breathing while sleeping. In some cases the sound may be soft, but in other cases, it can be loud and unpleasant...
and Junior's creaky cradle keep Papa from getting the sleep he himself advocated. Junior's voice is here supplied by Stan Freberg
Stan Freberg
Stanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...
, who would retain the role for all future Three Bears cartoons, including Bee-Deviled Bruin and Bear Feat
Bear Feat
Bear Feat is a 1947-animated Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, released in 1949 featuring The Three Bears.-Plot:Papa Bear sees an ad about a circus and makes his family practice until he learns it was called in 1928 and throws himself off a cliff.-Censorship:*When this cartoon aired on...
, released on Looney Tunes Assorted Nuts
Looney Tunes Assorted Nuts
-Disc one:*A Bear for Punishment *Dog Gone South *Boyhood Daze *Pests for Guests *Mouse Wreckers *A Sheep in the Deep...
, both in 1949. Mama Bear made a cameo appearance in the 1950 Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
short The Scarlet Pumpernickel
The Scarlet Pumpernickel
The Scarlet Pumpernickel is a 1949 animated Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short released in 1950, directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese....
.
1951's A Bear for Punishment
A Bear for Punishment
A Bear for Punishment is a 1951 animated Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon released in 1951, featuring The Three Bears. That was the last cartoon of The Three Bears series...
, the last film in the series, is often considered the funniest, and it is perhaps the most satirical. This time, it's Father's Day
Father's Day
Father's Day is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. Many countries celebrate it on the third Sunday of June but it is also celebrated widely on other days...
, and Mama and Junior's well-intended gifts do nothing but dishonor the perturbed Papa. Jones later stated that many of the scenarios in the short were derived from his own experiences.
Jones retired the Three Bears in 1951. The influence of the series would linger, however, as other studios copied or altered the idea. Aside from Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
's aforementioned All in the Family, Famous Studios
Famous Studios
Famous Studios was the animation division of the film studio Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967. Famous was founded as a successor company to Fleischer Studios, after Paramount acquired the aforementioned studio and ousted its founders, Max and Dave Fleischer, in 1941...
repeated Jones family scenario in their Baby Huey
Baby Huey
Baby Huey is a gigantic and naïve duckling cartoon character. He was created by Martin Taras for Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios, and became a Paramount cartoon star during the 1950s. Although created by Famous for its animated cartoons, Huey first appeared in comic-book form in an original...
series of cartoons. The Bears' cartoons most significant impact was perhaps on Jones himself, as these films (along with the Hubie and Bertie
Hubie and Bertie
Hubie and Bertie are animated cartoon mouse characters in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Though largely forgotten today, Hubie and Bertie represent some of animator Chuck Jones' earliest work that was intended to be funny rather than cute.-First film:Jones...
and Charlie Dog shorts) represent some of Jones's earliest work.
Mama Bear of the Three Bears can be briefly spotted in a brief headshot during the final scene of the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
.
In the early 1990s, the Three Bears were brought back and featured several times in the TV series Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
. Most famously, they appeared in an updated "90's version" of the classic Three Bears fairy tale (with Elmyra
Elmyra Duff
Elmyra Jessica Duff is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. She is one of the main characters from the show. Elmyra is voiced by Cree Summer in all of her appearances...
playing the part of Goldilocks), which parodied suburbia
SubUrbia
subUrbia is a play by Eric Bogosian chronicling the nighttime activities of a group of aimless 20-somethings still living in their suburban Boston hometown and their reunion with a former high school classmate who has become a successful musician...
and the mass commercialism
Commercialism
Commercialism, in its original meaning, is the practices, methods, aims, and spirit of commerce or business. Today, however, it primarily refers to the tendency within open-market capitalism to turn everything into objects, images, and services sold for the purpose of generating profit...
prevalent in American society. In the episode, "Prom-ise Her Anything", Mama Bear is seen as a lunch lady
Lunch Lady
Lunch lady is an American slang term for a woman who cooks and serves food in a school cafeteria; the equivalent British English term is "dinner lady". In Britain, a dinner lady also patrols the school playgrounds during the lunch breaks to maintain order amongst the children...
