VOLUME 11 - NUMBER 01 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1975

FIL IC IO IM IM IE IN IT I JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1975 51.5070p. HE HOLLYWOOD CARTOON PLUS: Disney . Fleischer . McCay . Avery . Hanna-Barbera . Natwick • Klein

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FILIVI C IOIMIMIEINIT published by THE FILM SOC IETY OF LINCOLN CENTER VOLUME 11 NUMBER 1 JANUARY- FEBRUARY 1975 STAFF CONTENTS editor SPECIAL ISSUE: THE HOLLYWOOD CARTOON RICHARD CORLISS 10: WARNER BROTHERS spec ial contributing editor focus on a studio GREG FORD article by Greg Ford assistant editor 18: MICHAEL MALTESE AND MAURICE NOBLE BROOKS RILEY Chuck Jones' crucial collaborators interview by Joe Adamson director of finance & production SUZANNE CHARITY 21: CHUCK JONES Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, the Roadrunner graphic design intervi ew by Greg Ford and Richard Thompson GEORGE SILLAS SUSAN DOBBIS 39: DUCK AMUCK Chuck Jones' cartoons with Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer Fudd contributing writers articl e by Richard Thompson RAYMOND DURGNAT 44: WINSOR McCAY STEPHEN FARBER Gertie the Dinosaur, Little Nemo article by John Canemaker ROGER GREENSPUN JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 48: MAX AND DAVE FLEISCHER Ko-Ko, Betty Boop, Popeye, Gulliver, Superm an RICHARD ROUD articl e by Mark Langer ANDREW SARRIS AMOS VOGEL ROBIN WOOD contributing editor STUART BYRON advertising manager 57: GRIM NATWICK master an imator of the female form: Betty Boop, Snow White TONY IMPAVIDO article-intervi ew by John Canemaker research assitant 62: THE VAN BUREN STUDIO memoir by I. Klein , MARY CORLISS 64: WALT DISNEY The opinion s expressed in FILM COMMENT article by Jon athan Rosenbaum are tho se of the individual authors and do not 70: TEX AVERY necessa ril y represent Film Society Droopy, Chilly Willy, George and Junior Bear of Lincoln Center policy or the opinion s article by Jonathan Rosenbaum of the editor or staff of the magazine. 74: TOM AND JERRY the an im ators' art FILM COMMENT , January -Febru ary 19 75, article by Mark Kausler Volume 11 number 1, publi shed bimonthl y by The Film Society of Linco ln Center 1865 76: TV ANIMATION Broadway, NY, NY 10023 USA from Rocky & Bullwinkle (down) to Yogi Bear & Boo-Boo articl e by Leon ard Maltin Second class postage paid at New York, New York and additionai mailing OTHER FEATURES offices. Copyright © 1975 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center. All righ ts 2: LONDON JOURNAL Uonathan Rosenbaum) rese rved. Thi s publication is fully proteded by domestic and international 4: ISTANBUL JOURNAL (Gera ld Weales) copyright. It is forbidden to duplicate a ny part of thi s publication in any 6: INDEPENDENTS (Amos Vogel) way without prior w ritten permi ss ion from the publi shers. 84: WITHER THE Am (Austin Lamont) 85: \"WHAT IS THE BFI?\" (Verina Glaessner) Subscri ption rates in the United States: 86: BOOK REVIEWS (George Morris, Joan Mellen) $9 (or six numbers, $1 7 for twelve numbers. El sewhere: $10.50 for six 89: CORRECTIONS (Roger Greenspun on LEDER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN ) numbers, $20.00 for twel ve numbers, pa ya ble in US fund s only. New 94: LETTERS (Charles Wolfe, Jonathan Rosenbaum) subscribers please include your occupat ion and zip code . Subscription and back issue correspondence: FILM COMMENT, 186S Broadwa y, New York , N.Y. 10023 U SA. Editori al correspondence : FILM COMMENT, 1865 Broadwa y, New Yo rk , NY 10023 USA. Plea se send manu scripts upon request onl y and include a stamped self-addressed enve lope. Microfi lm editions ava ilable from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor MI 48106 . Printed in USA by Acme Printing, Medford, MA. Distributed in the USA by Eastern News Compan y. 1S5 West 1Sth St ree t, New York NY 10011. International distribution by V\\brldwide Media Service, 386 Pork Avenue Sou th, New York , NY 1001 6 USA. Distributed in Great Britain by Moore - Harness Compan y, London. FILM COMMEN T participate s in the FIAF periodical indexing pl an. ISSN: 0015· 119 X. Library of Congress card number 76-498. on the cover: Bugs Bunn y, drawn for Film Comment by Chuck Jones All cartoon stil ls, and the c haracters in them , are copy ri gh ted by the respective studios.

- JOU& Nell's, with all the Ellington sidemen becomes cinema occurs in Will Cowan's crowded around Freddie Washington's wonderful SALUTE TO DUKE ELLINGTON, a NALS bed playing a somber blackout melody (the Universal short of 1950: in the midst of a title tune again) and projecting tasteful tune, Ray Nance steps forward and \"im- LONDON JOURNAL death-shadows on the wall, capped by a provises\" Louis Armstrong in everything final image of Duke fading and blurring but his music-aural improvisation sud- by Jonathan Rosenbaum out like a candle flame as the dancer- denly blossoming into visual improvisa- heroine loses consciousness. tion as he mugs and mimes his way October 8: Victor Erice's EL ESPIRITU DE through an inventory of recognizable. The last excerpt in the program, from Satchmo stances, in a spirit perfectly LA COLMENA (THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE) . matching that of the music around him. DUKE ELLINGTON AT THE WHITE HOUSE I've been trying all weekend to come up October 13: The same issue of musical with an adequate description of this lovely (1969), offers the satisfying spectacle of El- and filmic values affecting one another Spanish film, but I can't get anywhere . A lington sharing a stage with Nixon without crops up with a revival of GUYS AND DOLLS colleague recently spoke of the movie as losing an ounce of cool or integrity in the on BBC television. Nearly all of the critical \"beguiling,\" which seems like an honest process, outclassing his sponsor with accounts of this underrated movie suggest start. Two remarkably expressive little every gesture of courtesy and wit and leav- that it's weakened by the \"unprofessional\" girls, Ana Torrent and Isabel Telleria, see ing no doubts at all about who is the pre- singing of Marlon Brando and Jean Sim- James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN at a traveling siding nobility. It's a significant contrast to mons; for my money, Frank Loesser's film show that stops in their village in Cas- Nixon's nauseating John Ford tribute, music has never come across better. Why? tille . Afterwards, Isabel explains to her sis- which con trived to remove the Brechtian Because the vulnerability of Brando and ter that the monster is still alive-and in- distance from the old dodger's vision and Simmons performing these tunes en- deed, he makes a brief appearance in the leave us with a chauvinistic postage-stamp hances their characters, making them un- final reel. The girls' father is a bee-keeper of mythology for right-wing auteurists to usually tactile as musical-comedy figures. who broods over Maeterlinck, while the slobber over-the perfect companion- mother writes unexplained letters to piece to Ronald Reagan's program intro- The slight quavers and hesitations in someone in France. Isabel plays dead for a duction to Bogdanovich's DIRECTED BY their voices as they approach and probe at bit, and Ana believes her. Ana befriends a JOHN FORD at the New York Film Festival in certain notes give their songs-\"I' II fugitive soldier who is eventually killed. 1971. Know,\" \"A Woman in Love,\" \"If I Were a Bell,\" \" Luck Be a Lady\"-an additional I don' t know what sense to make of Other parts of this Ellington anthology emotional layer precisely because of the either the plot or Erice's beautiful honey- raise the whole complex issue of compati- risks and tensions involved, which im- tone colors and honeycomb compositions, bility between jazz and film as indepen- mediately translate themselves into the but I find the film haunting and rather dent and/or simultaneous artforms: clearly emotional risks taken by Sky Masterson spellbinding in a muted way, and emo- the best jazz doesn't always add up to the and Sister Sarah Brown . (Is GUYS AND tionally it all seems to add up to something. best cinema, and the contrast of filmic ap- DOLLS the only Method musical?) Listen to Like Mervyn Peake's unnerving fantas y proaches to the music is interesting for its Robert Aida and Isabel Bigley in the novella Boy in Dar/mes s, its overall effect is illustration of diverse ways of dealing with original-cast album of the stage produc- unmistakable yet strangely unaccounta- the problem. A lunatic extract from MUR- tion, and you'll hear to what extent \"pro- ble, at least by me . All Icando is point and DER AT THE VANITIES (Mitchell Leisen, 1934) fessionalism\" can bleach out or eliminate hope that you'll get a chance to encounter frantically interlaces plot and performance, these touching overtones, giving us a more it. ending with the entire Ellington band polished surface with much less sense of murdered by a spray of machine-gun bul- the human beings/actors behind the voi- October 10: A program of films and ex- lets; the quasi-abstract title credits of ces . Which only demonstrates that an tracts featuring Duke Ellington at the Na- CHANGE OF MIND (Robert Stevens, 1969) aesthetic for the film musical, musically tional Film Theatre, judiciously selected, give the music a more neutral surface to speaking , shouldn't necessarily be the same arranged, and presented by David Meeker play against, but wind up serving as a rela- aesthetic used on stage musicals. and Charles Fox. The earliest treat-and tively static backdrop . Perhaps the only the first recording of Ellington on film-is moment in the entire evening when jazz CONTINUED ON PACE 83 BLACK AND TAN FANTASY (1929), directed by Dudley Murphy the same year as his Bes- Ana Torrent and Isabel Telleria in Victor Erice's THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE. sie Smith film, ST. LOUIS BLUES, with an equally creaky plot and a lot more arty chiaroscuro. But it is full of indelible details and moments: Duke's elegant rehearsal of the title tune with a trumpeter, interrupted by the arrival of two piano removers (\" Move your anatomy from that mahog- any!\" ); a nightmarish dance routine of five men of decreasing heights in tuxedos on a polished, mirror-like floor, combining cancerous Busby Berkeley-like images of multiplicity with a period species of voo- doo jive; a death scene worthy of Little 2 JAN.-FEB . 1975



JOU& filmmaker depends on his more recent into the father's own distaste for himself. work in which, as writer, director and When the film played in Paris, it was NALS leading performer, he is turning to indig- compared to THE BICYCLE THIEF-partly, enous characters and situations. There I suspect, because of the plot-but the ISTANBUL JOURNAL are underlying social assumptions in the wonderfully detailed opening section of films-particularly in uMuT-and both the film, the establishment of the family by Gerald Weales films make use of extensive speeches and their life, reminds me less of Italian denouncing inequities of one kind or neo-realism than of similar passages in a An Italian moviemaker, stopping in Is- another. The jury at the 1972 Colden film like Ousmane Sembene's MANDABI. tanbul long enough for a quick look at Cockerel Festival in Adana, having the catch-as-catch-can methods of the voted Cuney best actor and his BABA The difficulty with UMUT for a' Turkish film business, smiled, shook his (FATHER) best picture, mysteriously re- non- Turkish audience is that the whole head and said, \"It's like the early days of versed itself before the awards could be last section of the film has to do with a the movies. \" So I was told by a Turkish made, presumably because of the \"un- strange and hopeless treasure hunt-as moviemaker with a touch of bemused fa vora ble reaction in government cir- though THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA pride in his voice. The bemusement, I cles\" re ported by the semi - official MADRE had been spliced onto THE BICY- assume, was the standard Istanbul Anatolia Agency . Later, Cuney, like a CLE THIEF-and the immediate effect is state-of- mind, an affectionate attraction number of other Leftist intellectuals, was the kind of disorientation one gets when to complication an incipient disaster; the put in prison . He left a half-finished film a film switches genres abruptly midway pride was more specific. $erif Coren is when he went to jail but, when I was in through. Yet, the hunt is no mere one of the producers of Yilmaz Cuney's Istanbul in April, his producers were metaphor. Such a search for treasure, films , and Cuney is one of the few seri- confident that he would soon be released initiated by divination, is said to be ous filmmakers in a hustling business in and the film completed. By that time, common enough in the Adana region which the chief product is a flashy, martial law had given way to elections, and even occasionally successful (the hit-and-run commercial picture imitat- and the expectations were that most of treasure to be found is marketable anti- ing American and European movies at the writers and journalists would be re- quities), often enough at least to make it their tawdriest. leased under an impending amnesty a tenuous hope within the film's realistic law . It passed in mid-May, but with an frame. Since the film early establishes its I was first touted on to Cuney by an amendment excluding political prison- hero's superstitious longing for the sur- architect in Ankara, an intelligent young ers from the general amnesty. Even so, prise reward, in a scene in which man who seemed determined that I have Cuney has been released, presumably he-being illiterate-must have the a look at Turkey's best attempts at the on a technicality; the original charge winning lottery numbers read for him, serious film. I was vaguely aware that against him was harboring - re- and since a similar scene, after the death UMUT (HOPE) , made in 1970, had played volutionaries, not expressing revolutio- of the horse, underlines the desperation in Paris to respectable reviews, and that nary sentiments . To me certainly, in his hope, we are prepared for the final an occasional Cuney turned up at a film Cuney's primary impulse seems more almost demented journey into the wild. festival, but none of his work has found artistic than political, particularly if one The treasure-hunt sequences seem too release in either the United States or Eng- looks at UMUT alongside a film like Sarah extended to me, but they do finally build land. I was warned by some theater peo- Maldoror's SAMBIZANGA. a power of their own and effectively ple in Istanbul that Cuney is simply too carry even as doubtful a viewer as me arty to bear and that his reputation, in UMUT, set in South Central Turkey, in over into the moment in which hope be- France at least, is as much political as and near Adana , is the story of a man comes the last terrible delusion. UMUT, aesthetic, that it depends in part on his and his family, whose marginal exist- for all its faults, is an impressive film . having been jailed during the period, fol- ence depends on his income as a horse- lowing the student unrest, when the cab driver (Cuney's father drove such a ACI is much less interesting, although country was under martial law. Too pro- cab). When one of his horses is killed by there would seem to be great potential in vincial to buy a knowing Istanbul opin- an automobile and when it is clear that its initial idea. A man (Cuney) returns to ion at the expense of an enthusiastic An- neither justice nor charity will prevail, his native village after years in prison, for kara one (is New York always right?), I the man (sensitively played by Cuney) having killed a boy in a blood feud in his decided I had better see for myself. Al- begins the slow slide into a despair in youth, and goes to offer himself as a sub- though Coren and his associates were which the titular hope finally pushed stitute son to the dead boy's father. He is extremely apologetic about the quality of him toward madness. The injustice is es- met, first with violence, then with hesi- the film they showed me (my week in tablished neatly, visually, in a scene in tant acceptance, finally with love, but his Istanbul, they said, was too short a time which the middle-class owner of the au- old allies will not let him alone . The for them to find good prints of the films), tomobile sits and has a glass ofayran with blood feud lives and he is seen as a traitor they did manage to come up with UMUT the police as the details of the accident who must finally be punished , as he is in and a 1971 color film ACI (BITTER). are taken down, while the cabdriver, the a scene in which the old man is killed and victim of the accident, stands a respectful he is blinded. Reduced to these terms, Cuney was an actor first, with a distance from the desk. The lack of char- the film could be seen as a statement hundred or so roles to his credit (or so I ity is conveyed, much more convention- about man's entrapment in antisocial so- was told in a display of amorphous Tur- ally, much more cornily, with standard cial usage, but this is not an accurate kish statistics), and then a director, but shots of the well-to-do at poolside and description of ACI. The film is, first of all, his growing reputation as a serious trick shots, such as one in which the face a love story between the man and his of the pleading cabman is distorted in the victim's sister-sentimental for all its au- clasp of a purse. Much more impressive sterity (v. a scene in which the man is a scene in the family in which parental brings a bouquet of wild flowers back distress, heightened when one of the after a day's work in the fields, and they children uses bread money to buy a bicy- are offered and accepted without cle ride, blossoms into a mild riot of ran- words)-and, finally, a revenge drama dom punishment, as innocent and guilty unusual only in that the hero is blind . An alike are cuffed, slapped, spanked in an inordinate amount of footage is given to escalating scene that collapses finally the man's learning, by means of bells, to CONTINUED ON PACE 87 4 JAN .-FEB . 1975

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INDE- Communications (a magazine), special pub- Death and Dying (reviewing thirty-five PEND- lications, and filmographies. Their titles films on the subject). They will be de- ENTS (and membership information) are availa- lighted to provide membership informa- ble from The Society for the Anthropology tion and data concerning their annual STRUCfURES of Visual Communications, American An- American Film Festival, the definitive orgy by Amos Vogel of nontheatrical films of all categories. thropological Association, 1703 New (EFLA, 17West Sixtieth Street,New York, For the first time, several hundred of Hampshire Avenue N.W., Washington, N .Y. 10023.) America's most active and productive in- D.C. 20009. dependent filmmakers have joined to- The Bulletin for Film and Video Informa- gether as an organization-the Associa- New publications useful in obvious and tion (c/o Anthology Film Archives, 80 tion of Independent Video and Film- Wooster Street, New York, N.Y. 10012, $2 makers- to develop methods of self-help subtle ways to both filmmakers and film- a year) is a valuable newsletter with infor- and mutual protection, to provide practi- users are now available from the Educa- mation about independent film organiza- cal, informational, and moral support, to tional Film Library Association: Museums tions, distribution news, grants, sample encourage existing and new methods of with Film Programs, (a geographical list programming of regional showcases, film exhibition and distribution, and to present with addresses); University and College Film screenings, lectures, and symposia with Collections (four hundred and fifteen Uni- theatrical and non-theatrical film field fig- ures for information-exchange, and A First Avenue Screening Room premiere: Mako Midori in Yasuzo Masumura' s WAREHOUSE. transmission of know- how and techniques to a new generation. Most significant and versity film libraries by state, size of collec- festivals, bibliographies (including promising, however, is an innocent- tion, budget, and personnel); and Non- magazine articles and special publica- sounding paragraph in its declaration of Theatrical Film Distributors: Sales Service tions), and even reprints of a few articles or principles: \"the Association does not limit Policies (with information on preview and artists' statements. A caveat: While the in- its support to one genre, ideology, aesthe- sales policies of one hundred and thirty- formation provided is first-class, it is tic, but furthers diversity of vision in artis- seven companies and types of films hand- slanted strongly toward the \"formal\" tic and social consciousness.\" This rejec- led). EFLA also distributes three filmog- (structuralist? minimalist?) avant-garde tion of sectarianism and espousal of raphies: Aging (a comprehensive, critically with which Anthology and Mekas are con- openness- combined with an emphaSiS annotated list of a hundred and thirty films cerned; other newsletters addressing on a possible fusion or at least co-existence for and about older people); Alternatives themselves to \"the rest\" of the indepen- of both aesthetic and social concerns- (an annotated list of a hundred and twenty dent field (eighty per cent?) would be ad- represents, to an even greater extent than films dealing with alternatives in educa- visable. its other goals, a Significantly progressive tion, life-styles, work, and religion); and attitude that requires encouragement and CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 support. Regular memberships are $10; so are associate non-voting memberships (available to anyone supporting the prin- ciples and work of the Association). If you only wish to receive mailings, the cost is $3. (Address Ed Lynch, Association of In- dependent Video and Filmmakers, 81 Leonard Street, New York, N.Y. 10013.) The Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communications is a new organiza- tion for researchers, scholars, and prac- titioners \"studying human behavior in context through visual means\" who are in- terested in the study, use and production of anthropological films; the analysis of visual symbolic forms from a cultural- historical framework; visual theories, technologies, and methodologies for re- cording and analyzing behavior and dif- ferent modes of communication; and the cross-cultural study of art and artifacts from a social, cultural, historical, and aesthetic viewpoint. The Society publishes Studies in the Anthropology of Visual 6 JAN.-FEB. 1975