. Papa Bear also appeared as the vendor in "Garage Sale of the Century" in Animaniacs
Animaniacs
Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs, usually referred to as simply Animaniacs, is an American animated series, distributed by Warner Bros. Television and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. The cartoon was the second animated series produced by the collaboration of Steven...
.
The Three Bears make a cameo appearance in Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
, watching a basketball game.
In Looney Tunes: Back In Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a 2003 American live action/animated adventure comedy film directed by Joe Dante and starring Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Timothy Dalton, and Steve Martin. The film is essentially a feature-length Looney Tunes cartoon, with all the wackiness and surrealism typical...
, the Bears are tourists in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. They run into DJ Drake (Brendan Fraser
Brendan Fraser
Brendan James Fraser is a Canadian-American film and stage actor. Fraser portrayed Rick O'Connell in the three-part Mummy film series , and is known for his comedic and fantasy film leading roles in major Hollywood films, including Encino Man , George of the Jungle , Dudley Do-Right , Monkeybone ,...
), whose trousers have rocketed off into the air leaving him in his underwear. DJ steals Papa Bear's trousers so he can save Jenna Elfman
Jenna Elfman
Jennifer Mary "Jenna" Elfman is an American television and film actress. She is known for her role as Dharma on the ABC sitcom Dharma & Greg and as Billie on the short-lived CBS sitcom Accidentally on Purpose....
from a villain.
Papa Bear will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
voiced by Will Ryan
Will Ryan
Will Ryan is an American voice actor and producer–writer–composer, well-known for singing about the American West. In the late seventies he teamed up with Phil Baron as Willio and Phillio. They had regular gigs on television, radio and comedy clubs and universities throughout the US...
.
Toro the Bull
Toro the Bull is an animatedAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of films. He made only one appearance in the short Bully for Bugs
Bully For Bugs
Bully for Bugs is a 1952 Warner Brothers Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short released in August 1953. It was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese.- Synopsis :...
. What makes him distinguishable from other bulls are his red eyes. Toro also made an appearance as a boss character in the 1930s era in Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time
Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time is a Looney Tunes video game for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation, released in 1999. Aditionally, a sequel, Bugs Bunny and Taz: Time Busters was made for the same consoles.-Plot:...
. He also appears in the films Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
and Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
.
Toro the Bull will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
voiced by Dee Bradley Baker
Dee Bradley Baker
Dee Bradley Baker is an American voice actor. He is noted as his long-running-role as Klaus Heissler in American Dad! and other various characters including Squilliam Fancyson in the hit TV series SpongeBob SquarePants, Nightcrawler in X-Men: Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance...
.
Cecil Turtle
Cecil Turtle is an animatedAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of films. Though he made only three theatrical appearances, Cecil is remarkable in that he is one of the very few characters who was able to beat Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
, and the only one to do so three times in a row and at the rabbit's own game.
Animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
Tex Avery
Tex Avery
Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery was an American animator, cartoonist, voice actor and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros...
introduced Cecil in the short Tortoise Beats Hare
Tortoise Beats Hare
Tortoise Beats Hare is a 1941 Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Tex Avery. The short stars Bugs Bunny and, in his first appearance, Cecil Turtle.-Plot:...
, released on March 15, 1941. Even from the cartoon's opening titles, Avery lets on that Bugs Bunny is about to meet his match. Bugs wanders onto the screen munching his obligatory carrot and absent-mindedly begins reading the title card, grossly mispronouncing most of the credits, such as əˈvɛrɪ for "Avery" rather than the correct ˈeɪvərɪ. When he finally gets to the title itself, he becomes outraged, tears apart the title card, and rushes to Cecil Turtle's house. He then bets the little, sleepy-eyed turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...
ten dollars that he can beat him in a race
Racing
A sport race is a competition of speed, against an objective criterion, usually a clock or to a specific point. The competitors in a race try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time...
.
Cecil accepts Bugs' bet, and the race begins several days later. Bugs races away at top speed just before finishing the shout of, "Get on your mark, get set, go!" Cecil quickly (for him, anyway) goes to a public telephone and calls up Chester Turtle. After talking to Chester about the bet, he tells him to call "the boys" (cousins), and tell them to be ready when he comes to their position, and to "give him the works". Chester calls the relatives, all of whom look and sound like Cecil (some have deeper voices, some have higher voices), and relays the message. As Bugs runs relentlessly toward the finish line, Cecil and the other turtles take turns showing up at just the right moment to baffle the bunny. In the end, Bugs is convinced he has won, only to see Cecil (or one of his kin) across the finish demanding the money. Bugs suggests that he has been tricked, and all nine turtles approach and reply, "It's a possibility!" Voice actor Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
supplies Cecil's drowsy drawl, which is like a slowed-down version of Blanc's later characterization of Barney Rubble
Barney Rubble
Bernard "Barney" Rubble is the deuteragonist of the television animated series The Flintstones. He is the diminutive blonde-haired caveman husband of Betty Rubble and father of Bamm-Bamm Rubble...
.
"Tortoise Beats Hare" follows one of the many folk variants of the Aesop
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
"The Tortoise and the Hare
The Tortoise and the Hare
The Tortoise and the Hare is a fable attributed to Aesop and is number 226 in the Perry Index. The story concerns a hare who ridicules a slow-moving tortoise and is challenged by him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, decides to take a nap midway through...
" in which the faster beast is deceived by look-alikes placed along the course. More directly, it is Avery's parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the 1935 Disney
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
Silly Symphony, The Tortoise and the Hare
The Tortoise and the Hare (film)
The Tortoise and the Hare is an animated short film released on January 5, 1935 by United Artists, produced by Walt Disney and directed by Wilfred Jackson. Based on an Aesop's fable of the same name, The Tortoise and the Hare won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons...
. Avery left Warner Brothers before he could produce any new cartoons featuring Cecil. However, he introduced a similar character in 1943 named Droopy. Droopy would even take some of his tricks from his slow-and-steady predecessor, such as using his relatives to help him outsmart a wolf.
Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
took Avery's scenario and altered it for his film Tortoise Wins by a Hare
Tortoise Wins by a Hare
Tortoise Wins by a Hare is a Merrie Melodies cartoon released on February 20, 1943 and directed by Bob Clampett. It stars Bugs Bunny and Cecil Turtle. Bob Clampett took Tex Avery's scenario from Tortoise Beats Hare and altered it for this film. The title is an appropriate pun on "hair"...
released on February 20, 1943. The title is an appropriate pun on "hair". Bugs again challenges Cecil to a race after viewing footage from their previous encounter two years earlier (which seems to depict Cecil as having won fairly instead of by cheating Bugs with his cousins). Bugs then goes to Cecil's tree home disguised as an old man (a parody of Bill Thompson
Bill Thompson (voice actor)
Bill Thompson was an American radio actor and voice actor whose career stretched from the 1930s until his death.-Early career:...
's "Old Timer" character from Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series which maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.-Husband and wife in real...
) to ask the turtle his secret. Cecil, not in the least bit fooled by the disguise remarks, "Clean livin', friend. Clean livin'...". And then reveals his streamlined shell lets him win, and produces a set of blueprints for his "air-flow chassis
Chassis
A chassis consists of an internal framework that supports a man-made object. It is analogous to an animal's skeleton. An example of a chassis is the underpart of a motor vehicle, consisting of the frame with the wheels and machinery.- Vehicles :In the case of vehicles, the term chassis means the...