\"The film book of the year!' -International Film Guide An in-depth, uncensored look at film as revolution, film as blasphemy, film as pornography, film as hallucinogen, film as cruelty, film as scandal- film as a subversive art FILM AS A • Wavelength ,Michael Snow'sambitious, SUBVERSIVE ART controversial experiment in one-take film- by Amos Vogel is the making; a single, 45-minute-long zoom first book of its • Luis Bufiuel's Land Without Bread, kind. Illus- one of the most \"perverse\" documentaries ever made trated with • Daisies,Vera Chytilova's stylish, close to dadaist, highly eccentric comedy 350 stills, many of gluttony gone wild rarely seen, many • Triumph of the Will , Leni purposely shocking, it deals with areas Riefenstahl's notorious Nazi of film infrequently covered in stan- dard histories, and concentrates on masterpiece subversion of form and content. • Number 4, Yoko Gno's irrev- Surrealism and expres- erent survey of the buttocks of sionism, Dada and pop, minimal and conceptual art, over 350 London artists and assaults on narrative, time, celebrities and space; Nazi propaganda films and early Soviet Rus- These and .....~...... Vogel has been in the fore- sian avant-garde ; films of hundreds of other the Third World, Maoists, and Western revolution- famous and infamous front of discovering new aries; and the \"forbidden\" films, appear in FILM AS film talents for almost three A SUBVERSIVE ART _ decades . He is on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania's An- a comprehensive and mes- nenberg School, and is a regular con- merizing study of the tributor to the Village Voice, the New cinema's most exciting, York Times, and other publications. disturbing, and controver- subjects of cinema: birth, sial works. $15, now at your bookstore, or mail death , sex , blasphemy - all are ana- Fully indexed by English and origi- this coupon to Random House Mail lyzed in detail, and there are full-length nal film title and by director. The stills Service, Dept. 11-2, 201 E. 50th St. , reviews and capsule descriptions of are accompanied by detailed captions New York, N. Y. 10022. If not com- several hundred representative films designed to invite close \"visual read- pletely satisfied, you may return book including: ing.\" Size 71;4 \" x 10\". postpaid within 14 days for full refund. • Why NOT, S. Arakawa's hypnotic, com- \"The impact of FILM AS A ~-T-o y-our-bo-ok-sto-re, -or ----------, pulsive, erotic classic of minimal cinema SUBVERSIVE ART will RANDOM HOUSE MAIL SERVICE • Oh Dem WaTermelons, Robert Nelson's reverberate for a very long Dept. 11-2, 201 E. 50th St., New York , N .Y. 10022 outrageous satire of racial stereotypes time.\" -NAT HENTOFF Please send me FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART by Amos Vogel, for which I enclose $15 plus Founder-director of Cinema 75 ¢ for postage and handling. If not completely 16, America's largest satisfied, I may return book postpaid within 14 days and most famous film for full refund. society, and former director of the New N a me ____________________________ York Film Festival and the Lincoln Cen- Address ___________________________ ter Film Department (until 1968), Amos City______________State_____ Zip____ Please a dd sa les tax whe re a pplica ble. Pri ce a pplies to U .S. and territories only . In Canada, write to Random House of Canad a, 370 Alliance Ave., Toronto FC-! ~------------------~ FILM COMMENT 7

That's Not All Folks: CON TIN UED FROM PAGE 6 A Look Behind the Showcase of the Month Award: to the First Avenue Screening Room and its inde- Scenes of America's fatigable sleuth-cineaste-progra mmer Fabiano Canosa, who, within barely more Great Cartoons than a year, has transformed a failing New York theater into an entirely new type of A course by Leonard Maltin repertory theater that assiduously stays away from the usual repertory staples, This series surveys outstanding work by the giants of stressing instead the young new talents American animation with lectures exploring the background (many as yet not well known and sorely in and context of each cartoon. need of exposure) as well as neglected masterpieces by older directors or curios of Feb.5 An Introduction to Cartoons: the remarkable pioneering of the pa s t. Consider so me of the titles : Winsor McCay with Gertie the Dinosaur, the evolution Oshima 's DEATH BY HANGING , Masumura's of cartoon style in the silent-film era with Felix the Cat, WAREHOUSE , Herzog's FATA MORGANA, Mutt and Jeff and others. Gomez' FIRST CHARGE OF THE MACHETE, Rocha's BLACK GOD, WHITE DEVIL, Arzner's Feb. 12 Walt Disney, from Kansas City to Hollywood, including DANCE, GIRL, DAN CE, Bruck's I. F. STONE'S early works, ground-breaking cartoons exploring new WEEKLY, Makavejev's MAN IS NOT A BIRD, vistas of sound and color, the birth of Mickey Mouse and Osheroff's DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES, Donald Duck and later experimentation. Guerra' s THE GUNS, Delvaux' THE MAN WHO HAD HIS HAIR CUT SHORT, Fass- Feb. 19 Max Fleischer, including prime entries from his innovative binder's ALI, Mehrjui's THE cow. The em- Out of the Inkwell series, the Bouncing Ball sing-alongs, phasis here is clearly not on shorts or the Betty Boop and Popeye, with rarely-seen examples of each. American underground, but on features · (at times close to the commercial area in its Feb . 26 Warner Bros. cartoons , tracing the development of perhaps creative aspects), Third World films, neg- the best cartoon studio in Hollywood led by Avery, Jones, lected countries, social and aesthetic con- Clampett and others , with such stars as Bugs Bunny, Porky cerns. For sample programs, address Pig, Daffy Duck and the Road Runner. Fabiano Canosa, First Avenue Screening . Room, First Avenue at Sixty-First Street, Mar.5 A Hollywood Potpourri, including films by Walter Lantz, Paul New York, N.Y. 10021. Terry, Ub Iwerks , Hanna and Barbera and others from the 1930's and 40's. Creation of False Myths Department: Watch out for the splendiferous, rapidly Mar.12 The Three Caballeros, Walt Disney 's forgotten treasure, a emerging new Leni Riefenstahl myth (in film never reissued to theaters , not shown at Lincoln America, not Europe where they know Center, seen in excerpt form only on television . Thirty years better), according to which she is not ahead of its time with pop-art visions of Donald Duck, Joe merely a great filmmaker (a fact on which Carioca and Panch ito south of the border. A real treat, and all are agreed) but only made innocuous, a major rediscovery that represents the zenith of the \" factual\" \" documentaries,\" with neither Hollywood cartoon. the films nor the filmmaker organically re- lated to Nazism . The new myth is assidu- Course number 6308. 6 sessions. 8:00 P.M. , $18 . Single admission $3.50 ously abetted by the most unlikely combi- One of more than 65 courses on film at The New School. nation of rightist, leftist, and politically Write for the film brochure or call 741-5690 . innocent/ignorant forces and media ever assembled into one eclectic mass of syco- ~~- You can register by telephone for phantic adorationists who, in the name of the above course if you are a Master Charge a spurious objectivity, vainly attempt to separate Leni's splendid (even magnifi- or BankAmericard holder. Just call 741-5610, cent) form-style-aesthetics from her nefarious (even deadly) content-subject 10 A.M.-7 P.M., Mon.-Fri. matter. More anon . ~!: The NeVI School Monthly lists of scarce cinema books & magazines sent America's First University for Adults airmail - $5.00 yearly. A. E. COX, 21 Cecil Road, Itchen, 50uthhampton 502 7HX, ENGLAND. \" .. . all at most reasonable prices.\" International Film Guide. 66 WEST 12 ST NEW YORK 10011 741-5690 8 JAN .- FEB . 19 75

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@ One of Bugs Bunny's fabulous subterra- praised for any especial originality; it's un- nean burrowings leads him to the Sahara doubtedlya hand-me-down- Tex Avery, Above : Elmer Fudd as Douglas MacA rthur, in Chuck Desert, whereupon he leaps up from his the foremost innovator at the Warner Jones' BUG S' BONNETS (1956). Sequence below : in rabbit-hole, yells out rejoicingly \"Miami Brothers cartoon shop, treated an Ozark Jones' RABBIT OF SEVILLE (1950), Bugs sprink les Beach at last!\", and rushes off in a swim- shirttail like a perforated paper-towel years Figaro Fertilizer on Elmer's sca lp , fi rst to Elmer's suit over miles and miles of desert sand, fi- before, in his 1938 cartoon A FEUD THERE de li ght, then to his di smay . nally coming upon an oasis and turning WAS, though the screwy notion very prob- disillusioned with the piddling reservoir ably dates back even farther. thereat: \"1 always pictured the Atlantic Ocean as much bigger. \" ButJarand away a The SAHARA HARE turban bit is unexcep- funnier gag in Friz Freleng's SAHARA HARE (1954) is a purely visual testification to the tional in itself, and of slightly over a Absurd and a gentle poke at the little second's duration, yet several knotty fireball rabbit-hater Yosemite Sam: to dry meanings could be extrapolated from it. his face , Bugs calmly pulls out the 15ack- The joke assumes additional humor, addi- section of Sam's turban, yanking it down tional value, when viewed within the con- and tearing it off as though the cloth flap text of a postwar Bugs Bunny cartoon were perforated. Then, as a topper, the -within the welter of signifiers, visual as- turban emits a second flap to replace the sociations and generic patterns that inform first, automatically-to make a perfect most of Bugs' films from this particular counterfeit of a paper-towel dispenser. period . The gag's visual apparatus isn't espe- For starters, one guesses the laugh is cially fetching: its pyrotechnics fall short of elicited by a scrambling-up of regional anything spectacular (though one does symbols: Sam's potentially \"foreign\" admire the software-the savvy of the sheik's appurtenance simulates a towel animators when it comes to their meticu- dispenser, a banal American mechanism. lous and to-the-exact-frame control-the And one can glean that the laugh is on Yosemite Sam from his ticked-off crowning surrealist imposition being doubletake-the flip Bunny stays unfazed, withheld just long enough to arouse atten- and doesn' t even notice the dis- tion, unloosed just soon enough to make it placement-effect that he's instigated. worth the wait) . Nor can the joke be One might say that the cartoonists are ridi- culing Yosemite Sam for his outlandish as- piration to masquerade as a sheik, when everyone knows that Sam's bombastic disposition and fiery cusses and expletives (\"You ornery fur-bearin' critter!\" \"You long-eared galoot!\") earmark him as solely indigenous to the American West. But who was it that spruced up Sam as an outre sheik to begin with, if it wasn't the filmmakers themselves? @ 1975Warn er Brothers, Inc.

by Greg Ford Ultimately, the revelation that Sam's cross-cultural mishaps were by no means madcap haircut-shampoo-barber jokes of exotic sheik's turban functions like a towel the only subjects for humor to be enter- 1950's RABBIT OF SEVILLE (most likely the dispenser betra ys the cartoonists' own tained in the rabbit's humorous hierarchy. finest Rossini cartoonization ever, though American cultivation. It ridicules their own Such gags, in fact, amount to just a small a couple from studios other than pretensions for having embarked on the soup~on of the full spectrum of subjects Warners-namely Shamus Culhane's tinsel desert aC.tioner in the first place, and covered in Bug's gag-spangled career. On Woody Woodpecker THE BARBER OF for having sent their rabbit skidaddling off, other occasions, the Warners artists con- SEVILLE and the opening Rossini sparrings underground, on a three-day-leave to jured joke-ideas which deliciously hit on of Tom and Jerry in Hanna-Barbera's KITTY Miami Beach, or to Pizmo Beach, or else to personality-human nature, inhuman na- FOILEo--are also con tenders for first place) . the La Brea Tarpits, and for further having ture. confounded the rabbit by making him \"ac- Among several dozen merry pranks that cidentally\" caisson to the Sahara Desert, or It's these jokes and their attendant delv- he plays on his barber-chaired victim, Bugs to sunny Spain (BULLY FOR BUGS, 1953), or ings into Character that have even more of Bunny, to breezy orchestration, sprinkles to the North Pole (FRIGID HARE, 1949) with a sorta timeless, \"universal\" quality to Figaro Fertilizer on Elmer's scalp instead of the flimsiest superficial excuse that he them, as these two gags that spring to any more orthodox restorative lotion \"took the wrong turn at Albuquerque.\" mind, from films directed by Charles M. stimulant, and Elmer's noggin, ever so Jones, are pips of explorations into the sick briefly , seems to sprout real hair. Fudd This was the staple premise for many a and troubled psyche of the hunter Elmer lights up at this, of course, and only then Bugs Bunny film in the late Forties and Fudd: to support an off-screen do red wildflowers bloom on the fertilized early Fifties: the scalawag rabbit unearth- commentator's clothes-make-the-man hair-like stems, to the victim's shocked ing himself in parts unknown, puzzling disquisition in BUGS' BONNETS (1956), we dismay. What's telltale, though, are those over road map directions, thereupon ar~ tendered the sight of Elmer J. in his un- six or seven microseconds of sheer elation wreaking madness in some arbitrary far- dies and he looks, at best, like a feeble on Elmer's face, when he believes that he's off land; wreaking craziness, with a dab of weak-kneed marshmallow; but just as grown actual hair. It's this brief uplift that the surefire comic rashness and overbear- makes his final letdown funny, and fur- ance of a U.S. Twain-type Innocent soon as his hunting utensils and hunting thermore gives the tipoff that the baldness Abroad who exports with him a homebred clothes are supered over his feeble form , ma y have been bothering Elmer for 10, sense of reality and misapplies it wherever he powertrips neurotically, discharges his these many years-that it may be yet he goes; wreaking craziness, and some- rifle and shouts out \" Kill! Kill! Kill!\" another affliction to salt the inferiority feel- times unintentionally. Perhaps the most -turning homicidal maniac as if attempt- ings that drive Fudd out, preposterously, ornate instance of suchlike sorry misap- ing to camouflage his truer schnook-y se.lf to hunt the \"wittle gway wabbit.\" prehension transpires in MY BUNNY LIES (and in the same cartoon, maybe more re- OVER THE SEA (1948) when Bugs, with mis- vealingly still, Fudd dresses up as Douglas All I mean to elucidate, in a roundabout placed chivalry, thoroughly routs the bag- MacArthur). way, is that even the most seemingly sim- pipes of an innocent Scottish bystander. ple or hurried-through or inadvertent vis- He's mistaken the kilt-wearing Scot for a There was surprisingly little levity ever ual gag, from the Looney Tunes and Mer- defenseless little old lady, the pipes for a levelled at Fudd's bald pate, but the bald- rie Melodies medley of visual gags, seems vicious squeaking octopus. ness was as permanent a fixture in the to glimmer forth, when interpreted, as a weakling image of Elmer as was the timor- gem-like condensation of wit and multi- A turban aping a towel dispenser, a kilt ous \"r's\"-and-\"I's\"-to \"w's\" ailment in the level significaiton; that the best of these being seen as a lady's skirt, bagpipes being milksop speech of Fudd, and it must have fantastic Warners sight-gags could com- mistaken for a ravenous octopus. Yet been predestined that a note on Elmer's pound whole complexities of visual mean- hairlessness crop up amid the sundry

- WARNER BROTHERS CONTINUED permit a director of high-calibre to work went beyond the pain-with-humiliation of within cleanly refined areas, can allow a di- a banana-peel pratfall. (Of course, the ing and visual association into absolutely rector the opportunity to produce most contortion was just part of the language the fewest nwnber of frames; and that the subtle variances within the ritual super- and could be used to express an unlimited Warners sight-gags, into the bargain, structure-variances that can be, in truth, range of emotions). could surpass the live-action cavortings of of the keenest aesthetical order. even Sennett's jesters in the application of Revered as posultively sacrosanct, mul- this uniquely to-the-frame preciseness and In his most remarkable paragraph (p. led over and over in textbooks, and with- concision (since a talented animation direc- 62), Stevenson, in all soberness, estimates out a smack of smug disdain, have been tor is able to regulate timing and composi- as \"bad quality\" any sample of the more sedate, \"non-violent\" graphically tion, not to mention all the elements of the \"neo-Disney\" handiwork that moves at 2-d UPA's (Robert Cannon's GERALD Fantastic, to an nth degree that nary a \"express speed\" or harbors \"caricatured McBOING BOING, etc.)' or, more to the heart live-action ringmaster could ever hope to animals, drawn on cels .\" The criteria are of the matter, a peculiarized independent attain); and, moreover, that such seem- totally absent, though one suspects that item like John Hubley's MOONBIRD, a ingly effortless economy in arriving at the umbrage taken with cels is simple frothy nightfall reverie wherein a little kid humor and bonus meaning was open most oversight since cel animation, after Disney, and his little brudder try to ensnare the singularly to those animators who chose to was, is, and probably forever shall be reg- somewhat over-preciously Crayola- work within prescribed generic guidelines, nant, really occupying a helluva lot a scribbled title bird (an ostrich lookalike where character concepts, story concepts, ground in the animation field, including contest loser) and do so while conswned in joke ideas, and space-and-movement acres and acres of the most ostensibly tepid watery colors on some suburban ideas could be either held over from one avan t-garde and e~perimentalist territory lawn made up of dissolvey translucencies cartoon to be wildly extended in the next, or else modified, or completely elided, or maybe kinkily deflected. The turban-to- towel-dispenser joke in the Freleng car- toon and the fertilized cranial flowerage joke in the Jones cartoon are quite funny in themselves, but then, in addition, are bol- stered up by the audience's familiarity with Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd, these characters; respective dupabilities, and the waggish rabbit's customary scrimmages with each. Yet, strangely enough, such \" genre cartoons\"-and by this I mean the Hol- lywood cartoons ({know, all those ani- mated short-subjects that were doled out to movie-houses of bygone years to be shown along with the major studios' live- action feature-lengthers)-by and large \" have been sloughed off or glossed over in fuddy-duddy fashion by our rather flatu- lent English-language cartoon critical his- tories. Printed as lately as 1967 was Ralph Stevenson's run-of-the-mill and none- too-modestly-titled softback Animation in th e Cinema which, to its debit, does its share to nurse this most untenable condes- cension toward commercial Hollywood genre cartoons. Most peeving of all, it seems to me, are Abo ve, two Ta shlin courtship scenes compared : Porky and Stevenson ' s obvious slightings, or his Petunia Pig's in PORKY'SROMANCE (1937), and Jayne Mansfield barely-deigned faint praises damning the and Ton y Randall' s in WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER \"Tex Avery Schoo!,\" under which catchall (195 7). Below, compare Ta shlin ' s pigeon se-duck-tress Hatta Mari heading he apparently subsumes Te x in 1944' s PLANE DAFFY with Tashlin 's live-action Mansfield. Avery's whole career as a cartoon director that Stevenson loves to travel in. and transparencies . I don't want to put at Warner Brothers and MGM and Univer- But the most persistent bugaboo that down Hubley's OK film; but unques- sal pi us the en tire directing careers of the historians have grouped behind to stig- tionably, as artifacts, the films that star more anchored Warners staffers Chuck matize the Warners art is the regular plaint Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Jones, Robert McKimson, and Friz Fre- about violence or, rather, the \"breakneck, Sylvester, Porky Pig, Pepe Le Pew, and leng, plus William Hanna and Joseph unremitting, extreme violence\"-to-do even Foghorn Leghorn are the more dur- Barbera's direction of the Tom and Jerry' s and hoopla based, I guess, on a sorely fal- able and readily readable hieroglyphs at MGM plus, it seems, whatever other lacious assumption that these most resil- today and, natch, are far the more indelibly Hollywood animation he can summon ient cartoon figures ever possessed the inked on a world public's collective con- that might foster his hypotheses and pre- same identical sentiency for hurt as would scious and unconscious both, while I mature conclusions. Offering us a good a flesh-and-bloodied live performer; to-do daresay that the vaunted MOONBIRD'S cross-section of myopic critical prejudices and hoopla founded on another mistaken seepage in to society has been well nigh disguised as straightfaced data, Stevenson notion that the fifty-seven varieties of close to nil, as the movie brings most audi- can only carp about \"sameness\" and splatted, squished, scrunched, or crunch- ences to downright yawning standstills. \"repetition\" in the narratives of the genre ed-up shapes that were gotten into But beyond this, as art, and also as Art, cartoons. And yet he might have seen that by the pliable figures necessarily registered the darling gibberings-gurglings of these such ritual and repetition-of-formulae can pain at all-or, if pain, that it necessarily kids in their MOONBIRD-questing (all the 12 JAN.-FEB. 1975