". The turtle ends the conversation with the comment, "Oh, and another thing... Rabbits aren't very bright, either!" just before slamming the door in the enraged bunny's face. Not getting the hint that the turtle's story is a humbug
Humbug
Humbug is an old term meaning hoax or jest. While the term was first described in 1751 as student slang, its etymology is unknown. Its present meaning as an exclamation is closer to 'nonsense' or 'gibberish', while as a noun, a humbug refers to a fraud or impostor, implying an element of...
, Bugs builds the device and prepares for the race.
Meanwhile, the bunny mob
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
learns of the upcoming match-up and places all its bets on Bugs. ("In fact, we don't even think that the toitle will finish... Do we, boys?" "Duh, no, Boss, no!") The race begins, and Bugs still outpaces his reptilian rival. However, in his new get-up, the dim-witted gangsters mistake him for the turtle. Cecil reinforces this misconception by dressing in a gray rabbit suit and munching on some delicious carrot
Carrot
The carrot is a root vegetable, usually orange in colour, though purple, red, white, and yellow varieties exist. It has a crisp texture when fresh...
s. The mobsters thus make the shelled Bugs' run a nightmare
Nightmare
A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
, ultimately giving the race to Cecil (in an aside to the audience, as the rabbits cheer him, Cecil remarks, "I told you rabbits aren't very bright!"). When Bugs removes the chassis and sobbingly reveals that he's the rabbit, the rabbit gangsters remark, in mock-Bugsy style, "Ehhh, now he tells us!" and commit suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by shooting themselves with a single bullet that goes through the sides of all of their apparently soft heads. (The final gag is often cut when shown on basic cable television but can be found uncut on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection
Looney Tunes Golden Collection
The Looney Tunes Golden Collection was an annual series of six four-disc DVD box sets from Warner Bros.' home video unit Warner Home Video, each containing about 60 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts...
: Volume 1.)
Cecil and Bugs would have one final match up in Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
's cartoon, Rabbit Transit, released on May 10, 1947. The title is a play of Rapid Transit
Rapid transit
A rapid transit, underground, subway, elevated railway, metro or metropolitan railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with a high capacity and frequency, and grade separation from other traffic. Rapid transit systems are typically located either in underground tunnels or on...
. Unlike Tortoise Wins by a Hare, this cartoon presumes that Bugs and Cecil have never met before now. While relaxing in a steam bath, Bugs reads about the original fable and, as he did reading the credits of Tortoise Beats Hare, becomes incensed at the idea of a turtle outrunning a rabbit. Cecil, also in the steam bath, claims that he could outrun Bugs, prompting Bugs to challenge him to a race (again, as in Tortoise Beats Hare, although at least here Bugs receives some provocation). This time, Bugs and Cecil agree to no cheating
Cheating
Cheating refers to the breaking of rules to gain advantage in a competitive situation. The rules infringed may be explicit, or they may be from an unwritten code of conduct based on morality, ethics or custom, making the identification of cheating a subjective process. Cheating can refer...
. Cecil, however, quickly reveals that his shell is now rocket propelled, allowing him to go a surprising combination between fast and slow. Bugs does his best to steal, dismantle, and destroy the device, but all to little effect. In the end, however, Bugs does manage to top the turtle and crosses the finish line first. Nevertheless, it is Cecil who has the last laugh when he rooks the rabbit into confessing to "doing 100 easy" -- in a 30-miles-per-hour zone. Bugs is taken away by the police to enjoy his victory—behind bars. Cecil closes out the cartoon by saying Bugs' famous line, "Ain't I a...um...stinker?" Iris-out.