Character's on the soundtrack) plainly lack today's Sick or Black Humor: there's the the psychological crispness-clarity of, say, the facial expressions etched by Jones on notorious iron lung routine in 1940's DAFFY the irked or befuddled countenance of his DOC (in which the berserk quack-doctor frazzled scrawny Coyote, after another one of his flubbed-up stabs at catching up Daffy also treats an operating-room re- with the Roadrunner: the wearied beastie's piqued or perplexed gander-takings when spirator like a punching- bag, and attempts one of his intricate Roadrunner-snaring gizmos goes kaflooey and comes to surgery with a rusty saw), the death agony naught; or his drop-mouthed gog-eyed \"Egad!\" look at the bird's f1abberghasting in 1943's CORNY CONCERTO, his kooky lam- gusty speed (speed quite often replete with all the after-effects of eddied dust clouds, pooning of FANTASIA (so that Bugs Bunny dredged-up cacti, tiny wafted scraps of and Porky Pig stagger about the Vienna paper) . My guess, without intending too much anti-intellectual slaver, is that the Woods in death throes accompanied by a most erudite animation cognescenti today are non-writing, supposed-to-be- Strauss waltz), or the equally gruesome traumatized young and adult who turn their TV's on at certain times, and might death agony of Daffy Duck in 1942's wait patiently through nettling marathon toy-or-hamburger commercials, or the WISE-QUACKING DUCK (when Daffy tucks harangues of dippy tot-show-host emcees, on the slim offchance of finally getting a his head inside his ring-necked collar, six-or-seven minute masterwork by Tex Avery, Robert C1arnpett, Jones, or Freleng. spurts out ketchup from a bottle and Manny Farber's old remark from a 1943 New Republic article on Looney Tunes- makes like decapitation), senility in 1944's Merrie Melodies is probably still admissa- ble: \"The surprising facts about them are OLD GRAY HARE (with a doddering Rip Van ~ that the good ones are masterpieces and Winkle Elmer and an arthritic Bugs Bunny the bad ones aren't a total loss. \" still at odds in the year 2000), mass murder ~ ' in 1944's GREAT PIGGY BANK ROBBERY (so The total thousandrtitIe-or-so output of ~ films, from 1930 to 1963, should be sifted through, as one reaps many troves and that Daffy Duck can machine-gun down a @ little dross-with special attention given to the following talented confluence of ani- closet-full of Dick Tracy characters, and mation directors and their rarely- cumbrous styles: the bullet- riddled corpses of Double 1) Frank Tashlin-whose Warners car- Header, Snake-Eyes, Picklepuss , etc., can toons compare and contrast fascinatingly with his later feature comedies. topple out like a row of dominos-leaving 2) Tex Avery-whose recognition of only Neon Noodle, an electrical neon out- animation's potential for absurdism and abstraction led him irrefutably to the dis- line, whom Daffy promptly lassoes into a covery of Bugs Bunny in 1940's A WILD HARE, and Daffy Duck in 1937's PORKY'S flashing EAT AT JOE 'S marquee ), and even, DUCK HUNT (where Daffy goes off on conniption-fitting tangents and ululates momentarily, homosexuality in 1941's \"woo-woo!\" into the Deep Focus of the lake horizon-line-but the best moment of WHAT'S COOKING DOC? (where Bugs Bunny's ~ _ PORKY'S DUCK HUNT is inexplicably lyrical: carousingly drunken trout row-boating by coveted Oscar trophy abruptly comes to ~nd singing \"Moonlight Bay\") and, just as Importantly, in his many mock- life and does a little gay sashay). documentaries and mock-travelogues at Warner Brothers from 1936 to 1942, most of 4) Robert McKimson-formerly Bob the. rudiments for the astonishingly rapid-paced style of his later films at MGM C1ampett's top animator, and whose early from ' 42 to '55, which partook of even more absurd hyperbole. work, from 1944, captures some of 3) Robert C1ampett-in whose madness C1ampett's initial raw, anarchic energy in there was even less method than in Avery's, and whose most undisciplined reckless films such as DAFFY DOODLES sproinging rubbery character- motion gave him some of the most eminently (where Daffy fiendishly paint- brushes stretchable-bendable characters in Car- toon History, and whose anything-for- moustaches on every billboard in a-laugh temperament prophesized Manhattan), GORILLA MY DREAMS (where Bugs Bunny and a simian go vine-swing- ing from tree to tree through the Bingzi- Bangzi jungle), and whose early Foghorn ___ Leghorn films (1944' s WALKY TALKY Bosko at oneness with nature, surrounded by the sm il- HAWKY, 1947's CROWING PAINS) contain ing jungle animal s of CONGO JAZZ (1930). some wonderfully reckless lirnbs-thrash- ~ ing-every-whichaway movement, as Henery Hawk is never allowed to get a ~ word in edgewise over the very boisterous m ~~ babblings-on of the Southern blowhard rooster (\" . .. that boy's about as sharp as a bowling-ball\"). ~ 5) Friz Freleng-who had the longest @ tenure of any director at Warner Brothers, and who was to use his early expertise at musical synchronization . learned from his pioneering direction of the early Merrie Melodies, and developed it into something like a personal theme in the Forties and the Fifties, cementing, brick-laying, and rivet- ting up an entire building to the music of Lizst's Second Hungarian Rhapsody in 1941' s RHAPSODY IN RIVETS, playing out the old-timey nursery-rhyme of \"The Three Little Pigs,\" ballet-style, to Brahm's Hun- garian Dances in his 1944 PIGS IN A POLKA and, quite often, utilizing his musical ap- lomb to present Bugs Bunny as a hoofer, in 1945's STAGE DOOR CARTOON, and once again in 1957's SHOW-BIZ BUNNY, where the song-and-dance man Daffy Duck tries to Grocery store labels spring to life in typical early Merrie Melodies m anner in Freleng's HOW DO I KNOW IT'S SUNDAY? (1934).

WARNER BROTHERS CONTINUED character ilk benefited from Disney's tutel- Mouse and his simplified, musically- syn- age (though a tandem causal condition- chronized shenanigans just must have upstage Bugs and crab his act. -the less rigidified production system, paved the way for the first of the Warner the willingness and initiative of the sepa- Brothers chaps: Bosko, appearing in the 6. Chuck Jones, who did so much to re- rate units-determined that the Warners' first of the Warners cartoons, a Looney fine and construct the characters of Bugs directors later would supercede the Dis- Tune, SINKING IN THE BATHTUB (1930). In Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy and the others neylanders with the cliching niches of their STEAMBOAT WILLIE, Mickey Mouse organ- into the finalized versions by which they storylines' more adult preoccupations, grinds a billy-goat's tail for organ-grinder's are popularly known today, and gave us their regular players' more grown-up music; in SINKING, Bosko, putt-putting the Roadrunner besides. characterizations, and their more shrewd along in his car, cranks the tail of a retrieval of a smattering of the pre-classical cow-in-the-road to raise her up like a It's left to be said that each of these artis ts pre- Disney zaniness to overlay the Dis- tollgate-the cow resents it and marches neylanders' first-simplified, then- off insultediy, her udders swinging to-fro quite likely deserves a \"special animation impeccable, then -increasingly- creakily to \"Pomp and Circumstance.\" Tight issue\" unto himself. \"realistic\" animation). sound-and-image synchronization is the crux of the whole shebang, as Bosko One need merely flit a glint at Mickey Though Disney's early menagerie might blithely forest-trips and beckons us to Mouse as \"Willie\" steering-wheeling at his seem eclipsed by the later Warners steamboat helm-his feet solidly planted morons-imbeciles-wiseacres, Mickey the CONTINUED ON PACE 16 while his white two-buttoned breeched midriff capers left-right, gingered up, to mark the beats of the music-to appreciate that, from the outset, the Warner Brothers A. Avery's RED HOT RI DING HOOD (1943). at MGM, pic- ARMS (1946), in which an Averyesque wolf frequents a cases, Bugs Bunny, say, might walk in front of the cred- c. turing pert pin-up Red and the wolfish wolf in oddly movie theatre and there gets erotically enflamed-this its and read them aloud , mispronouncing the G demure postures: usuall y, Red does a hot-and -flirty time not fuelled by the typical chantoosie, but first by a names-\" Fred Ah-vahr'-ee\"). Actually, the \"shadow nightclub dance, saucily animated by Preston Blair, cutie usherette, and next by the movie-screen vision of character\" silhouette was simply a rotoscoped version while the wolf illustrates his lupine appetites with wild , lauren Bacall (here rechristened \" laurie Bee-Cool \"). of Warners storyman Tedd Pierce, who gave his most wild re act ion- shots, cross-cut with the tantalizing Clampett, seeming to specialize in nightmares, dreams assiduously drawn-out performance in DAFFY DUCK AND dance: like some whirligig erogenous zone , he might and hallucin ations, now comes to grips with the Hol- EGGHEAD (1937), where, shot in cold blood byone of the w histle, stomp hi s feet , set in motion a Rube Goldberg lywood Dream Machine, as the wolf is all but burnt to a screen ' s cartoon characters, he does a lengthy fall to hand-clapping machine, or hi s eyeballs might unsocket cinder in hi s symbiotic involvement with the Bacall- death (and DAFFY DUCK AND EGGHEAD is graced with a themselves for mid-air ogling at the dish, hi s body Bogart \" Anybody got a Iight?\" seq uence from TO HAVE splendid opening: the two walnutty principals are maybe crackle itself into tiny flakes, se nd itse lf to the AND HAVE NOT. Along the way, Clampett also provesthat shown leaping from two sepa rate walnut shells). ceiling, or go through other unspeakab le palpitating gy- animated cartoons can criticize live-action cinema as Avery's many masterful innovation s in distanCing his rations spoken of later in thi s issue. Mostof the comedy concretely as does the written word : in BACALL TO ARMS, subject-matter-as well as the very processes of the car- is milked , though, from the delicacy of the crosscutting the coy innuendoes and the wry, snide witticisms of the toon medium-were well exploited by other directors between the lady' s smooth nubility in the dance, and Howard Hawks film are sabotaged by the wolf's ruder, at Warner Brothers, notabl y by Chuck jones in the in- the skitt ish strenuous helter-skelter of the wolf's impos- more red hot reprisals to them (he blows his top, twi rl s a comparable DUCK AMUCK (which, among other things, sibl y overstimulated responses. The widespread theory party noisemaker). In Time Magazine , Agee described puts to the question the animator's possibly sadistic that these most healthy lecherous acrobatics were in- Bacall as \" hot as blazes\" and quipped that she \" has control over the frame-puts to the question the curred solel y for the enjoyment of WWII servicemen is cinema personality to burn and burns both ends against animator's thumbs-up , thumbs-down Emperor's Rule obviousl y a moot iss ue, though a partly-corroborative an unusua ll y little middle,\" and Robert Clampett uses over his cartoon subjects) and in the delightful HARE image occurs in THE SHOOTI NG OF DAN MCGOO (1945 ): simi lar incendiary imagery in hi s cartoon , as the wolf TONIC (1945 ) in which jones and 8ugs Bunny, in during one protracted wolf-whistle , the wolf's body, fantasizes Bogart tossing an Army Surplus flame- cahoots, persuade the audience that i t' s contracted the turned erectile, ha s Army, Navy and Marine uniform s thrower to Bacall (i nstead of the famous tossed book of dreaded disease \" Rabbititus\" by swirling red and yel- zapped over it. By the by, the first of Avery's matches) and as the wolf imagines Bacall's sultry tread low spots on the screen. ever-unsated masher-type wolves was whelped at across the room igniting a minor conflagration , a little Warners, in 19 37's LlTILE RED WALKING HOOD, first dis- ribbon-stream of flames (extingui shed to the last sputter F. From Tex (Fred) Avery' s touchstone Bugs Bunny film played \" lurking in a nearby pool hall,\" as the narrator by a hopped-up Smokey Stover brigade that instan - A WILD HARE (1940): a \"guess-w ho \" game. Elmer ven- sez, but the Red Riding Hood co-starred here, a little taneously zings on-scene). tures, \"Wose mawy Wane? Pwissiwa Wane?\" How is a sprite, bears only incidental resemblance to Preston character born? The chunkier rabbit in PORKY'S HARE Blair's perter, suppler dame of the later MGM \" Red Rid- B. Droopy, roped up, in hi s first screen role in Te x HUNT (1936), directed by Ben Hardaway, proclaims \"Of ing Hood\" spoofs. Generally speak ing, all the sexily Avery's MGM DUMB-HOUNDED (1943): this film, and the course, you k~ow, this means war! ,\" but he proclaims it updated poems and fairy-tales that Avery directed at slightly more exaggerated NORTHWEST HOUNDED POLICE in a scatter-brained way, and it was up to director MGM were antedated by more subdued Warner (1946), concern the vivesectional phobic \" take's\" ofthe Chuck jones to stipulate that the line become the moral Brothers \" pilot\" versio ns: hi s sassy SWINGSHIFT CIN- escaped-convict wolf whenever he lays his enlarged or fulcrum to the later Bugs stories. It was Ben \" Bugs \" DERELLA (1945) was forerun bYCiNDERELLAMEETSA FELLA out-poppable eyes on the seem ingl y inescapable dog. Hardaway who gave the Bunny hi s moniker, but it was (1938), and hi s drastic ridiculing of the purplest The wolf character would traverse entire continents to up to Te x Avery to first prove that the moniker was a simi les-metaphors in Service's Yukon poem in THE shake off Droopy, yet would always find the impassive misnomer and that Bugs wasn' t buggy or batty atall, but SHOOTING OF DAN MCGOO (1945) was looked forward to basset waiting for him on the other side. In the jarring was a character with much mental wherewithal. Facing by his 1939 Warners fi 1m DANGEROUS DAN MCFOO. conclusion of NORTHWEST HOUNDED, the wolf, once a gun-carrying hunter, Bugs Bunny in A WILD HARE first more placed behind bars , wonders aloud if \" there delivers hi s crucial scarcely-importuned catchline Other well-known cartoon depictions of sex should could've been more than one of those little guys,\" and \" What' s Up Doc?,\" and several other groundrules for get capsulized mention here: there's that famous-but- Avery zip-pans to an unnerving shot of a hallway aisle the Bugs-Elmer tussles were established in this film , most-unfunny ancie nt unsigned porno relic from the littered with mountie Droopys , who chorus in unison character-building precepts that were hewn to by the 1920's entitled BURIED TREASUR E(included in the recent \" Hmmm, could be,\" a pet Avery one-liner. This magi- other Warners directors: Bugs' cautious testing-out of sex -compendium HISTORY OF THE BLUE MOVIE) and cally multipliable or ubiquitous character concept was the situation with his gloved hand , before spinning out featuring a roughl y-sketc hed homunculus who carts hi s introduced in Avery' s Warners film TORTOISE BEATS HARE of his rabbit-hole and into sight at last (in Freleng's 1942 titanic cock abo ut in a wheelbarrow in so me dopey (1940), where Bugs Bunny is rendered paranoid by a FRESH HARE, set in snowy Canada, the gloved hand ap- anti-Eden garden. In a different class altogether are the plethora of turtles. pears from the hole and goes through the same routine, naive and primitive boop-boop-a-doops of the Flei s- only this time around , wearing little finger-sized snow- chers' pre-Hays flapper, discussed elsewhere in this C. Tex Avery' s se lf-portrait model sheet. shoes) and , of course , Bugs' habit of planting kisses on issue. Chuck jones' onl y cartoon series dedicated to Elmer's forehead, here revealing not just Bugs' in - sex-frustration were the films th at sta rred the aromatic D. A cartoon-within-a-cartoon: Porky animates his souciance, but also his genuine awe and affection for Pepe le Pew-a Pari sian skunk as much amorous as own stick-figured drawings in PORKY'SPREVIEW (1940) at Elmer's seemingly limitless insipidity. After A WILD malodorous, and whose hoppy, mistaken love-pursuits Warners, one of Avery' s man y flagrant jokes upon his HARE, on Iy a few changes were left to be made in Bugs' of a female cat caused neverending mating difficultie s: audience . character-shape (i .e. the Bunny 's squattier bow-legs in here the humor stemmed from the female cat's dis- this cartoon had yet to be straightened out). traught refu sals of the smell y advances, from her ter- E. Avery's Egghead, an Elmer Fudd prototype with a rified expression s, swats at the sku nk , and quick bigger probosc is and more enigmatic motivations: cast G. Here spicing each other with salt and pepper, two getaways-but all of this was optimistically counter- as Prince Chow Mein in Warner Brothers' CINDERELLA famished buzzards struggle to devour one another balanced by Pepe's cavalier comebacks, by hi s Charles MEETS A FELLA (1938), Egghead finds hi s dreamboat Cin- throughout the course of Avery's most libidinous MGM Boyer-or Maurice Chevalier-type suavete and , even in derella waving to him from the theater's tenth row. The film WHAT'S BUZZIN ' BUZZARD ?(1943): to put the viewer the face of countless brushoffs by the cat, his mand atory \"s hadow character\" silhouette (supposedly of a \" real\" in a properly carnivorous frame-of-mind, Avery, at the . retention of his self-assured franglais asides to the view- audien ce-member) was one of Avery's best devices to beginning, inserts a live-action photo of a steak, drip- er (\"l uff weel find a way\") . Also at Warners , Robert annihilate the formal strictures of the frame (in other ping with gravy. Clampett directed a very funny piece called BACALL TO 14 JAN .-FEB. 1975

COURTESY PAUL TRE NT @ 1975Warner Brothers, tn c. COURTESY JOE ADAMSON .. FILM COMMENT 15

WARNER BROTHERS lurched-tempoed, hastened motion. But cossack-step after nibbling Russian Rye, charm is there in 1934' s pOP GOES YOUR and one of them gets kayoed by a CON TIN UED FROM PACE 14 HEART (tugs-of-war betwixt worms and downswung Harm-and-Ammer mallet, as baby robins, a woods-pillaging bear vil- does the feline villain of the 1935 \"Tiptoe Through the Tulips\" with him. But lain, pond-side lily-pad leap-frogs doing BILLBOARD FROLICS, who also is tormented the prize-winning gig is Bosko's \"boom, boom, boom, boom!\" continuos to by the RCA Victrola dog and plagued by sax-blowing of soap bubbles (\"I'm Forever the all-important carolling of the title- the police squadron called for by the Phillip Blowing Bubbles\" ), with Bosko' s heart- song); 1936' s LET IT BE ME (in \"Birdville, \" Morris pageboy. throb Honey daintily staircasing the bub- moralizing over some starstruck local- bles down from her second-story window yokel hen); 1936's I'M A LITTLE BIG SHOT The 1937 doozy SPEAKING OF THE as her dance-steps splish every bubble to (\" BirdvilJe's\" other-side-of-the-tracks: a WEATHER gi.ves the same workout to a correspond with the ditty's every note. bank-robbing jay); 1937's STEAMLINE GRETA magazine-rack, so that \"Crime Stories\" (This serenade-scene compares favorably GREEN (in \"Carville \" yet, with anthro- fugitives are persued by \"Boy's Life\" do- to many such musical-skits from the same pomorphized automobiles, where typify- gooders, by siren-ing \"Police Gazette\" season' s Mickey Mice .) ing establishing-shots are to colonize the cop-cars, and are sentenced to Life denizens of BugvilIe-Chickville-Carville at (Magazine). It's revealing that this cartoon Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising some down-home township mixer, pub, should beauteur'd by Frank Tashlin, whose (Harman-Ising-\"harmonizing,\" under- or jamboree, and the dances there are live-action feature satires, it's been noted, stand?) created these \"Boskos\" with Iso- mechanically, but uniformly well- abound in suchlike cultural-punning and dore Freleng (the selfsame Friz) as the chief propelled. (A favorite early Melodies topical relevancies. The Disney studio animator. The three of 'em were formerly dance from Freleng's 1937 spiritualist ex- came to draw a blank on what the Warners Disney personnel and their derbied Bosko travaganza CLEAN PASTURES: a supercilious artists never forgot: that even the most (the Negro) was a black-dot-inkblot sidewalk tap of a very natty spade to flout a lavishly mythical cartoon could still quite specimen like a Mickey the Mouse san s Stepinfetchit angel who has been commis- nicely keep abreast of topicalities. (Even in mouse-ears--or like Flip the Frog or Os- sioned by Pair-O-Dice to round up Harlem Jones' sumptuously Wagnerian WHAT'S wald the Rabbit, other charmers co- souls.) OPERA, DOC?, the capping anathema im- masterminded or masterminded with Vb precated by a teutonic Elmer Fudd to smite Iwerks somewhere around . But Bosko's The continuous motion generally as- a Brunhilde Bugs Bunny is \"Smog!,\" a squeaky, sometimes-e'en-tremolo falsetto similates or merges any didacticism pres- modern pestilence.) was, if anything, more guileless than the ent in these flowing mini-musicals, and Mouse's. Bosko was a guileless paragon, the films are seldom saccharine. The litmus In Tashlin's b&w PORKY'S RAILROAD his picaresque adventurings defiant of if not the acid test is Freleng's first-in-color (1937) , Porky's spasmodically slowpoke exegesis-except for the comment that BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1934) by dint-of its locomotive (headin' for the last round- whether he was dabbling in free- potentially cloying little girlchild house), arduously huff-puffing uphill, is enterprises (BOSKO'S STORE, BOSKO'S SODA sleepyhead who's Sandmanned off to toy outrun by a snail, predicting a quite FOUNTAIN , 1932), proudly waxing a dreamland; it's a damn scary dream, as it cartoon-y gag in Tashlin's Sixties souped-up race-car (BOSKO THE happens, induced by gluttonous overeat- DISORDERLY ORDERLY when a real-life spas- SPEED-KING, 1933), chasing butterflies ing of mixed bananas and chocolates . Also tic, Jerry Lewis, himself is outrun by a (TREES' KNEES, 1931) or in a dogsled mush- germinative, one of the color Melodies snail. All the rib-tickling over con- ing pipsqueak huskies through a blizzard could chance upon a character who was over the simplest-drawn hump-shaped positively foolish enough to belly out the sumerism-commercialism in his prefty- knolls (BIG MAN FROM THE NORTH, 1931), negatively blase Buddy and become, brilliant comedy -cum -social-critique Bosko had a kinda simplified oneness with thereafter, the pudgy star of the studio's of the middle Fifties, WILL SUCCESS the unarrayed world about him, an es- parallel-running series of b&w Looney SPOIL ROCK HUNTER?, is foreshadowed by Tunes: in HAVEN'T GOT AHAT (1935), the fat the comparable courtship folly of PORKY'S poused philosophy sloganized by the child hog Porky, fraught with stammers- ROMANCE (1937). Adman Tony Randall catchphrase AIN'T NATURE GRAND? (1930) . stutters through his faltering overlong proposes to puckered-lipped Jayne Mans- show-and-tell of \"Midnight Ride of Paul field in dehumanizing padded equipage so Harman-Ising departed from Warners Revere,\" is the least endearing to cinch her endorsement of his Stay-Put and packed off Bosko with them to MGM, schoolhouse dunce with classmates such lipstick merchandise; in the cartoon , Porky where they alchemized their first- as the mischievous Beans, Ham and Ex stutters proposals to Petunia Pig (a Tashlin- ambiguous ink-splotch into a much more (cute twin pups), a pianist Oliver Owl and invented sow), while she is more enrapt complicated but less appealing Bosko-a a scared kitten quakily show-and-telling with the \"Chewie Gooey\" candies and the fully-colored beige-mulatto cuteso-kiddo \"Mary's Little Lamb.\" flowers that he's brought to her. (The de- stereotype. Meantime, Warners' Looney personalizing salespitch in the florist's Tunes were left to schlep along with Most regaling, though, are those store window: \"A Posey to Please Every Buddy, a caucasian Xerox of the original SKELETON DANCE-like Melodies where Nosey.\") Without a doubt, Petunia Pig is a Bosko and pretty pallid and pale at that clotheslined ladies' underwear shimmies, Jayne Mansfield-progenitor but a much (though Freleng' s 1934 BUDDY THE GOB , Jello quivers, bodyless men's pajamas more taking-aback resemblance to the Orientally-swung, undulates well to bongo tree-stumps with their trap-door over-shapely Mansfield is discovered in \"Shanghai Lil\"). Fortunately, Harman- rears. Or those in which grocery the curvaceous design of the top-heavy Ising also had decreed a Merrie Melodies trademarks-brand names spring to song- Nazi pigeon se-duck-tress Hatta Mari in legacy before they left (among their early land-movement like the snazzy HOW DO I the rousing Tashlin \"propaganda\" cartoon Melodies, the 1932 THREE'S A CROWD, re- KNOW IT'S SUNDAY? (1934), where Dutch PLANE DAFFY (1944) , in which Daffy and his portedly initiating the books-coming-to- Cleanser labels wooden-shoe dance, carrier-pigeon confreres forlornly cancel life schemata) . The vintage Merrie Uwanta Biscuit insignias participate, out the names of every pigeon-flyer Melodies of the middle Thirties, furthered tamales fandango, lobsters and clamshells torched by wicked Hatta-an indubitable mainly under Freleng's direction, proved castenet, the umbrella-toting tootsie from visual-and-story quotation of DAWN to be less aesthetically perishable than the the Morton Salt container can get rightly \"Buddys.\" The mild smiles that are inspi- soaked by a downpour deluge from a box PATROL. rated by these Melodies might seem tame of Threaded Wheat (the unavoidable ac- Anyone admiring the devastating alllour or lame next to the far-flung guffaws en- companiment: \"By A Waterfall\"). And couraged by all the post-Avery manic- there are fitful startles: some flies abruptly fou of Tashlin's live-action farce THE ness-the acumen behind this fluid sinu- LIEUTENANT WORE SKIRTS, where Sheree ous motion maybe seeming less pro- North and Tom Ewell smutch each other nounced than that behind the Forties' later CONTINUED ON PACE 93 16 JAN .-FEB. 1975

BOB CLAMPETT . Top left series of four: PORKY IN WACKYLAND (1938). Porky Pig tracks the last of the Do-Dos , worth trillions , surrounded by Clampett 's wacky hallucinatory effects. Above : DAFFY DOC (1940). Is there any- thing funn y about an iron lung? The arti- ficial lung gag, which may at one time have seemed unutterabl y grotesque, in retrospect was onl y an excuse for Clam- pett to e x ploit h is sense of rubbery character motion: the fun of the accident' s aftermath (right), as Daffy 's head , hands, feet bulge in and out like inhaling-exhaling lungs. Series of five, top to bottom , at right: TIN PAN ALLEY CATS (1942). Given the moral alternatives of Uncle Tomcat' s Mission or the Kit Kat Club (top), which would you choose? Our protagonist opts for the latter; and in the middle of a jam session , he ex horts his trumpet player to \" SEND meoutofthis world \" in emulation of Fats Waller, on whom his character is ba sed (second panel) . He hallucinates the \" out-of-this-world \" lips (fourth) and an unforgettable \" rubber band \" (fifth ), cited in a Clampett interview by ani- mator-animation historian Milton Gray, in Funn ywor/d #12 . Left : Bob Clampett and friend , c. 1945.

\"We£t,/~kfe.a..u~b ba.ke,,! Gh.oWrlI rr\\.erlI!\" Interviews by Joe Adamson . Animation is a com plex, collaborative would say, \"Go ahead,\" knowing that he art, and it takes many men of many talents many days and nights to work its peculiar could depend on you for turning out the magic. While the animation director bears heavy burdens of responsibility and is type of humor that came out of the studio. granted in return an uncommon measure of control, he is dependent every step of God bless guys like Chuck Jones, who the wa y on a battery of story men, animators, and graphic designers to bring said, \"Go ahead. \" his vision to fruition . In these interviews, two of Chuck Jones' assistants, writer Chuck's scope is much, much wider Michael Maltese and designer Maurice Noble, discuss their roles in the elaborate than Freleng's. Freleng didn't dare venture process of cartoon creation. forth; he would back off when you sug- MICHAEL MALTESE When you're watching an old Warner gested a new thing to him. Chuck is a Brothers cartoon, and some powerful qual- highly sensitive man; that's what makes ity about the verbal exchanges makes you stop and say, \"Hey, who wrote this thing, him the artist he really is. That's why when anyway, Preston Sturges?\" , you can be fairly certain you are in the able hands of one of Chuck's characters gets hurt you Michael Maltese, story man at Warners from 1937 until 1958. Whether working 6 don't feel that they're really hurt. It's like alone or in collaboration with Tedd Pierce, whether working for Friz Freleng, Tex ~ he's going to make them better right away . Avery, or Chuck Jones, Maltese wrote the ~ When Chuck did a cartoon having to do funniest cartoons to come out of that or any other studio, characterized by Q with an alley-a dirty alley with a garbage Keatonesque sight gags and spiced by dialogue worthy of Ben Hecht. Maltese if: can-Chuck's garbage cans always looked wrote exclusively for Jones from 1946 to 1958, and it was a peak period for both . i;< spotlessly clean. They looked like they This interview was held April 3, 1971. 6 were made out of platinum-beautiful! MICHAEL MALTESE: It was fun going to work. The atmosphere! That place Michael Maltese (right) with Friz Freleng. U With Freleng, they looked dirty. When Fre- looked old, beat-up-it was right out of leng had a tough-looking cat, that cat was Dickens, you know? Really, you went in the back rooms, they were dreadful rooms. So what we did , we made him into a dirty, vicious, rotten. You could almost smell They had composition board for walls, and we used to put our fists through it, we grown-up, fussy-type bachelor, and we the cat. Chuck' s cats were always clean, used to throw darts at it. Dave Monahan teamed him with Daffy once in a while, precious. And even when he'd try to make tried to set fire to it once, just for the hell of and we gave him more grown-up stories, mean cats, there was always some kind of it, just to see if it burned. And it wouldn't and the result was that he picked up again . saving grace about them. burn . We did everything to that studio . And the boss, Leon Schlesinger, passed . They never went in for the cute stuff at The guy with the most mischievous the checks out once a week, and he said, \"Pew, let me outta here! This looks like a Warners. There was only one guy that Bugs Bunny character in the whole studio shit house.\" But we loved it. To me it was like home. And The Looney Tune Bunch tried cute stuff. Chuck, at the time-and was Tex Avery. He kept that studio jump- was something that will never be dupli- cated in this business. he'll admit it-had the Disney Syndrome: ing. When Avery was around, you got a We wrote cartoons for grown-ups , that the urge to try to make the most beautiful kind of gaggy, fun atmosphere. Usually, was the secret. For instance, Porky Pig was a boy pig. Chuck's stories at the time were cartoons going. Freleng would say, \"Ah, anybody working for a director would say slanted towards the kids, and the grown- ups would go out in the lobby for a smoke bullshit! Let's knock 'em dead!\" In 1944, \" He's the boss,\" and there would be prob- while the Porky Pig cartoon was on. And they were talking about dropping Porky. when I was working for Freleng, we came lems. But Avery would cheer the guys into up with Yosemite Sam in a picture called this crazy mixed-up attitude. And you can HARE TRIGGER, and I patterned him more put this down-I don't care what you hear or less after Freleng: \"WHY, I'LL BLOW from anybody else-he took Bugs Bunny *YOU TO SMITHEREENS! OOOOOH!\" and instilled into him the character that A real red-haired, hot-tempered little guy! made Bugs Bunny. Oh, he was a little firebrand . And a hard Tex is a hard man to work for. He's a per- taskmaster. With Freleng, you never knew fectionist to this point: that even when he's what he thought of your stories. He might ready to turn out a good cartoon, it's still love them, but he wouldn't tell you. I not as good as he wanted to make it. I'd tell never knew how much Freleng valued my him, \"You proved yourself already,\" but talents until I told him I was quitting to go he'd think, \"No, it's got to be better!\" He with Avery at MGM, and then worried himself to the point where it got \"OOOOOOOOOOOH!\" And he got to too difficult for him. the boss, and the boss called me up at When Avery was gone [to MGM], the home and said, \"You can' t quit. Freleng heritage that was left us at Warners was don't want you to quit.\" I was flattered . Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. And I was surprised. And it was up to us to develop these The relationship between Chu.ck and me characters and tum them into something. was just great. He gave me the freedom of Each unit had so many Bugs Bunnies to expression that I couldn' t have gotten from do, and so many Daffies-the stock stuff. Freleng. So for twelve years I worked with The rest of the schedule was up to us, these Chuck. A writer will go into the director's were one-shots. We came up with differ- room, and the director's busy and you'll ent characters that we thought would go, say, \"Can I see you a minute, Chuck? I'm * Avery's Bugs Bunny films are A WILD HARE, supposed to do a Bugs Bunny. Now here's an idea that I got.\" And like as not, Chuck TORTOISE BEATS HARE (both 1940), HECKLING HARE , ALL THIS AND RABBIT STEW (both 1941) . 18 JAN.-FEB. 1975

and they didn't go . Who could tell? We dontcha?\" and I says, \"Yeah, ga-nu. \" And ent kinds of acts. In one we showed Fre- didn't say, \"We're gonna do a Roadrunner he'd think, and he'd say, \"How about a leng, but Freleng didn' t think it was funny. cartoon, and it'll be a tremendous smash.\" Mesopotamian yellow-bellied sapsucker Freleng was bald; a bald-headed guy' s al- We'd had high hopes for other characters, chasing an Australian jackanapes?\" One ways self-conscious about his hair, and and they'd laid the biggest bombs! So we'd thing we learned was not to be self- nobody notices it, really. We did an act just say, \"It's just another filler.\" It was a conscious when you're thinking up stories where Tedd Pierce is walking along the big surprise when Roadrunner became a or cartoons. Because people hate to laugh street and he stops and takes out his comb, hit. We did only one a year, then two a unless they have a reason; they feel embar- and he combs his hair. Then he removes year, never more than that, for fear of kill- rassed. But we knew, writing these car- the loose hairs from his comb, drops them, ing it off. toon stories, that the kidding around that puts his comb away. Now I play Freleng. I we all did sort of broke down the barrier, pick up the loose hairs and paste them on I did a picture with Freleng called and enabled us to go unashamedly, almost my head. We showed that to Freleng one DOUBLE CHASER, where a cat went after a like children, into making absolute idiots day and he said, \"You son of a bitch,\" and mouse, a dog went after the cat, a dog- of ourselves. An outsider would see us and walked out. catcher went after the dog-and they all say, \"Well , for heaven' s sake! Grown got tangled up, and it was very funny. men!\" But we understood. Maybe we became cartoon writers be- Chuck and I used to kid around about a cause we thought this way, or maybe we chase film. I'd say, \"How 'bout an old wil- We'd start the ball rolling by making car- though t this way beca use we were cartoon debeest chasing an old gnu?\" And toons of each other, or we'd start kidding writers. I don't know. Chuck'd say, \"You mean a ga-nu, around, or we'd go on and do these differ- MAURICE NOBLE my desk after each picture. I put every- and I would work back and forth with No one who sees Chuck Jones' cartoons thing away. I don't pull anything out of the Chuck on the staging and things like this, hat and say, \"Well, it was good last pic- and eventually we had this super-colossal of the 1955 - 1970 period can fail to notice ture, I'll use it in this one.\" presentation . I've always loved that car- the stunning beauty of the design work. toon . Jones' cartoons were always well de- Many times Chuck would have an idea signed, and in the early Forties he was set- for a cartoon, and it would be either a I don't know whether any other de- ting new styles in cartoon layout that were rough story board or just a rough outline of signer thinks in the same terms that I do, declared bold and innovative when aped a story. And he'd call me in and give me a but I design in motion. If you have a by UPA a decade later, but with Maurice general idea of what we were going after. panoramic shot, it's a series of areas that Noble he achieved a visual grace that is as He might say, \"I need material there and are exposed to the eye as they pass delicate as it is striking. The Noble hall- here.\" So I would take his sketches and through . You have a big area and a small mark is as evident as Jones' in outstanding start weaving them into a continuity of area and a staccato area and so forth-put Warner and MGM cartoons like ASHEEP IN graphics. And out of the graphics, some- on a flash of red, let it extend for a long THE DEEP, BATON BUNNY, ROCKET SQUAD , times, would come another facet of the car- time, and then two flashes of blue, and the Academy-Award-winning THE DOT toon: a gag, or staging, or even a complete green, and it's a rhythmic thing. From the AND THE LINE, and the supreme tour-de- dramatic switch in the middle of the car- artistic standpoint, when you' re on a still force of short subject animation, WHAT'S toon. Then he would go back and intro- composition, your eye has a chance to OPERA, DOC? This interview took place De- duce it into the story as he developed it and wander and see a big area and a small area, cember 29, 1971. laid out the animation. and the balance of the composition. When you're on a panoramic shot also, your MAURICE NOBLE: When you speak of Some cartoons, just because of their na- overall total has to balance out to be an in- the cartoons Chuck's made over the years, ture, are A-B-C, right down the line. teresting eye experience: your large areas I think the variety of them and the explora- Others would permit the use of graphic and small areas are exhibited to the eye as tion of ideas is really tremendous . We al- exploration. We did a Space picture, and the pan goes along, and the spaces and ways tried to find a solution which seemed the idea of Space became more and more rhythms of this whole thing, this total appropriate to a story, whether from the developed. I'd do a sketch, and pretty over-all, is a visual composition in motion . directorial standpoint or the graphic soon we had floating cities, and jet- And this is purely done by the use of color standpoint. The style came out of the car- propelled taxicabs , and all this. Space and space relationships, and accents in toon, instead of vice versa. I think one of evolved. Far more than we ever antici- patterns of forms, and so forth . the strengths in Chuck's cartOons has al- pated originally. ways been just that: approaching each one There's a school of animation layout that as a fresh start. I have a tendency to clean I think WHAT'S OPERA, DOC? was one of I call the Nut and Bolt School: every rivet's them. The thing just got bigger and bigger in the right place, and every table is solidly and bigger, as these sketches came along, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in Chuck Jone s' WHAT'S OPERA, DOC? (195 7), Maurice Noble's \" supreme tour-de-force of short subject animation. \" FILM COMMENT 19

Right: Chuck Jones' THE PHANTOM TO LLBOOTH (19 71). Left : Jones' SHEEP AHOY (1954). CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19 was given a great deal of creative leeway, belonged to the Shirly Door Knob School: because I believe he had confidence irl my they were putting highlights on brass on the ground, and every chair is drawn so taste and what I was doirlg for the pictures. doorknobs. And they would come back that you know it's a Chippendale. There If I designed somethirlg that didn't seem to into my room to see what was goirlg on, are many very fine designers for animation be appropriate, he would let me know, shaking their heads. Sometimes they who are not happy unless they have been with no doubt irl his mirld, that this was would groan, and sometimes they'd be able to put every nail in place all the way not correct-at least, to his way of think- very puzzled, and sometimes they'd look through a composition. But when the ing. And this is something that one always at it and say, \"What in the hell are you camera quickly goes across something like has to accept in any given production : the doirlg?\" And I would say, \"Well, I'm de- this, the important thing is what it says: director is the director. signirlg the picture. Isn' t it irlteresting?\" \"Table-Chair. \" An interesting table and And to me it would be real interesting. chair. Beca use of the na ture of the Chuck was the kind of person that And they wouldn't know what it was all medium, the eye is exposed to somethirlg wanted fresh ideas. He was kind of a Dis- about. They thought I was bats when I put irl such short flashes that everythirlg must ney of the short subject. I don't believe I that bright red on Elmer with those purple read very quickly, and irl an interesting would have worked as many years for skies in WHAT'S OPERA , DOC? Yet they way. So it doesn't matter what period it is, Chuck if he hadn't had these fresh ideas thought it was great when they finally saw unless you're definitely workirlg irl period. coming along all the time . Because one it on the screen. I had the Ink and Pairlt Then one exaggerates. You take what is the must really enjoy one's work to make it Department come irl and say, \"You really essence of that period and overemphasize bloom, you know? mean you want that magenta red on that?\" it. I'm quite sure that a lot of the French And I said, \" Yes, that's the way.\" I had furniture I've thrown irl some of the Pepe One thing about Chuck's cartoons is the made this sketch and shown Chuck what Le Pews would never stand on their over- tremendous number of cuts . And back- the result was goirlg to be, and he said, exaggerated curved legs . But the overall grounds. In the busirless, a \"same-as\" is a \" Yeah, go ahead .\" appearance when the eye sees it quickly is: scene used over again. And his pictures Here is an overdone rococo French in- would never have \"sa me-as\" back- I did a character one time all pairlted irl terior, of big swerving backs and so forth. grounds, because there was always a new white. It was a woman with a white poo- facet or something, so it meant a new lay- dle, and a white umbrella, and she was all Exaggeration for comic effect also can be out. Many times I would design maybe a dressed irl white. Everythirlg. And I think woven irlto it if that's what yo u're going hundred backgrounds for one cartoon . a red rose was pirlned on her. And they after. But, irl essence, all design for anima- And this gave them a sense of motion and thought, \"Why, there ' s no color to this tion should have a certain humor to it. It variety, while the other departments character. \" Well, it looked beautiful on the must, in its shapes and color, contribute to would be painting twenty-five or thirty screen. the spirit of the cartoon. If it's stodgy de- backgrounds. And the same telephone sign, and a Gang-Buster cartoon, they pole would be comirlg through constantly, I've been fortunate enough to pull off a don't mix. Well, my sense of design wouldn't permit number of things, so that now when I do me to do that. We couldn't go back and somethirlg zany, they tend to listen to me . Workirlg with Chuck Jones was a very re-use backgrounds. And many times IfI can' t make it irlteresting, I don' t want to creative experience. It got to the point when we tried to, it was a loss of time, be- stick around. I really don't. You work with where we would have a few short-hand cause we would have to make readjust- some directors and this is it. They don't conversations regarding the picture, and ments and re-pairlt and re-peg, and by the understand what exploring for ideas then he' d more or less say, \"Don't bother time we had gone through all that, we means. And this is what Chuck was al- me, just go ahead and do it.\" And I know might as well have started from scratch. ways after: ideas.~· that sometimes he was just a little sur- prised at what he got back. But it worked At that time, most of the other animators well, so he would keep his mouth shut. I Maurice Noble's \" electric eye\" and \" Martian Maggot\" from Jones' DUCK DODGERS IN THE 24% CENTURY (1953). 20 JAN .-FEB. 1975

Like the great silent comedians, BEGINNINGS; Jones could express emotions EARLY EXPERIMENTATION; \"through physical detail-- REALISM VS. \"BELIEVABILITY\" and it was beautiful to watch.\" CHUCK JONES: Kansas City is where Interview byGreg Ford and Richard Thompson Ub Iwerks started, and Bugs Hardaway, and Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising and Walt and Roy Disney . .. all those people worked for that one little company, Film Ads in Kansas City. And until it kind of pe- teredout, they actually made commercials, commercials for theatrical showing. Walt then came West, and then Friz, Ham Hamilton, classic animators, and they all got established with ALICE IN CARTOON - LAND at Universal. I came up with the next generation-well, generations were sepa- rated by about eight or ten years then. Those of us who had gone to Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles, where could we work? We could go into commercial art or we could go into animation. So I worked with Ub Iwerks, who had split with Disney at the time. I worked for Universal, and then Charles Mintz, and . . .hell, in those days you jumped from studio to studio . But eventually I came to Warner Brothers. Meantime, I worked as a sailor for a while, went to South America or someplace. Q. And as a lumberjack, and a cowboy . . . A: I was called a lumberjack by Disney people who thought I was a communist. Q: What does a lumberjack have in common with a communist? A: Well, they used to say that the Com- munists took \"little hairy Jewish people\" along when they had a speech to make at a union meeting. When I spoke at a meet- ing, one of the Disney animators said, \"How come they' re using these big pink lumberjack types now?\", and pretty soon everybody was saying it. So I went home and took a look at myself-I was twenty-five-and, sure enough, I was a big pink lumberjack type. And I was a fat lumberjack-two hundred and five pounds. Q: In Positif magazine, they say that Chuck Jones, before he went to Warners, was a lumberjack, and had a big blue ox named Babe. A: That was true. That was a sexual rela- tionship. But anyway . .. Q: Somehow, we've got your chronol- ogy all screwed up . Did you do that before you worked in any animation studios? Or in-between? A: I don' t know . . .Anyway, I did it. Q: Your first cartoons, starting from about 1938, seem to make a much greater effort to approximate realistic shape and movement than your later cartoons. A: That really was an effort, learning how to make things move. One of the things I think is basically misunderstood about easel art is that, say, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, de Kooning, Robert Motherwell can all draw beautifully. They all had line control. They had to learn that, and then they branched out. It's hard to FILM COMMENT 21