The Warners directors retired Cecil after his third showdown with Bugs. Nevertheless, Cecil has made occasional cameos in later projects. He is seen briefly in the 1996 film Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
and the 2003 DVD Looney Tunes: Reality Check, his voice now provided by Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
. He's also made cameo in an episode in The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
. He also features in some issues of the Looney Tunes comic book. His only notable Warner Brothers Animation Looney Tunes short cameo came in 1954's Devil May Hare
Devil May Hare
Devil May Hare is a 1954 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon was released on June 19th, 1954. This theatrical cartoon was directed by Robert McKimson and starred Mel Blanc playing the voices of Bugs Bunny, the Tasmanian Devil, and the turtle...
, which was directed by Robert McKimson
Robert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
, Sr. and pitted Bugs against the Tasmanian Devil
Tasmanian Devil (Looney Tunes)
The Tasmanian Devil, often referred to as Taz, is an animated cartoon character featured in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes series of cartoons. The character appeared in only five shorts before Warner Bros...
, who made his debut here.
Cecil Turtle will appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
voiced by Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
. Cecil also appears in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
opening.
Willoughby the Dog
Willoughby is a hound dogHound
A hound is a type of dog that assists hunters by tracking or chasing the animal being hunted. It can be contrasted with the gun dog, which assists hunters by identifying the location of prey, and with the retriever, which recovers shot quarry...
created and voiced by Tex Avery
Tex Avery
Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery was an American animator, cartoonist, voice actor and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros...
for the 1940 cartoon, Of Fox and Hounds
Of Fox and Hounds
Of Fox and Hounds is an 8-minute 1940 Tex Avery film which introduced Willoughby the Dog.Tex Avery did the voice of Willoughby, and Mel Blanc did the George the Fox.-Plot:...
. Willoughby is characterized by his below-average intelligence and overall gullibility. Willoughby later appears in other Warner Brothers animated shorts, including The Heckling Hare
The Heckling Hare
The Heckling Hare is a Merrie Melodies cartoon, released on July 12, 1941 and featuring Bugs Bunny and a dopey dog named Willoughby. The cartoon was directed by Tex Avery, written by Michael Maltese, animated by soon-to-be director Bob McKimson, and with musical direction by Carl Stalling...
(1941), The Crackpot Quail, Nutty News
Nutty News
Nutty News is a 1942 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Looney Tunes series. It was directed by Bob Clampett, animated by Virgil Ross and an uncredited Vive Risto, and musical direction by Carl Stalling....
(as the lead dog of a fox hunting party), The Hep Cat
The Hep Cat
The Hep Cat is a 1942 Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, written by Warren Foster, animated primarily by Robert McKimson, and set to a musical score composed by Carl Stalling. This cartoon is notable as the first color Looney Tunes short, but was re-released in the "Blue Ribbon...
— as Rosebud (1942) and Hare Force
Hare Force
Hare Force is a 1944 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny and an old lady. Although the title is an obvious play on Air Force, the cartoon's plot has nothing to do with the military. The unit of Friz Freleng was the first unit besides...
— as Sylvester the Dog (1944). According to Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
, the character was based on Lennie, from Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....
(1941).
He will later appear in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
as a friend of Barnyard Dawg
Barnyard Dawg
Barnyard Dawg is a Looney Tunes character. An adult anthropomorphic basset hound, he is the archenemy of Foghorn Leghorn. He was created by Robert McKimson, who also created Foghorn and was voiced by Mel Blanc...
and will be voiced by Damon Jones
Damon Jones
Damon Darron Jones is an American professional basketball player. A 6'3" point guard–shooting guard, he played college basketball for three years with the University of Houston Cougars before declaring early for the 1997 NBA Draft, but he went undrafted.-High school career:Jones played for...
.
See also
- Merrie MelodiesMerrie MelodiesMerrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmographyLooney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmographyThis is a listing of the shorts, feature films, television programs, and television specials in Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, extending from 1929 through the present. Altogether, 1,003 animated theatrical shorts alone were released under the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies...
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1929–1939)
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1940–1949)
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1950–1959)
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1960–1969)
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1970–present and miscellaneous)