J CHUCK JONES CONTINUED • ~OAD·RUNNER think of an artist that is worth anything who didn't have this ability. They started ('IRDIIUS IlrtJ.US with the basics. With those early cartoons, I was learning the basics. What the hell, I Chuck Jones (1956). started directing when I was twenty-five, so I had to learn the language, and so did Original art: Daffy Duck in my animators. We had classes-for years, ROBIN HOOD DAFFY (1958). we had at least two classes per week, at night. And we were working a five-and-a-half-day week, about fifty-six hours a week. Q: Who conducted the classes? A: I did . And I had to learn at the same time . I went to the lectures that they were having at Disney's with Don Graham. We also went through a whole series of classes from the Art Students League, conducted by Simone Nikoliades, who did those edged drawings, marvelous things, which kind of caught the character. He laid down the law that if you ever want to learn to draw, you have a hundred thousand bad drawings in you. And the sooner you get rid of them, the better you are. So we did thousands of drawings. Q: This realism effects timing, too . An early cartoon like GOOD NIGHT ELMER [1940] is rather slow-it seems obsessed with realistic movement, shape, and shading. A: The shading was there because of the presence of a single light-source, the can- dle, which was very important. The story was just a tiny thing: a man attempting to put out a little candle. How can you make an entire story about that? Is it possible? That's what I wanted to know. I wouldn't say it was a particularly successful picture, but it was crucial in terms of what came af- terward. You have to stumble a lot, I can't think of any other way of doing anything. There are no short-cuts. And nobody had the time to do a scene and then throw it away-we had to use it in the final film. At Disney's, during the same period, they were experimenting with things and then not using them. They could afford to, but we couldn't. There was nothing wrong with that, but several of the pictures were experimental-some of them worked and some didn' t. Some were slow, but I was at- tempting to discover things about timing here, and in the early \"Sniffles\" films. Be- sides, they didn't seem as slow then, basi- cally because all cartoons weren't at such a fantastic pace. The pace thing started with THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE [1935] at Disney'S. Q: One aspect of THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE which you seem to have picked out and expanded in the Pepe Le Pew series is the \"Slow and steady wins the race\" idea of character action. Pepe maintains his steady pace, while the female cat Pepe is pursuing finally wears herself out with fas- ter but more sporadic movements. A: I did that even earlier in LIlTLE LION HUNTER [1939, Jones' first cartoon featuring the native African child lnki and the mysti- cal mynah bird]. The mynah bird was that sort of steady character. I often have music

dictating the steady pace. In the Inki series, see-he was an evil trung. It was the last of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in WHAT'S OPERA , the mynah bird would hop along to the great clearcut conflicts. Nevertheless, DO((1957). \"Fingal's Cave Overture. \" That was my within the context of cha uvinism, you first experience with Mendelssohn. could discover the idiocy of people just c 1975 Warner wanting to go throw themselves out in Baby Bear and Mama Bear. Q : The vocabulary of Carl Stalling, the front of the cannon. At least you could be regular composer for Warners cartoons , is z unbelievable. He can even anticipate the reasonable. audience's association with the image. For Another development is that after this 0 instance, in the middle of the chase in FAST AND FURRY-OUS [1949], the first \" Roadrun- film, and after the war, I worked more with ':\":; ner\" film, you cut to an overhead perspec- the writer Mike Maltese. He was more of a tive of this highway cloverleaf that the gagman than Tedd Pierce, with whom I'd < characters are running around, and Stall- been working earlier. Tedd tended to be ing immediately refers to ''I'm Looking more of a writer. He was good at structure, 0 Over a Four- Leaf Clover. \" He seems to be and it was a humorous structure-but it able to relate to any kind of music. wasn't gags. On the other hand, Mike Mal- < tese was, and still is, a brilliant gagman. A: There was a reason for that: he was a But whatever happened during that Q lead organist at some of the biggest thea- period, it probably wasn' t due to the War. ters in St. Louis and Kansas City, where If anything, the War would have calmed it \\~ you had to have everything right at your >- \\ fingertips. That was one of the reasons he down. tended to go toward visual titles . When a Q : At any rate, we could say that in 1942 \"\"::J character was eating something, he'd play 0 \"A Cup of Coffee, A Sandwich, And You,\" there suddenly was a decisive break from U even though it might not fit exactly. If it that over-awareness of realism. was a lady in a red dress, he'd always play \"The Lady in Red,\" or if a bee, he'd always A: Yeah, that's right. I think at that point play \"My Funny Little Bumblebee,\" which the language began to be learned, and this was written in 1906. Sometimes it worked group of people working together discov- and sometimes it didn't-that \"Funny Lit- ered that they were all reasonably facile. tle Bumblebee\" thing was so obscure no The team thing is very important. It gets to one could make the connection. You had to the point where you can snap your fingers, be a hundred and eight years old to even or make a single drawing to convey your know there was such a song. idea. Whenever a new animator came to work for me, he was in trouble for a while, Q : Around 1941 or 1942 your cartoons because on my exposure sheets, I would seemed to change-they began to present put down a notation like \"BAL\" -which more violent and radical character-motion, was \"balance\" -or \" ANT\"- \"an ticipate.\" and the backgrounds became more And all my animators had to know exactly stylized. Do you think the War had any ef- what they meant. fect on this change? Q: What did it mean-an anticipation A: I think as far as action and before the actual motion? subject-matter were concerned, my car- toons actually were gentler before A: Sure. Or \" BAL\" might mean that I'd 1941 ... so I'd agree with that proposition wan t a particular character solid on his feet to a limited extent. But generally, no, I before he did something, so you'd know don't think there's much of a connection that there was a stability to the thing, be- there. In terms of violent character-action, fore it moved into action . Of course, I used I suppose that I was effected somewhat by \"holds,\" and animators learned that when both Friz [Freleng] and Tex [Avery]. I al- I put down a twelve-frame hold, that ways admired their sense of timing and didn't mean thirteen frames or eleven sense of movement, and their gag frames-it meant twelve frames exactly. structures-although they certainly When the Coyote fell off, I knew he had to worked differently. You see, after THE go exactly three or four feet and then dis- DRAFT HORSE [1941], I discovered that I appear for eighteen frames before he hit. A could make people laugh-and not just be new animator would come in and he amused. And that's a heady thing . You get would overlap that, and it would never so you want to make them laugh, or at least work. make yourself laugh. When we'd layout dances, we began to Q : THE DRAFT HORSE is still very funny understand that we could anticipate by today. To begin with, we' re confronted one frame. If a step is supposed to come with a superpatriotic plowhorse, flags in down on a beat, we found out that if you rus eyes, who then of course is terrified moved it up one frame, it would work, be- when he's caught in the middle of some cause the throw back to the middle of the army war-games. theater, thirty rows back, would make the step appear to be exactly on beat. That's A: Well, at this particular time, very early just one frame we're talking about, in the Second World War, everybody was one-twenty-fourth of a second, but we in favor of fighting. There were simple found out it worked best for the entire the- terms then. You have to be in contact with ater if you were one frame ahead of the the idea of what Adolf Hitler was: he was beat. an enormity, a giant black thing over the horizon. That was something you could Q: How often did you use rotoscoping? A: Almost never. OccaSionally, when we had to shoot something like a complicated dance, we'd actually take live-action AWlgnerian shadcw cast on a cliffside in WHAT'S OPERA, DOC?

CHUCK JONES CONTINUED A: That's right. They wandered in, and and shatters them against the wall , the frames and study them, sketch them out the place had a robot broom that would records fly and break into pieces, and the and look at them to see where the feet would land . We did that for the sweep up anything, regardless of what it robot, invariably, has to come out and leprechaun's little jig in THE WEARING OF THE GRIN [1951], where Porky goes to Ire- was. sweep up, again and again. Also, there are land. Q: And the dogs had to dodge the robot shots, with the simulated editing, of a mis- Q : There are so many disciplines just in terms of timing-the way Bugs Bunny broom, to keep from getting swept up sile sailing past intercut with a quick insert walked must have been mathematically exact. themselves. You did a remake of the same of a character, just watching it go by. A: Sure, but the basic thing in animation film about a decade later, this time starring A: That may have been generated from a is that you're talking about believability. You see, I was dealing with the idea of your mice characters Hubie and Bertie fascination with tennis matches, and such realism first, but then I realized that be- lievability was much more important. So [HOUSE HUNTING MICE, 1947], which seems intercutting effects would often make the that with Bugs or any other character, it was the feeling of weight that mattered . to be such an incredible improvement on scene work . It also demonstrates that you One of the best examples of this is puppets or marionettes: they seem to work best if the original DOGGONE MODERN. could get an object to look like it's moving a their knees don't bend when their feet touch the ground . Otherwise, they look all A: Well, the style of background was hell of a lot faster with editing. And wrong, because there's no suggestion of gravity there. So I discovered that if you completely different in the two cartoons . eventually, I began to add shadows of the get the feeling of weight, you ' re all right-it doesn' t really make much differ- In the first few pictures I worked on, we missile flying past; this happened very ence whether it's realistically drawn or not. used a man by the name of Griff Jay, who often in the \"Roadrunner\" films. Q : In other words, the values become less literal and more abstract. was an old newspaper cartoonist-and he Q: Most memorably, when you get an A: Sure. If you wantit loose, if you want did what we'd call \" moldy prune\" back- insert dose- up of the Coyote, with a truck it buoyant, if you want it inflated like a balloon-well, go ahead and make it like a grounds. Everybody used the same type of or train heading right for him, the shadow balloon. But if my decision is that it' s a Bugs Bunny story-then Bugs has a par- thing back then-Charlie Johnston drew of it going over his face, and he's holding ticular weight. So I want him to feel, as he walks across a room, as if he has this given backgrounds for Tex Avery, and he was an up a little sign that says \"STOP, IN THE density, this given solidity. old newspaper cartoonist too. NAME OF HUMANITY,\" or something Q: Unless he's pulling himself out of a Q : But the biggest difference between like that. ahat, la CASE OF THE MISSING HARE [1942]. the two films is in the starring characters. A: Of course you realize that all our stuff A: Ah ha! But even then, pulling your- self out of a hat has a feeling of weight, as The situation is the same, a pair of charac- was pre-edited; it had \" simulated edit- you lift yourself up. This feeling of weight and believability can even be offscreen, as ters being victimized by the crazy elec- ing,\" as you say. The editing was all in the in DUCK AMUCK [1953] and RABBIT RAMPAGE [1955]. tronic house devices, but Hubie and Bertie director's head. A lot of people don't Q: Certain themes started emerging the in HOUSE HUNTING MICE are active and fully realize that, so it's interesting and well very first year you began to direct . In DOGGONE MODERN [1938], those two early developed characters, while the dogs are worth emphasizing. This wasn' t necessar- dogs of yours, the boxer and his puppy pal, were pitted against the absurdities of far too passive-they just don't have a ily true of Disney, but we didn' t actually technology, much as all those\"Acme\" de- vices would later backfire on the Coyote in chance. physically cut our stuff at all. The directors his quest for the Roadrunner. The two dogs got trapped in a modernistic A: No, they don't. The dogs don'-t really here developed the ability to bring in a car- house-of- the- future . amount to anything. They just walk toon within ten seconds of its proper around and get mixed up in all the length. It's easier to do this on a spot-gag gadgetry. But they don' t demonstrate any picture that it is on a story picture, of real human reactions, none that we can course. It was really mental editing, and recognize anyway, beyond a sort of I've never met a live-action director, or generalized anxiety. The characters aren' t editor, who understood how this could be really established, so you don't care about done. It's just like shooting these little dips the, You do care about Hubie and Bertie, of film in live-action, at exactly their proper though. length, and putting them all together. And Q : They' re real personalities. It' s so ~~ / much more exhilarating to see them re- spond to the machinery, occasionally react / ~ ( v\\ against it, and at odd times even triumph over it. There's a marvelous sequence where Hubie and Bertie succeed in tem- ~ ~~f) ~ porarily outfoxing the robot, remember? .':t {(If; I)I ~ Unlike the two dags, they finally realize that this fucking broom is going to whiz u out and sweep up the debris, regardless of E ~ ,) purpose, and so, this time, the characters ie \\ make use of the fact and consciously try to co wear the robot out. They turn on an au- ~ tomatic record ejector that shoots out discs ~ ~ o'\" An original Culhane 's sketch of the lion, with emphas is on hind leg s, in IN KI AND THE LION (1941). this was the necessity of the situation, since we weren' t allowed any retakes. We weren' t allowed to cut. We only had so much footage, and we had to do it right the first time . We did retakes in the sense that we' d re-animate something, if it was wrong, but we never re-filmed. Q: One thing puzzles me: Treg Brown occasionally gets a \"film editor's\" credit. Usually he is credited as a sound-effects man. 24 JAN.-FEB. 1975 '

A: Right, the \"film editor's\" credit also like Robinson Crusoe. Anyway, we had to to crack an extraordinarily uncrackable refers to sound-effects; he was a sound ef- go through the process of anatomy first, in nut . And he tries everything: sawing it, fects cutter. He deserved his credit things like DOGGONE MODERN, so that the exploding it, riveting it. thoroughly, since he was one of the most later dogs still gave the impression of being brilliant sound-effects editors that ever dogs, but weren't drawn exactly like dogs A: That was a difficult picture to do . It lived. and didn't move exactly like dogs . Marc was such a simple gag; it's almost idiotic in Antony in FEED THE KITIY [1952] and CAT it's simplicity. No dialogue, of course. But Q: Your cartoons have more of this simu- FEUD [1959] certainly appeared to be a dog, when he tried to crack the cocoanut by lated, live-action-type editing than any but he moved according to the anatomy pushing it off the Empire State other cartoon director's. In the middle of we had established for him. He was over- Building-that was the sequence that got one of the \"Roadrunner\" chases, the cam- weight in front, and had a tiny behind. me. He starts pushing the cocoanut up all era angles switch rapidly from pan shot, to those flights of stairs, and I'm so sad for a close-up of the Coyote, to an overhead him when he has to push it up each stair vantage, etc. Nobody at Warners did this individually, then scramble up the next kind of thing more frequen tly, except pos- stair and push it again, and so on. sibly Frank Tashlin. Friz Freleng, on the other hand, seemed to opt more for an illu- EMOTIONAL NUANCE; sion of \"stage space,\" as if the characters FACIAL DETAIL were performing live on a stage platform . You often revert to close- ups, reaction Q: What struck you as most impressive shots, and even very subtle uses of subjec- in Buster Keaton's repertoire of physical gags? A: He often moved like he was being pulled away-he' d doubletake as though someone were yanking him by the back of his collar. The classic scene of all is where he actually was dragged off-in cops, I be- lieve. There were these hundreds of cops chasing him, right behind him; a streetcar goes by and Keaton just reaches out and grabs it and it pulls him off-screen. Q :There's a gag like that in ZOOM AND BORED, where the Coyote' s foot gets ~~. 9ls:a::: caught in the rope of the harpoon that he's just shot off. He' s struggling to unsnarl his .,) foot and finall y succeeds, but then realizes that he's left mid-air over one of those ter- The M ynah Bird and Inki, by Chuck Jones. rible thousand-foot drops. So at the last second he grabs for the end of the harpoon rope, still zipping by-and he's yanked off tive view points; Freleng goes for Q: And the frisky puppy in TERRIER in the way you described that Keaton bit. I single-takes. STRICKEN [1952] and TWO'S A CROWD [1951] seems to me you were influenced even was a natural-looking four-legged puppy. more by Keaton than Chaplin. A: It sounds like an observation that But his friskiness is just beyond the realis- you' d be able to make more accurately tic. There came to be a very thin line for A: I would think so, because my stuff is a than I could. I don' t see myoid pictures too you, then, between the realistic and the little broader than Chaplin's, although the regularly, and I never think of them in slightly exaggerated. early Chaplin is quite broad, too . Chaplin terms of cutting. originated those funny little hoppy runs A: Oh yes, a real dog might do other and turns, where he bounces up and Q: Another thing wrong with the two down a bit while rounding a corner. I'd use early dogs that appeared in DOGGONE things than what this puppy does, but the that a lot; I thought it always looked funny I, MODERN and a couple of other films at the puppy's basic characteristic is this fastness . and strange because it wasn't at all neces- time: there seemed to be some question as So that's what I take off on and accent: that sary, physically. It was redundant. Simi- to what movements were defined for incredibly quick movement. He comes larly, Chaplin's surprised reactions were them. They were very naturalistically sliding in, barking like crazy, all ears, arms, always comically over-elaborated . He' d drawn, but their movements seemed to and legs. jump up into the air and then come down confuse human-like and canine actions. Q: And the squirrel in MUCH ADO ABOUT and then start to run. The jump is solely a method of registering excitement and A: That's why there wasn ' t any NUTTING [1953] is also a natural-seeming realization . He'd look like a human character, because what we were trying to squirrel ... exclamation point, calling attention to his do was to find out how the hell a dog surprise-like saying, \"Ah! I'm sur- moves. Just how he moves, and nothing A: Technically, that's one of the best pic- prised!\"-and then he'd run. Since they much beyond that. That's when I was tures I ever made. I studied squirrels just to had no other means to express it, they'd do fighting the anthropomorphic idea of find out how they moved; they tum their it with physical action, and it was beautiful movement. They were modeled with heads in almost one frame and then they to watch. back-legs like dogs, but nobody really hesitate as they look-like a bird, they knew how to move them properly. The re- don't have binocular vision . I love those lit- Q: You seem to have a special interest in sult was that they looked rather awkward. tle hesitations when he's looking around eyes. and sniffing. If the surrealistic ending One very pivotal film for me was INKI worked it was because everything was so A: Oh yes . That's another thing I picked AND THE LION [1941] , where Shamus normal up to that time. The cocoanut was up from Keaton-those little eye-flicks to- Culhane, one of the all-time great simply impossible to break, and when it ward the camera, which I'd use, say, animators, finally got that lion to did break there was another one beneath whenever the Coyote realizes that some- work-then Manny Farber wrote in New it . thing is inevitably going to fall on him and Republic that he thought the lion looked the action stops for a moment. Of course, Q: Just one ordinary squirrel setting out FILM COMMENT 25

CHUCK JONES CONTINUED dressed for the part, but he wasn't really that was always used in the early Tom Mix the brave matador. Westerns, too, during a tense poker game-everything would be stockstill in Q : But in terms of facial detail, I'd have to the frame except that the eyes, in close-up, would be flickering back and forth, left and pinpoint FEED THE KITTY [1952J for its right. I found that yo u could get a laugh from any of these minimal movements . gamut-running of facial expressions. Like in TERRIER STRICKEN, you hear the mistress off-screen telling the cat to take A: Of course, that was a very sentimen- care of Frisky, the little puppy. Claude Cat has a devilish smirk on his face, of course, tal picture. but we got the laugh from just his tiny eye-movement from side to side. Q : The tough bulldog falls hard for a tiny \" Q: Often yo u bring the whites together black kitten . .. so that the two eyes are joined, to indicate a character's surprise. A: The dog starts out pugnaciously with A: That just seems to make the surprise the cat but then runs the entire gamut of a dramatically s tronger. I might take one eye up and even make the other one square relationship with anyone. It's like a girl, under certain conditions. I found that once they're accepted as eyes, you can do any- you know, when you first meet her: then thing with them to get strong effects. Tex Avery used them so that the eyes would yo u gradually get so that yo u can stand her shoot out approximately six feet, then fall on the floor, etc. I never went quite that far. and then yo u fall in love with her, then you Q : You did , just once in a special become obsessed with her and fear she's case-HOPALONG CASUALTY [1961], when the Coyote reads that Earthquake Pills going to die or something. And that is The frisky puppy, his fastness emphasized , in NO aren't effective on roadrunners. what the dog went through: he was a very BARKING (1954). A: I usually use such extremes only for protechve character. I got involved with simplest thing to use if you don't happen strong reactions , as when the Coyote is that bloody dog, Mark Antony: his panic to have any other tools at hand. amazed at the Roadrunner's speed and his when he thinks the cat is going to die, his jaw drops straight to the ground. But then efforts to look nonchalant when he's trying I have a running gag I want to do he immediately picks it up and shoves it to cover up for the cat. The drawings in sometime-picking up on the image of the back into its proper place. I wanted to get that cartoon were a lot of fun. Big Spring, and making an entire cartoon his startlementat the Roadrunner's speed. about it. The Coyote could just get caught Q: Those movements seem to suspend up in the spring, then later it could just time, like when the construction worker in ?NE FROG.GY EVENING [1956J finds the sing- GRAVITY, VELOCITY, AND THE RE- bounce him along, then he could get mg frog ill the cornerstone, and gives a LATION OF FOREGROUND TO caught up in it again, and it would just prolonged look of disbelief at the audience, BACKGROUND keep going. Then he could falloff the edge or when the Coyote is scheming and one of of a cliff and one end of the spring could his ears simply flaps over. Q: What are your favorite effects to catch on top of the cliff, and then he'd get A: I don't know how long those move- show, say, the force of gravity in cartoons? down to the end of the spring, and there'd ments take, but when I use them, you see, You often use those straight-on shots of be an outcropping and he'd grab the out- it's simply a matter of conspiring with the the Coyote in the midst of a fall, and differ- cropping. And then he'd spring back to the audience. ent parts of his body fall at different times. top and he'd pull the outcropping up and that would drive him down again. Because Q: Sometimes yo u suspend all action for A: Well, that was an old trick of mine to ~hen something compresses, it has to go a moment as beads of sweat start forming emphasize the idea of faIling. A good ex- ill the opposite direction-it's cause and on a character's forehead-like when the ample of this in actual nature-one that effect. And so, you see, just this spring, guy in ONE FROGGY EVENING is showing the always'infuriated me-is when a red light combined with gravity, would be all you'd frog to the agent and is worried whether or changes. Why doesn't everybody move at need in terms of motive power. not it'll sing. once? But they don't: the first car moves, then the second takes its movement from Q: How would that cartoon end, just in A: In the earlier cartoons we'd have a the first, and so on, and yet supposedly it is the middle of the action? heavier profusion of sweat for an anxious possible that they could all start at once. To character. But in the Fifties we learned that me it was funny to apply the same princi- A: I don't know how I'm ever going to just one or two beads looked better. ple to a living body, so that the Coyote's end it, but it would obviously end up in a trunk would drop away, and then his face . situation that implies a continuum, where Q : Another one of my favorite instances and stretched -out neck would still be the action goes right back where you of this time-marking animation occurs in there, then the head would drop, leaving started from . That \"Here we go again!\" BULLY FOR BUGS [1953J when the proud the ears, and then the ears'd drop off. kitsch. We might even use a spring wipe matador looks at the camera, doesn't move for the ending, going off in the distance or for a time, then simply flares one of his Q : It prolongs the agony, too, having the just faIling away from the camera. nostrils. Coyote involved feel each part of his body drop at different times, his expressions Q : MOUSE WRECKERS seems to us to be a A: That's a caricature of Juan Belmonte, changing in the process. major cartoon because of the controlling one of the great bullfighters. He looked like factors of the film are always kept that and was every bit as vain. And then I A: And yet when he lands, you know, it off-screen. Your two mouse characters, put in him what I would feel under the same circumstances-that is, fear-once doesn' t seem to hurt him any. It's usually The Coyote, with stretched-out neck , fall s out of the he's face to face with the bull . So he's just the idea of falling, the idea itself, which frame in ZOOM AN D BORED (1957). seems to carry the emotional impact. 26 JAN .-FEB. 1975 Q: Sometimes you have entire cartoons set up around the idea of gravity. In MOUSE WRECKERS [1948], for instance, you have a whole string of gravity gags, the coup de grace being the upside-down room se- quence. A: An earlier gravity gag in that cartoon is when Claude Cat is pulled through the house by the rope, which is triggered by the mice pushing the heavy boulder off the chimney. And remember? Claude would get pulled into stacks of dishes, around ~ bannisters, under tables. Gravity is the \" --

Hubie and Bertie, are stationed on the the liquid flowed up, while if it were vibrating and so, with these two things in chimney playing architectural mind- games on poor Claude Cat, who's alone in shown from yo ur viewpoint it would combination, yo u still have something on the house below. The mice reconstruct his entire room, and when Claude wakes up, naturally flow down. And I wanted to the screen after the arrow is gone . Here, he doesn't know whether these things are really happening or whether he's hal- show what he felt. Actually, Charlie Chap- what's important is what's left over: the lucinating it all. lin used something like that in the opening catapults in m y cartoons are sho w n the A: In the later M-G-M remake, YEAR OF THE MOUSE [1965], the cat finall y realizes airplane sequence of THE GREAT DICTATOR, same way, the y g ive yo u a refe rence - that the mice are provoking these disas- ters, and at the end he catches the mice. when he's piloting his plane upside- point. Q: Yeah, it's a moral ending, where the down . And the same series of gags are in Q : There's an early Daffy Duck cartoon earlier Warners film has an immoral end- ing. the Porky Pig cartoon JUMPIN' JUPI- called CONRAD THE SAILOR [1941] which A: Oh, well, I like immoral endings had very pronounced experimentation better. Forgetting the Tom and Jerry, the purpose in MOUSE WRECKERS was that the with ways o f presenting speed. You actu- ally had the running characters leave ghost-images behind them, which would then catch up with the solid characters. I also remember a promine nt use of matched cutting in that cartoon. /~k Well, we u\"d , lot of oved'pping Original sketch for the Coyote in READY, SET ZOOM! (1955) . cat never realized exactly what was hap- ,G pening to him . And it was based on an ac- tual happening. This upside-down room c 1975 Warner Brothers, In c. did exist: some English duke or something has a weird sense of humor, and at his par- COURTESYJOE ADAMSO N ties, when someone would pass out, he'd ha ul 'em in there and everyone would look TER [1955] when they lose their gravity. graphics on that particular cartoon, so that through the holes in the walls and watch There I didn' t have to turn the camera one scene would have the same graphic them come to . And people would do ex- around, obviously, since it was in outer shape as an earlier scene, even though it actly what the cat did: they'd try to crawl space. I just used a little sign that read: would be a different object: first we'd show up the wall or something-particularly \" You are now entering a low gravity a gun pointing up in the air, then in the someone with a dreadful hangover, you zone.\" can imagine how hideous that was. iQ : This brings us to another natural Q: The second-to-last image of that car- toon is amazing. It's just Claude's eyes, force. I was wondering about yo ur means with the cat being driven totally insane, of expressing velocity on the screen. One ~ cowering at the top of a tree, and the leaves of my favorite gimmicks is in BULLY FOR ~ falling away just enough to reveal those BUGS: as the bull charges, it leaves dozens ~ eyes. ©of hooves in mid-air behind it . Daffy's ~ A: In that picture I used a different thing: the eyes were handled almost like a pair of horse in DRIP-ALONG DAFFY [1951] leaves animated breasts-did you notice that? hooves in its wake as well. You often use ==~::::~~ dust, as when the Coyote is lagging just Q: Yes, the pupil came out of the ball of behind the Roadrunner and is trying to the eye, like a nipple . The fear registered in pick up speed. Claude's eyes in amazing, as he looks from side to side. A: Well, there again I'm giving the viewer something to hold onto, something A: Phil Monroe did a good job on that. to register the speed. A bow and arrow is a Q : When Claude is in the upSide-down good example from real life. You pull the room, on the ceiling that he thinks is the string back, and release the arrow, but the floor, trying to keep his balance by digging bow is there-except in a Daffy Duck car- The upside-down room sequence in MOUSE his claws into the ceiling, the camera toon . But the bow is there with its string WRECKERS (1948), by Chuck Jones. turns around and goes upSide-down with Claude; it's faSCinating . I wonder if you were trying to show the force of gravity through motion alone, and without the standard visual presentation of what's up and what's down. A: Well, Claude opened the bottle and FILM COMMENT 27

CHUCK JONES CONTINUED foliage, which serve as the background for desert landscape backgrounds were flat- the next shot. In regard to technical tened out, more Japanese. next shot, there'd be a cloud in exactly the facilities at Warner Brothers, did you have same shape. It gave a certain stability a multiplane camera, or anything like it? Donald Graham, the dean of all art which we used in many of the cartoons teachers for cartoonists, always said that after that. John McGrew was the artist re- A: No, we faked it a lot but we never had cartoons were unique in the way they es- sponsible for that sort of thing. CONRAD any such thing. I don't think any studio tablished space by movement. And he said was also the one where we used the first did except Disney'S. that the \"Roadrunner\" series was the only complete 360-degree turn, when the case that he knew in which a form moved characters went up through the air. Q: Sometimes, the Warners cartoons in \"pure\" space, where the space was have at least two layers, moving in perspec- achieved entirely by the form moving it. Q: Conrad and Daffy are being chased tive during a shot. through the air by a torpedo, and they go Q: That's certainly evident when you get around full circle. A: Well , we could do that all right. those overhead-viewpoints of the Coyote Johnny Burton, who was in charge of pro- falling off a cliff. He falls straightaway from A: The fields themselves did not turn all duction, was pretty damn good at man- the camera, isolated against a completely the way around. The field only made a par- euvering things around to get a blank background, diminishing, then dis- tial turn. The effect was accomplished pn_ three-dimensional effect, but all three appearing for a time until-poof!-he's tirely by changing the shape of the clouds. layers would actually be on the same level been reduced to a puff of dust on the The clouds were the main thing. So when as we were photographing them. He was ground below. Are there any antecedents you saw it, it looked like you made one very clever at working out the speed at to that? In SUPER RABBIT [1943], Bugs complete revolution-we started at one which foreground material should go, in Bunny is flying along and is about to \" re- end looking down on a battleship and at relation to a second layer. I've used as charge his batteries,\" but then accidentally the other end you were looking down at many as three layers to achieve certain ef- loses all his fortified, super-Vitamized car- the same battleship again . It was a very fects . rots, and he falls to earth at that point-a tricky problem; 1'm not sure it was worth it. beautifully animated fall. In style and cam- Also, one of the reasons you'd use a era angle, it seems to anticipate the Q: You've used the same basic technique foreground object, if you weren' t cutting in Coyote's later falls. since, as when the camera seems to do a the middle of a pan shot, is that your back- lBO-degree tilt. In MOUSE WRECKERS, when ground drawings would have to A: That was animated by Ken Harris, Claude is being pulled through the drain- repeat-otherwise, they' d be on a and it was very similar to all the Coyote's pipe, you must have drawn the drainpipe mile-long sheet of paper. So you'd have to later falls. Ken added that \"loose-limbed\" so that it bulged out in the middle and ta- use a telephone pole to cover up the break feeling to the action. pered off at either end, to allow for the between the first background and the du- perspective-change during the camera plicate field . But finally, with the \" Road- Q: In one case you used the same back- movement. runners, \" say, this type of persp~ctive ground in two cartoons: the \"Electric Eye\" 7 f ~£? . ~ ~~. '~< ~~G ~ ~ / VV/ The gamut-running of bulldog M ark Anton y's fa c ial expression s when confronted with the kitten in FEED THE KITIV (1952 ). A: Yeah, that's exactly what we did . We didn't seem to count. We dropped it, since that was in both DUCK DODGERS IN THE 241/2 used it before in an early \" Sniffles\" car- it just didn't seem necessary. The pans CENTURY [1953] and ROCKET SQUAD [1956] . toon . In fact, that's one of few tricks we were so damned fast that the audience originated that Disney took from could never look at them too closely; other A: Yes, that giant mechanical bloodshot us-remember the perspective trick when times, you'd get your speed and perspec- eyeball suspended from the ceiling. I liked the alligator comes slithering down that tive effects just by having a diminishing the shape of it, and it went so fast that I pole in \" Dance of the Hours\" [from body in space. You see, if we couldn't thought it would be fun to use it again. It FANTASIA]? Anyway, John McGrew was a achieve the idea of in tense speed through was designed by Maurice Noble. He great student of film techniques. And the character drawings, there didn't seem created most of the space-age gadgetry for oddly enough, much of the staging in to be much point in using added mechani- those films . Maurice also invented that CONRAD THE SAILOR was taken from cal means . ROCKET SQUAD \"Evaporator\": the character Eisenstein's writing. It had mostly to do would step into a weird test- tube glass with matched dissolves, with the relation Q: In the later cartoons, you seem to use contraption and ZAP! disappear and re- of one shot to the next-so that one scene, completely \"slanted-over\" backgrounds materialize somewhere else. In that case, formally, might be exactly the same as the to accent the speed of the character. Maurice worked ahead of me on the story previous one, even though the subject and originated that contraption. would change. A: Well, that was Maurice Noble's idea. And he'd always take this opportunity to Q: There is always a very marked con- Q : You have a transition like that in HOLD use a lot of interesting shapes-abstract trast between foreground and background THE LION, PLEASE [1941], one of your ear- curves and things of this sort, which gave a in your cartoons. Would you say that you liest Bugs cartoons, where this weakling sort of depth feeling to it. But for the most say that you generally gave more leeway to schnook of a lion is claiming his status as part, we were trying to avoid forced or your background artists than other direc- \" King of Beasts,\" and all the other animals tors might? in the jungle are laughing at him . The Italian perspective, which you'd establish laughing animal faces in the first composi- by having the various buttes get progres- A: Yeah, I did-you see, what I did was tion dissolve into shrubs, flowers, and sively smaller into the background. Except to draft a very rough plan, just to show the for the road itself, we used almost none of layout man what I wanted. Now, if I put in this forced perspective. The buttes and a doorway, say, all 1wanted was room for 28 JAN .-FEB . 1975

the character to exit; I didn't care what the with backgrounds, and so forth. And later dog in the country. A lo t of directors have doorway looked like, beyond that. on, I would find this kind of thing very used size deformation , but diffe re ntl y. Maurice would take my layouts-let's say useful, in that often it would make your Clampett's tiny ch aracte rs are often d e- there'd be ten layouts for the scene-then gag work, and sometimes you wouldn't signed to convey smalln ess and cuteness, he'd make a sort of mise-en-scene that de- even know why. Like that little abstract with head s and rumps large in propor- fines the limits of the character action. background at the end of DUCK AMUCK , tion to the rest of their bodies. Similarly, He'd find the layout that goes the furthest with the sharply angled lines going off. whe n Avery mag nifies his characters in to the right, the one that goes the furthest KI G-S IZE CANA RY [1947], th e ir s h apes to the left, the deepest one, the closest one, Q: There's a similar de sign in change to convey large ness--th eir s to m- and generally planned where most of the ARISTO-CAT [1943]' where abstract linear ach s distend gro tesq u ely ou t of propor- action would have to fall. He'd take all shapes serve as an expression of the tion. But w h e n yo u s hrink or e nlarge a these separate layouts and put them all in character's mood-an almost laughably character, their anatomies retain their orig- one drawing, and then design the back- superabundant expression. This silly pa- inal proportion s. It's less like biolog ical ground around it . He'd also take into con- trician cat is helpless when his butler walks nig htmare, and more like a sort of absurd sideration what was happening in the out, so the cat goes running terrified displacement. Your pug nacious flea , the story-which very few background men through the mansion , screa ming out Mighty An ge lo, looks like a pe rfectl y ever do. Generally speaking, the fore- \"Meadows!\" in a series of takes, each one proportioned circus he- man . ground characters were all mine, but with a new wallpaper design in the back- Maurice would also often design back- ground, directl y reflecting the cat's feel- A: As a sort of lay physicist, I've al ways ground characters which were visually ings. been fascinated by the peculiar perfectio n very strong, like those Baroque-looking of tin y things . When I was a kid , there was French bystanders in the later Pepe Ie Pew A: That was McGrew. He was deeply in- a general assumption that things w hich terested in the emotional effects yo u could were very s mall were imperfect. Large cartoons . get from those jagged red and white lines h o uses were fin e, w hil e a gra in of sa nd Now, in the \"Roadrunner\" series, we in the wallpaper. It' s quite jarring. So, even was nothin g. But the more I became ac- though we were working with just a silly quainted with this, by reading Sir James almost never used color for emphasis. But little cat, we wanted it to appear as though Jea n s and Isaac As im ov and o th er in a more overtly experimental picture like he were really in a state of panic. popularizers of science, the more I realized FROM A TO ZZZZ [1954], we had a scene in a that it was n't a matter o f perfection or im- boxing ring, we flashed to a completely red MICROCOSM/MACROCOSM- JONES' perfection. Long after that, I finally got background at the punch, which then SENSE OF MINIATURIZAnON along to the DNA molecule. The mos t per- quickly diminished. There was a lot of high fect thing and the most misunderstood contrast stuff in that cartoon. But the most Q: I love the monumental prelude of thing is the DN A molecul e. And then , on outstan.ding example of Maurice's acheiv- CAVEMAN INKI [1950], yo ur la st cartoon 10 1975 Warner Brothers, Inc. ing mood with his backgrounds was with Inki and the Mynah Bird . It's crazy the other hand, yo u have infinities that no WHAT'S OPERA DOC? [1957]. how the Mynah Bird, a tiny creature, is as- one can possibly unders tand either. sociated with mountains crumbling, the Of all the people I've worked with, earth shaking, natural catastrophes that So yo u begin to wonder if the re is n ' t Maurice was probably the most influential. terrified all the larger animals . so me kind of big loop that hooks the m Maurice was a brilliant designer, and very together- perfection/im perfection , s mall often people give Phil DeGuard credit for A: Oh, they weren' t te rrified of the size/la rge size, microcos m/macrocosm. design, since the credit roster would say Mynah Bird, but they were terrifi ed of the Each \"opposite\" is really the sa me thing \"Backgrounds by Phil DeGuard .\" Phil was natural condition that arose from the looked at from a different viewpoint. If I'd an excellent follow-up man, certainly, and Mynah Bird's appearance. The mountain been a physicist, I wo uld probably ha ve he's a fine painter, but he bears the same split right in half, remember? Everyone ex- hooked into it in another way; or if I had relationship to the layout man, in prepar- pects something pretty tremendous, and been a novelist, I probably would have ing a picture, that a contractor does to an then this little thing comes out. tried to write something like aBrien' s The architect in constructing a building. Diaillond Lens , which was preocc upied Q: Isn't this a recurrent theme? You fre- with the sa me idea. I did read it when I was Q: What about John McGrew's style and quently show these violent contrasts be- young, and it probably had somethin g to approach, as compared with Noble's? tween very small characters and their en vi- do with my later work. At the time, the ronments. It's visible in yo ur early TOM idea of a story like that seemed ridiculo us. A: John McGrew didn't really have a THUMB IN TROUBLE [1940], which features But now we know it's far from ridiculous. style; he was experimenting all the time. little Tom taking a bath in his father's HORTON HEARS A WHO [1971] was a good Maurice does have a style. John McGrew, cupped hands. It' s also operative in yo ur example of a microcosm/macrocosm rela- you might say, was more of an intellectual. early Porky cartoons-PORKY'S ANT and tionship, and it also contained the You could be intellectual, and get away PORKY' S MIDNIGHT MATI NEE [both 1941] \"person 's-a-person- no- matter- how-s mall \" with it ... but if you're solely intellectual as -that co-star an African pygmy ant. Then idea , which, I agree, is also represented in a director, you weren't going to get away in TO ITCH HIS OWN [1958], yea rs la ter, things like PORKy'S ANT. with it. The result was, however, that he there' s yo ur flea , the Mighty Angelo, who goosed me into thinking that it might be wants to settle down on some nice quiet Q: It's interesting how long you've kept worthwhile to try some different things FILM COMMENT 29

CHUCK JONES CONTINUED looks at his watch and says, \"You're late!\" Disney seems to be a simultaneous inspira- The little girl who lives in the penthouse tion and exasperation. this concern, and how images from your accepts it as a new toy, while the people earlier films spring up again in the later who trade on \"sanity\"-such as the par- A: Well, I know I exasperated him a lot. ones, in altered ways. Your early black- ents of the little girl or, later on, the psy- You see, the THREE LITTLE PIGS established and-white JOE GLOW THE FIREFLY [1941J has chiatrist-are terrified. the whole idea of character animation. Be- a firefly scooting aroWld the face of a sleep- fore that, there wasn't such a thing. The ing camper, walking the part in the guy's Q: Technically, the movements of the cartoon with the grasshopper and the ant, hair; and the camper's mouth , twitching in elephant are so fluid. It' s as if you were and others they did in the Thirties were the sleep, creates a major earthquake for Joe . using the same number of drawings that progenitors of the whole idea of character Years later, you do this again in BEANSTALK you would if you were animating a large animation. And Bugs Bunny, of course, is BUN NY [1955] with the sam e kind of im- elephant. finally the offspring of Max Hare from mense close-ups on a human head, as Disney's TORTOISE AND THE HARE-that Bugs and Daffy are running around the A: Yes-in fact, I would say we used was the first pure speed cartoon as well. Giant Elmer Fudd's ears, nose , and more drawings . We used a real elephant cry mouth. It's a weird, almost Swiftian on the soundtrack, too. The same thing, in Q: It certainly seemed to influence you a image . a different area, is the bull in BULLY FOR great deal. BUGS. The bull had to be believable as a A: The Swiftian connection is exactl y bull: he had to present the same terror and A: And it's still pretty hard to beat. And right, because I reme mber those descrip- probability of injury to Bugs as he would to BAND CONCERT [1935J was superb, but it tions of enormous pores and things that you. And that's why I showed that first wasn't as quite as strong a development as Gulliver saw, the enormous size of the man facing the bull, the Juan Belmonte THREE LITTLE PIGS . The three pigs looked hairs, and how gross it was when he was caricature, before Bugs even got into the alike, but had completely different per- on a woman's breast. story-if he's afraid of the bull, well, poor sonalities. You might say that they were Bugs . But that's the trick, I think, if you're the beginnings of the Seven Dwarfs, who Q: The humor of these change-of-scale going to do miniaturization: you've got to all looked similar but all had different per- effects seems to be based on taking a make your audience really believe that sonalities. character who's tailor-made for largeness, such a thing is possible. Of course if you'd who se very drawing sty le and ask Eddie Seltzer, our producer, he'd say, Q : THE BAND CONCERT expresses charac- body-s tructure suggests largeness, and \"You should use fewer drawings for a god- ter conflict in terms of musical conflict in shrinking it-like the tiny bulldog in your dam little elephant!\" the same way that your LONG-HAIRED late \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoon THE CAT'S HARE [1948J does. Donald plays \"Turkey in ME-OUCH [1965], who had those wild flash- Q: The same thing seems to work, in re- the Straw\" on his fife, interfering with Mickey, who's trying to conduct the ing teeth that tore through all the other verse, with that little puppy you had in William Tell Overture. You have Bugs characters. TERRIER STRICKEN and NO BARKING [1954]. Bunny strumming a banjo, an~belting His motions and anatomy are tailor-made \"What Do They Do on a Rainy Night in A: Yeah, that little piranha dog! He was to convey smallness and friskiness. And Rio?,\" while your opera-singer, Giovanni really a shrunken version of the big bull- yet, with the same type of funny perverse- Jones, is trying to sing an aria. dog, Marc Antony. ness, you took that character, in the 3-D cartoon LUMBERJACK BUNNY [1955J, and A: I don' t know if there was any con- Q : Or, most especially, your miniature made him into a giant-casting him as scious relation to the Disney picture, but in elephant who \" terrorizes a large Paul Bunyan's dog. general you'd have to say that in terms of metropolis\" in PUNCH TRUNK [1954]. the tools supplied to those who followed A: Right, his movements are frisky. him, Disney was to animation what Grif- A: That had to be a real elephant; it When you look at a puppy, at the time he fith was to live action. Almost all the tools couldn't even be a cartoon elephant. It first stops being an infant and becomes were discovered at Disney's; they were the wouldn't have worked at all unless it was a what you'd call an adolescent puppy, well, only ones who had the money, and who real elephant. You had to establish it as a his movements are very quick. They stand could and did take the time to experiment. perfect miniature-and the people who there posed, ready for action , looking at Donald Graham gave lectures to future see it as real people-or else their response you and trying to provoke you-so their animators at Disney'S. There was one on wouldn't count. If we had used an an- movements are very cleancut and sharp. distant action and one on secondary thropomorhized elephant, there wouldn' t action-secondary action being those in- have been any shock value to it, and you DISNEY stances when a character comes to a sud- wouldn' t have believed it. den stop and his hair moves out on its Q: I'd like to talk about your attitude to- own, without the volition of the character. Q : Not all the people who see the ward Disney. Not only the person of A primary action is when you move your elephant are surprised by it, though. course, but all the associations one has head, and a secondary action is what hap- with the Disney name. In your cartoons, pens to your hairset. A: No, but that's the idea . Some people live with fantasy every day of their lives. The drunk, you remember, staggers out, sees the elephant, and takes it calmly-just 30 JAN.-FEB . 1975

Q: That's certainly very evident in find it very difficult to select th e color that as he and the sheepdog pass each other on FANTASIA . will be of any use to you . But if you take the way to work, they punch in together at arbitrarily, say, yellow or green or a par- the timedock ... A: In \"The Sorceror's Apprentice\" se- ticular shade of blue, you can paint a pretty quence there was a tremendous amount of good picture-because the fact of painting A: And they say, \" Hello, Ralph,\" secondary action because Mickey was fit- a picture depends more on you and not so \" Hello, Sam.\" So in the :' Sheepdog\" ted in such a big costume that when he much on the tools available. You can paint series he's one character, when he's work- stopped the suit would swirl around him. a very good picture of a green meadow ing with Bugs he's a completely different Of course, I used this a lot in the \" Road- without any green paint. You might sub- character, and when he's working with the runner\" series as the bird stops and the stitute white for green and then surround Roadrunner he's a completely different dust continues to go by. it with brown, using colors very sparingly. character. He looks the same , I admit. I It will still look springlike. don't know, I liked the shape of him . It's Q: Despite the obvious influences that like the same actor playing three different Disney has had on your cartoons, many of Everyone I've ever respected always parts in live-action films . them seem to sa tires or parodies of Disney. used restricted tools. The greatest come- dians were the ones who wore the sim- Q: Of course, there are el ements of per- A: Right. Well, Disney himself never plest costumes and worked in prescribed sonality that overlap from one series to went in for satire. I don' t think he under- areas-such as Chaplin. So it just became another. The Coyote who works with Bugs stood it very well. WHAT'S OPERA, DOC? can evident after a while that the narrower Bunny is different because he has a voice be looked upon as a satire of FANTASIA. I the discipline in the \"Roadrunner\" and dialogue, but he's like the Coyote never made a cartoon which didn't contain series-for instance, that there was no who chases the Roadrunner in his obses- some flick-of-the-wrist at the establish- dialogue, that the Roadrunner wouldn't sion with his own machinations . In ment of the day; the Disney people seldom hurt the Coyote, and that the Coyote OPERATION: RABBIT [1954], the Coyote did that, of course. would be victimized by his own draws up various inventions at a ineptitude-the better it got. draftsman's table-\"Plan One: Pressure Q: BROOMSTICK BUNNY [1956] changes Cooker; Plan Two: Explosive Decoy; Plan the concept into who's the ugliest one of all Q: Could you compare the \"Roadrun- Three: Flying Saucer.\" He's obviously ner\" series with the \"Tom and Jerry\" series hung up with himself in a smug, self- instead of who's the fairest one of all, aLa which you took over in 1964? They seem congratulatory kind of way. similar enough that there might be some SNOW WHITE . overlap in concept. A: The last scene in that was one of my A: The witch in BROOMSTICK BUNNY was all-time favorite gags. The Coyote is in the A: I wasn' t really at home with the Tom munitions shed, filling up Bugs' s carrots So afraid of getting pretty, and she tried to with nitroglycerin, complimenting himself get rid of Bug's ugliness. Miniaturization. From left: JOE on his idea, while behind him, through the GLOW THE FIREFLY (1941); window in the background, you see the Q: It has a great deal of abs tract variation PORKY' S MIDNIGHT MATINEE train coming toward him. But the Coyote on Bugs' usual character shape. At the end (1941 ); Mighty Angelo, the pug- doesn't pay any attention; he just con- nacious flea in TO ITCH HIS tinues screwing the carrot-tops back in he looks like a stick with a head stuck on OWN (1958); Bugs with Fri sky place, and thinks he's so smart, saying to top, and the head is almost nothing but Puppy in LUMBERJACK BUNNY himself, '''Wile E. Coyote: Super-Genius.' eyes as Bugs makes with that ultimate (1955) ; the Mighty Angelo, I like the way that rolls out- ' Wile E. pathetic expression. HORTON HEARS A WHO Coyote: Super-Genius.'\" This Coyote's a (1971). type ofvery shabby egotist, because he has A: My characters often used the exag- that exaggerated self-confidence that he gerated \"soulful eyes\" with the gooey, and Jerry characters. Hanna-Barbara han- refuses to lose. oversized centers-the \"old soulful eyes dled those characters beautifully, much routine\"-to get themselves out of a jam. I better than I did. Jerry was a much more Q: But isn't this trait carried over from think I first used that in a \" Charlie Dog\" charming character in their best cartoons the Coyote in the \"Roadrunner\" series, cartoon, LITTLE ORPHAN AIREDALE [1947]. than I could ever make him, simply be- that same love for his own schemes and cause I could never understand him. And I devices? THE \"ROADRUNNER\" SERIES; couldn' t really draw Tom very well; I had \"WOLF AND SHEEPDOG\" SERIES; to tum him into a different cat really. So I A: Oh yeah, but the whole thing is JONES' \"TOM AND JERRY\" purposely said, \"The hell with him.\" And I changed. In the films with the Coyote and tried to keep Jerry attractive personally, the Roadrunner, the entire situation is Q: I'd like to talk about the rules and dis- more like the Roadrunner, in that he never more desperate. The Coyote here isn't ciplines you applied to individual series. really hurt Tom in my version. Bill and merely an egotist; he's almost possessed, You said in Psychology Today that the more Joe's Jerry would sometimes cut Tom into he's a fanatic. And now I realize, it was rules you applied to the \"Roadrunner\" slices. It became sort of half-assed with my only in the earlier cartoons that I made series, for instance, the funnier the films Tom becoming a combination of the were. Coyote and the original Tom . It's difficult c7\". \" to work with someone else's characters. A: Well, if you sit down to paint a pic- () 1975 Warner Brothers, Inc. ture, and you spread out on a table every Q: You've used the same Coyote charac- color you can buy in a paint store, you'll ter in many different ways-which way do The bull in BULLY FOR BUGS (1953 ~ you think he operates best? A: The Coyote really represents three different characters: he's one character in the \"Wolf and Sheepdog\" series .. . Q: His name's Ralph, Ralph Wolf, and FILM COMMENT 31

CHUCK JONES CONTINUED a gag which reappear in a \" poster that the audience couldn't have the re- ending\"-in ZOOM AND BORED, for exam- motest idea would happen. much of a point about the Coyote wanting pie. 1'd ha ve three or four of the to eat the Roadrunner. Later on, even that Roadrunner's nerve-wracking \" beep- Q : Explosions seem to be very important didn't seem to matter any more, and the beeps\" at the opening, in rapid succession to you. There is a use of explosions in your Coyote's motivation became even more to prepare the audience for more. But by work, more so than in the work of other generalized: all he wanted to do was get the end of the film the Coyote, poor bas- animators, that releases a lot of the tension him, or something, because his dignity tard, was so shaken that I didn't have the which results from the extreme pacing. was shot. heart to let the Roadrunner send him off the cliff. So when the Roadrunner comes A: That's probably true-I got to a point Q: And eventually, in the last of the up behind the Coyote, he holds up a sign where I needed something to release all series, even the Roadrunner bird himself saying \"I DON'T HAVE THE HEART.\" this tension. But also, to me, an explosion seems superfluous to the series. For exam- Then sometimes, in other Roadrunner is best used not as a dramatic device in it- ple, he hardly makes an appearance in TO films, I'd use a different kind of running self but as a point or an idea in the comic BEEP OR NOT TO BEEP [1964], as the Coyote gag, a cumulative gag, like the dynamite sequence. An example is the cartoon spends more than half of the film trying to cartoon .. . where the Coyote built a fantastic, long operate one single catapult, an instrument trough up the side of the mountain [ZOOM which was originally intended to get the Q: You mean LICKETY SPLAT [1961]? That AND BORED]. You didn't know what he was bird. one has the Coyote in a balloon, toward going to do with it, bu t the camera panned the beginning, unloosing these hundreds up and you sawall the work he put into it A: Right-the catapult itself achieves a of flying dart-shaped dynamite sticks ... and how delicately the trough was bal- sort of perverseness, a personality of its anced on the rocks. By the time the camera own. A: Yeah, then at the end of every scene finally got to the top and the Coyote lit the that followed afterward, one of the little fuse to the dynamite, it wasn't even proper Q: There's a general difference between darts, left over from this first gag, would to let the fuse bum down. The second the the \"spot-gag\" cartoons and the narrative come in and explode. Or sometimes I'd go Coyote lit the match, the whole thing ex- cartoons. through a number of very simple visual ploded . BOOM!! Immediately. The humor jokes, fast-like, saving a very long gag for is not in the explosion at all, but in the fact A: The difference is in the relationship of the end, like when the Coyote swallows that the guy obviously worked for hours the Earthquake Pills in HOPALONG and hours and weeks and weeks on the timing, pacing, and hitting the proper damn trough. length for the film without going over the CASUALTY. But there is a structure. It isn't, budget. If a spot-gag film was too long, A.C. Gamer, who did some of the best you could just lift out a gag and save if for as it may appear in the beginning, a series special effects we had, concocted a big, the next film . of spot-gags without relationship ~o one beautiful explosion with curlicues and another. I'd alternate, say, a gag which stars splaying out. It was a marvelous Q : But the \" Roadrunner\" films , though would let the audience in on what was thing, and it was based on a discovery we spot-gag films , are definitely structured going to happen, where the surprise might made around the time of DRAFT HORSE: that works. They don't have a narrative struc- be in how it would happen, with a scene there were mechanics to an explosion we ture, but they're far more than strings of that would get a laugh from something unrelated gags. A: I evolved a kind of rhythm to them, which sometimes had to do with planting Below: Charlie Dog, by Chuck Jones. Above: The hadn't know about. Before, we always Co yo te in L1CKETY SPLAT (1961) and TO BEEP OR NOT supposed that an explosion would go out TO BEEP (1964). fast, so we'd make a small drawing, and then a bigger one, and then a bigger one, \\\"R~ taking maybe three frames to spread out. Well, when you think about it, you realize Soeuylefsvl that it couldn't conceivably be that way, because each frame was one-twenty- Routine fourth of a second. This meant that it (for8ettl~ would take three-twenty-fourths of a sec- adopted) ond to get the full effect, which was far too much time . So, by studying some live- action explosions, we discovered that the brightest frame was the very first one. That became evident to everyone later, of course, with the documentary footage on atomic bomb explosions, which actually went all white at first, and then faded down a little bit until you began to see the mushroom. So what we would do was to 32 JAN .-FEB. 1975

take the explosion to its furthest point at thing. Although in this case, you have one be stronger pieces of dramatic business the first frame, and then take a few frames person with the object of protecting the than there would ever be in the to diminish . I later applied that principle to sheep and this is the major difference in Roadrunner-Coyote cyde, where yo u al- more minor, less violent actions: if some- the series. You have the Wolf who wants to ways have plenty of action, even when one simply got socked in the jaw, the most gather up the sheep, and the Sheepdog nothing's really happening. A lot of my extreme drawing would be the first one, who wants to keep the sheep toge ther. explanations are dependent on the stylistic and then we'd diminish it. This is quite a different things from protect- problems that I was trying to solve at the ing yo urself, which is the concept that the time. Q: I'd like to know more about the less \" Roadrunner\" series dealt with. To me, it's known but very remarkable \"Wolf and a more sympathetic situation, and there- Q: I find these cartoons very movin g. fore the means of protection could be a lit- They always suggested to me a kind of du- Sheepdog\" series. tle more dramatic, a little stronger. And plicity involved in jobs, an aJienation- A: I got the idea for that series at about visually, come to thing of it, the Sheepdog from-self, the necessary compromises that is the exact opposite of the Roadrunner people must make certain jobs-that sort the same time I made a one-shot film with of assumption of a disguise, within a dis- Mike Maltese called GO FLY A KIT [1957]. , There were these large-scale arguments , j going on, as to which was the more impor- tant conditioning factor: environment or / heredity . Well, I would guess that both of them are important, and nobody really ---..., ' '. knows. But it got to the point where it was .-----.. so idiotic-the yo ung people were rearing their children either with all environment or all heredity in mind. I felt that, OK, it's absurd, so let's make it really absurd and go on the supposition that an adopted cat raised by an eagle would obviously be able to fly. The same thing would hold true for the \"Wolf and Sheepdog\" series, I thought. Just as human beings go to work, punch their cards down and become at that point, say, bus drivers-a bus driver isn't a bus driver on his way to work, he's only a bus driver then he gets in the bus. And I thought, if that's true of human beings, why can't it be true of animals? A snake isn't a snake until he goes and punches in e '9 75 Warner Brothers, Inc. in the morning. And a wolf and sheepdog .J ' . could be very good friends, real buddies, up to the point that they punch in, the fac- \" tory whistle blows, and they do what they're being paid to do. bird, who is very fast, while in this case the The Coyote grabs a fl y. dog, who takes the sa me part, doesn' t Q: Once you mentioned that the \"Road- move at all . guise, within a disguise, within a disguise. runner\" series began as a satire on the The dimax of this occurs in SHEEP IN THE usual kind of character-conflict in car- Q : He just appears on the cut, from no- DEEP [1962], where yo u pictorialized first a toons, the Coyote being a purely intellec- where. wolf in sheep's dothing, which turned out tual and motivated character, while the to be a sheepdog in wolf's do thing, which Roadrunner bird is completely unmoti- A: Yes, with an almost magical quality . turned out to be a sheep in sheepdog's do- vated, a natural or nearly supernatural Q : And in this series, the Sheepdog ac- thing, and so forth . character. You have a similar classic tively dobbers the Wolf all the time-it can dichotomy here, with the Wolf and get pretty severe. In STEAL WOOL [1957], for A: Yes, I enjoyed that. It just kept going Sheepdog. And then there's the fact that example, the Wolf is squished pancake-flat forever. But that really is always true, and the Wolf and Sheepdog are antagonists and gets punched in the nose, leaving his in a way, I suppose, it's a sort of satire on only after the whistle blows, which seems snout accordian-crinkled. to indicate a satirization of typical cartoon A: Maybe the fact that there was little ac- character dashes . tion otherwise indicated that there should A: It ma y have been an underlying FILM COMMENT 33

CHUCK JONES CONTINUED ciplines were with the Porky character is Abe Levitow animated that. I'd say that impossible. He tended to change with each that was his first really good piece of ani- The Shee pd og. series he appeared in. He was kind of mation. square, I suppose; but you always felt, in a the idea that working people experience a movie like DUCK DODGERS IN THE 241/2 Q : I'm very fond of the horror-show- grea t differe nce between life as it is so- CENTURY , that he had his tongue in his type series with Porky and Sylvester, cially, and as it is when you get to work. cheek. There was always some sly aware- where the character construction seems to For in stance, if two people walk into a ness . For instance in DUCK DODGERS , Daffy be one of Sylvester's paranoia versus room and one sits down behind a desk, the is so caught up in his crusade-his as- Porky Pig's complacency. My favorite is orie person becomes the power, and the signment to find a supply of Aludium the second , CLAWS FOR ALARM [1955], other person becomes the subject of that Phosdex, the shaving-cream atom-that where Sylvester is terrorized by these ras- power. by the end, he has succeeded only in ob- cally mice armed with axes, chopping literating the entire alien planet and goes blocks, nooses, guillotines, but Porky re- Q: This relationship is completely on to claim the remaining crumbling mains entirely una ware and, through arbitrary-and how much did they change mound in the name of Earth. Then we pan blindness or dumb luck, always emerges over the years? Not much, except that yo u down to Porky, hanging off the edge of the unharmed. eve ntually added a lunch-break for the thing and saying \" B-b-b-b-big deal!\" warring characters. A: There you ha ve a very logical Q : More often than not, you've used Porky-he's not a dope, but he's certainly A: That's right. The beginning and the Porky as supporting-player rather than very naive in the sense that he doesn't see end of the cartoons remained the same, star. He's an \" eager young space cadet\" to what's happening . The cat is determined but employee conditions improved in the Daffy's \" Duck Dodgers.\" In the Westerns, to protect him, and victimizes himself in interim . he's even subtitled a \"Comedy Relief' to the process. You might say that this is a PORKY PIG Dafty's \" Western-type Hero,\" with little variation of the \"singing frog\" situation, in absurdist labels resembling the Latinate that whatever happens, there's no evi- Q: How do yo u see Porky in relation to captions yo u always use for the Roadrun- dence of it. This one guy had the privilege, the other characters? ner and Coyote. or the curse, of seeing the singing frog, but when other people looked at it, it stopped A: Porky began as a child, and grew up A: I thought Porky was at his best as the doing its song-and-dance. along the way. But to decide what the dis- \"Fat Friar\" in ROBIN HOOD DAFFY [1958]. I In CLAWS FOR ALARM-as well as in the did hundreds of layouts on that-I got so first in this series , SCAREDY CAT infatuated with that fat-assed character. [1948]-this poor cat is trying to save That whole picture I enjoyed very l'I!uch. Porky's life all the time, but he always ap- pears to be taking Porky's life, poor devil. Q : And it's very well deSigned . You once The lights go on, and there's Sylvester, told me that you knew Eugene Pallette. caught in the midst of a protective act, but seeming to be the guilty party, holding the A: Oh, yes, Pallette was a good friend of knife or razor blade to Porky's throat, mine-he used to stay and live with us all while the guilty mice are hidden some- the time. Of course we'd also see Fairbanks where. Somehow the funniest thing is that occasionally, and the mannerisms of these Porky isn't even alarmed by this-he people would affect you, they were such doesn't believe Sylvester has the courage strong personalities . I guess that helps, to do it. He sees Sylvester holding the unconsciously. Actors like Flynn were real- razor, but he doesn't really take it seri- ly holdovers from that earlier era . Flynn ously. He just says, \" You psychopathical wasn't quite an origina\\. Daffy was really pussyca-you psychopa-you psychopa parodying Fairbanks there, more than -you manic-depressive cat, you .\" Flynn. Daffy's swashbuckling poses were Porky's voice always drops at the end, I exaggerations of the way that Fairbanks don't know why, so when you say \"you moved . His body had strong, dramatic ac- cat, you,\" that little \"you\" at the end drops down about three notes. tions to it. Q: Pallette is very s trongly evoked as Q: In JUMPIN' JUPITER, the last of the series, Porky and Sylvester are threatened by a fan- Porky falls over laughing at Daffy's buf- tastic Martian: a Dr. Suess-like bird, consisting foonery, out of control, with that great entirely of smooth, curved lines. There's animation of his jelly-like stomach bound- another Martian, in DUCK DODGERS, with a ing, thumping up and down. A: And Daffy says, disgustedly, \" How jolly can yo u get?\" That stomach was good. Robin Hood Daffy and Porky, the \" Fat Friar,\" in ROBIN Pepe Le Pew and his inamorata , by Chuck Jones. :-!:!OOD DAFFY (1958) , by Chuck Jones.

Roman Legion-type helmet, tennis shoes, The other thing is that Pepe always rep- Q : At times, Pepe Le Pew is pretty overt, and just a black circle for a head-no facial resented the other side of my personality, as far as sex goes. features at all except two large oval eyes. because he represented what I wanted to be, and what I think every man would like A: Well, he's overt, but that's an honest A: That was one of the first times I dis- to be: irresistible, at least in one's own love for a woman . . .I can't see anything covered you could get on easily enough eyes. You don't have to be irresist ble in wrong with that. without mouth action. You can convince women's eyes if you think you are. As for people that the little Martian is speaking Pepe, he got plenty, you might say. But it Q: Something one can respect, some- simply through the way he moves, and never occurred to him that he had of- thing one can understand. with that funny, meek Richard Haydn fended anyone. He was never fazed, kind of voice-innocent, harmless, and A: That's what I thought, anyway. The saying things like ''I'm going to blow up under any circumstances. entire cat-mouse cartoon cycle, the chase the Earth, as it obstructs my view of In the first cartoon [FOR SCENT-IMENTAL cycle, might be called \"oral\" today . But in Venus.\" those days, it was a matter of eating some- REASONS, 1949], there was a pantomime body, like a cat eating a mouse . Nourish- Q: It was a Porky cartoon that intro- sequence where the girl is hiding inside a ment. Sustenance. Survival. Today, if you duced Charlie Dog, that very aggressive glass case and Pepe is outside, and she is say that a character is going to eat mutt who feels that he has to ingratiate saying [imitates female cat' s pantomime of somebody-well, it has a different mean- himself to a master. He continually finds disgust, holding hand to nose] and he goes ing. But the skunk Pepe was unique in unwilling masters, but keeps going to [imitates Pepe's soundless, shocked/upset chase cartoons of the period in the sense great lengths to find a home. In one car- reaction]. So he pulls out a gun and walks that he was after the cat, well, to screw her, toon, DOGGONE SOUTH [1950], he tries to off, the cat quickly running out, feeling bad I suppose. He says, \"She theenks by play- . befriend a plantation owner and so adopts about this presumable suicide. It turns out ing hard-to-get she can make herself more a Southern accent, eats chitterlings and that Pepe is completely all right, of course, attractive to me-how right she eez!\" And compone, the whole works. In LITTLE OR- wasn't the slightest bit deterred. He just \" Not every man would put up with PHAN AIREDALE, he actually fakes preg- takes the girl in his arms again, saying thees-Iucky for her, I am not any man.\" nancy to win over a master, even though \"Fortunately for you, I meesed.\" It's that the dog's name is Charlie. complete self-assurance. With the Coyote Q: Are all his feminine foils cats instead of the \"Roadrunner\" series, I understood of other skunks? A: Right. Porky finds out the dog is him because he made so many mechanical male, throws him out, then Charlie pops mistakes, which is natural for anybody, A: They had to be . Another skunk right in again to testify: \"Well, there was particularly for me. But Pepe was the super wouldn't make any sense, because the such a case in Venezuela.\" Iloved that line. character, a super sex-job, and he knew it. other skunk would go for him, so where's Then there's the one that takes place in And he never gave up. the comedy? So there always had to be a Italy, where Charlie tries to break into a ploy of getting a white stripe accidentally pizza parlor, trumping up an Italian Q: Where do you suppose the audience down a cat's back, which, I can tell you, got dialect. Yes, I always liked that dog, that identification goes in those cartoons? To- a little tiresome trying to figure out. It was eager dog. He's kind of a chauvinist dog, ward Pepe or toward the female cat? strange since the audience never objected or a salesman dog-always trying to bell to the implausibility of having it happen himself, advertise himself. But that's really A: I've never been able to discover that, again and again, film after film. what dogs are. They'll butter you up, lick because all the girls I've ever known adore your foot, die on your grave . the Pepe character as a sex-object, you Q: It's very graceful in CATS-BAH [1955]' might say-he was really irresistible. where the guy is painting the hull of a ship, PEPE LE PEW and a lady passenger comes down the One of my favorites was WILD OVER YOU gangplank with her pet cat on a leash, and Q: What would you say the basic disci- [1953], because there Pepe's mistaken de- some of the paint sloshes on the cat. It's pline is in the Pepe Le Pew series? sire was this enormous wildcat, and the also the film where the seduction story is situation furnished some good structured with an \"As Time Goes By\" A: That was miscegenation, obviously. remarks-\" Acres and acres of her, and CASABLANCA-like flashback. But why, if After all, what's a mule but a hunk of mis- she's mine, all mine .\" I liked the end-line. Pepe is irresistible to other skunks, would cegenation? This is involuntary miscege- The wildcat is ferociously fighting Pepe off a cat resist him? nation, which is a slightly different thing. in a balloon floating away into the dis- Pepe thought the girl was a female skunk tance, and she's clawing the hell out of A: Because he smells bad! When I was a while in reality she was a female cat, and him. You can't quite tell what was going kid, I worked on a boat that carried creosol she could never understand why she was on, just a big mess, a big brawl in the dis- piling, and I don't know if you' ve ever being followed, you see. I mean, from her tance, and then we cut back to a close-up of been dose to creosol piling, but it has a ter- viewpoint, it was miscegenation, while Pepe, looking up at the viewer and saying, ribly strong smell. But strangely enough, from his viewpoint, it certainly wasn't. \"Eef you haff not tried eet, do not knock in about four or five days, you forget, and eet.\" everything resumes its normal smells again, except that everywhere you go, you notice the people reeling-you smell. As () 19 75 W arner Brothers, In c.

CHUCK JONES CONTINUED with the narrator saying \" . ..and he had a Harpo himself never understood it. In son the size of his thumb, and he had a son other words, Bugs' behavior would often far as Pepe was concerned, it really came the size of his thumb, etc. \" surprise himself. He never knew what he down to that simple level of misunder- was going to do next. Another important standing. Do you know what he once said? A: Getting back to ONE FROGGY EVENING , rule was that we always started him out in In one film he daintily sniffs his wrist it would have been easly to keep on using an environment natural for a rabbit. and says, \"Do I offend?\" the Lubitsch trick, implying the action going on behind closed doors or barri- Q : With or without banjo, a La Q : Pepe's one moment of self- cades. I wanted to see if I could find other awareness. ways of conveying the same thought-as LONG-HAIRED HARE? when the frog is singing in the part, and A: Well, that was a slight exception-but THE SINGING FROG the cop is behind the wall . The cop can Q: In ONE FROGGY EVENING, much of the hear the frog. In this case, it's simply that he did have his feet in his rabbit-hole and the cop's eyes are behind the wall; by see- humor seems to be derived from a sharp ing the top of his head you know that he's he was out in the woods, remember? Sit- break between anthropomorphized a cop. The cop's activities are determined ting there playing the banjo the way al1Y movementand natural animal movement. by the actions of his hat. And then there's the terrible time that the owner of the frog rabbit would under the same circum- A: It was anthropomorphic when the has in the theater: first getting the people stances. And that, to me, was always very frog was singing and dancing and com- in there, then having the rope to the cur- important. Next came the provocation, pletely natural otherwise. tain break. You have to feel sorry for the and the provocation is always based upon guy; he's stuck with that frog and some- a guy who is minding his own business. Q: Did you actually use a frog as a model how the only place he can get rid of it is for that? back where he got it-back in the corner- Q : In LONG-HAIRED HARE'S musical lan- stone of another building. It was really an guage, Bugs Bunny, on the one side, A: I studied a frog, but I didn't actually exemplification of frustration, and it seems to represent the popular, singing get a real frog as I did with the squirrel in continued . .. pop songs or folk songs, while the MUCH ADO ABOUT NUTTING . I was more in- opera-singer, on the other side, represents terested in the action; I knew I could draw BUGS BUNNY AND DAFFY DUCK the classical, or in this case, the preten- it. It was obvious the way the frog had to tious . Where did you find the voice for the move, from the way he was drawn. Q : Getting back to the idea of individual opera basso? disciplines for characters, what about Bugs The trick was that the audience would Bunny? A: We found a young singer with a terri- never hear anything but the frog' s singing bly strong' voice. And remember Bugs' re- voice . The rest is entirely pantomime . A: Well, I always underwrote the idea of venge on the opera-singer? The singer's There are a lot of ways of doing this, and Bugs never being a heckler-he's minding performing at the Hollywood Bowl and they all seem obvious once you look at his own business, and then somebody Bugs is perched on top of it. Bugs tests the them-putting the characters behind the comes along and tries to disturb him, hurt Bowl first, saying \"Hmmm .. .acoustically plate glass window in the theatrical him, destroy him. But when he fights poi- fect! \" Then he causes the whole thing agency, for instance. There the timing had back, he becomes an anarchist, rather like to vibrate, bouncing the singer down to work interestingly, because when the Groucho Marx. below. We had to do something similar to protagonist went back to get the theatrical our actual singer. We told him, \"We're not agent, once the frog had started singing Q: It takes a butt from a bull to an- going to hurt you, but something may the rag, we kept the music going but you tagonize him in BULLY FOR BUGS, as Bugs happen to you while you're singing. couldn't hear the voice . The phrasing goes sailing over the arena declaring, \"Of Whatever happens, keep singing.\" So works out so that the frog starts to sing, his course, you know, this means war!\" while he was recording at the microphone, owner runs back inside in a hurried fash- we snuck up behind him, grabbed him ion, trying to tell the agent what's happen- A: That' s the old Groucho Marx line, and shook him . His voice did just what ing. Subconsciously, the audience knows and it certainly became basic to Bugs' you hear on the soundtrack. what he's telling him even though there character. A cross between Harpo and are no words spoken, because the music is Groucho is what he'd become at that point: Q: I thing SUPER RABBIT holds up very still being carried over. The you cut back to he had the intellect of Groucho combined well among your earliest Bugs cartoons. the frog; as the frog is finishing the song with the zaniness and oddity of Harpo, (\" . .. that lov-ing rag!\") , PLOP!!, the door which I never understood-I'm sure A: In fact, it was one of the first cartoons opens, a guy points, the frog looks up, where I got a real feeling for Bugs, which I croaks, and the theatrical agent gives that had some trouble doing for a little while . tiny look at the audience which I often That was one of the first times I got a hold use-it's one of my favorite gags. Then on the character, and on the way he would you cut to the street and the frog and his later develop, for me at least. You could see owner are thrown out. By the way, did you know that Mike Maltese and I wrote \"The Michigan Rag\"? We needed a ragtime piece, so we wrote one. Q: The whole cartoon seems to be in a parable structure . It's like an excessi\".e punishment for one man's greed-fo~ hiS desire to exploit the discovery of the smg- ing frog and make millions . A: That's right, the guy wants to join the From left : Bugs in SUPER RABBIT (1943) ; with the opera singer in LONG HAIRED HARE (1948) ; Porky as Claude establishment, enjoy the fruits of the estab- Rains in THE SCARLET PUMPERNICKEL (1950) . lishment. And that was also one of the first of my continuing or cyclical cartoons, like HORTON HEARS A WHO, the endings of which imply that what's happened will happen again and again in the future. . Q : That certainly existed in cartoons like I WAS ATEENAGE THUMB [19631 which ends 36 JAN .-FEB. 1975

he was really enjoying himself, which I en- Sherlock Holmes, or Robin Hood, or PUNISHMENT, BEE-DEVILLED BRUIN, etc.] joyed. whoever, so he was still trying to establish and Henery Hawk appeared briefly as a the fact that he had a right to be there. messenger-it was an epic, so all my Q: Well, he certainly seems to enjoy characters had to be in it. Everybody ap- himself during that great scene where the Q: Would you say that role-playing, preciated it except Jack Warner, and I don't villains try to blast him with the cannon. then, was central to Daffy's character? think he ever realized we were talking And this, too, is a Marx Brothers bit, in the about him in the cartoon. way that Bugs imposes a completely A: That's certainly one important aspect, foreign discipline on the ominous situa- but then there are many pictures where he Q: Daffy was trying to sell a script to tion: staging a basketball game with the Warner, the script providing the mock- cannonball, turning the hunters into a plays just the part of Daffy Duck. The very epic story, the cartoon-within-a- cartoon. rooting section. early ones don' t really count, since he had yet to completely develop his character. A: Daffy was no great writer, of course, A: The only reservation that I might Just as you think of Jack Benny as being a so the thing had to end with one cliched have about SUPER RABBIT was that it had an very miserly person, so Daffy is miserly re- disaster after another: \"Then, the dam ending that only related to that particular garding his own life. Of course he can't broke!\" \"Then, the volcano erupted!\" time, and that particular war effort in 1942, stand loss of dignity, that's another aspect. \"Then, the price of food skyrocketed!\" when Bugs goes off to join the Marines. Q: There's a brilliant sequence in ROBIN -while pictured on the screen was one Q : What sort of disciplines would there HOOD DAFFY, very sad in a way. Daffy has a kreplach with a pricetag of $1000. The be in Daffy Duck cartoons? heroic line to deliver before he performs ultimate catastrophe. We end it with Daffy some athletic feat of derring-do, scream- shooting himself, saying \" It's getting so A: Well, Bugs and Daffy actually started ing \"Yoicks, and away!\", swinging on a you have to kill yourself to sell a story out very similarly ... they both began as vine, and smashing right into a large tree. around here!\" raving lunatics . Daffy eventually became a He keeps saying \" Yoicks, and away!\" over self-preservationalist. It was really his job and over, crashing into a new tree each Q : And DRIP-ALONG DAFFY [1951] to save his own life. time, his voice getting more and more parodied the high-angle shots generally tired. Wasn't this the cartoon where used for classic HIGH NOON gundowns. Q: But he's always showing off so much . Daffy's beak kept springing up? A: Well, he's a show-off too , but basi- A: The thing that made that work was cally he was concerned with taking care of A: Yes, it was. Manny Farber called it \"a the distant sound the horse made. I used himself. Friz Freleng and I used a competi- token of Daffy's ineptitude,\" or some- the distant spur-jangling sound too, even tion between Bugs and Daffy throughout thing. though the characters weren't wearing any the \"Bugs Bunny Show\" TV series . All spurs. through it, Daffy was trying to get to be Q: Genre-parodies often come up in master-of-ceremonies, but Bugs got all the Daffy Duck cartoons. Q : It seems to me there's a great deal of applause. This sort of thing would drive FROM A TO zzzz's Walter Mitty-ish Ralph Daffy nuts. Daffy always wanted to be A: Very often. I liked to do that. I did one Phillips character in Daffy, in his naive de- triumphant, in whatever he did, but in on Jack Webb, sort of a Dragnet-in- sire to actually live out these heroic fan- some cases, all that meant was having to Outer-Space cartoon, called ROCKET tasies . survive, and he was always apologizing. SQUAD. I would say the basic discipline He'd stand there and say: \"Pain hurts me,\" there was to be as true to the original style A: That's righ t, Daffy's an innocent, he's \"I may be a cowardly little black duck, but as possible, accenting the comic qualities of an ingenuous character. Not only when he I'm a live little black duck,\" or \"What a the particular genre all the while. As in is playing parts, but in a straight situation: shitty thing to do .\" We often wrote Daffy's ROCKET SQUAD: \"Thursday-4:05- all he wants to do is survive, and be trium- dialogue with four-letter words, and then P.M.-I struck a match-Thursday- phant, without having to do the work that we'd abridge it later. 4:05 and a quarter-P.M.-I lit a was necessary, and without having to be cigarette.\" particularly nice. Q : It seems that Daffy is often cast in ambitious parts that he's always unequal Q: In THE SCARLET PUMPERNICKEL [1950], Q : In DRIP-ALONG DAFFY, Daffy first rides to, Errol Flynn-type romantic leads. yo u exaggerate, to just the right degree, into the Western town, sees the sign that a the Michael Curtiz-type grandiose set de- sheriff is wanted, opens his coat, and has A: I don ' t know why ROBIN HOOD DAFFY coration and use of shadow, all those very an all-purpose selection of badges: worked so well. But there you have a romantic trappings of costume epics. \"Chicken Inspector,\" \"Junior G-Man,\" straight parody. There he did not act, as etc. He's ready to impersonate any given usual, the part of a self-preservationist, A: There were a lot of in-house jokes in role at any given moment. but he did want people to believe he was that cartoon-mostly in the casting. We put on the Mother Bear from those earlier A: I like the way he pulls out his guns, \"Three Bears\" cartoons I did [BEAR FOR and his chaps come off along with them . \"Time out, whilst I adjust my THE SCARLET PUMPERNICKEL. Left : Daffy and Melissa Duck. Right : Curtizian swo rdplay as Melissa watches. accoutrements ...\" Q: Daffy seems to be very consistent with those self-conscious asides for his, sent straight to the viewer off the screen. You've said that you didn' t preview your cartoons, but one verbal bit in RABBIT FIRE [1951] must have been previewed . Elmer Fudd is stalking both Bugs and Daffy-this is the first fully developed car- toon that features all three of them together-and Bugs keeps engineering it so that Daffy is the one who gets blasted by Elmer. Daffy angrily takes Bugs by the col- lar and says, \"You're despicable!\" This line always brings down the house . . .and then, as if you knew it would get a terrific laugh, Daffy proceeds to soliloquize on Bugs' despicability, elaborating on the line. A: No, I actually rewrote the line on the soundstage when Mel Blanc said \"You're FILM COMMENT 37

CHUCK JONES CONTINUED CARTOONOGRAPIflES despicable!\" The way he said the line was by Joe Adamson so good and so strong that I immediately rewrote the line, and said \"Look, I want CHUCK JONES you to play with this thing, draw it our as much as you can-You're despicable, and 1938 NIGHT WATCHMAN; DOG GONE MODERN. 1939 RABBIT! DUCK!; NO BARKING; STOP, LOOK, AND not only that, you're pickable, and not only that. ... \" And Mel just kept going. ROBIN HOOD MAKES GOO~; PRESTO mANGE-O; DAFFY HASTEN!; SHEEP AHOY; MY LITTLE DUCKAROO. 1955 Q: It does appear very spontaneous. DUCK AND THE DINOSAUR; NAUGHTY BUT MICE; OLD THE CAT'S BAH; CLAWS FOR ALARM; LUMBER JACK RAB- A: It was spontaneous . . . I just let Mel GLORY; SNOWMAN'S LAND; LITTLE BROTHER RAT; go, him run out of gas on the idea. We BIT (in 3-D); READY, SET, ZOOM!; RABBIT RAMPAGE; used that in one of the Westerns, too ... LITTLE LION HUNTER; THE GOOD EGG; SNIFFLES AND Q: Yeah, Daffy'S great mouthings-on. DOUBLE OR MUTIONi BABY BUGGY BUNNY; BEANSTALK There's a lot of rambling speech in the THE BOOKWORM; CURIOUS PUPPY. 1940 MIGHTY \"Charlie Dog\" cartoons as well. BUNNY; PAST PERFORMANCE; JUMPIN' JUPITER; GUIDED A: They were both pretty noisy charac- HUNTERS; ELMER'S CANDID CAMERA; SNIFFLES TAKES A ters. Those \"Charlie\" cartoons were real MUSCLE; KNIGHT-MARE HARE. 1956 TWO SCENTS' talk-fests. I probably prepared myself for TRIP; TOM THUMB IN TROUBLE; THE EGG COLLECTOR; not talking, in the pantomime cartoons, by WORTH; ONE FROGGY EVENING; DUGS' BONNETS; talking a lot in these. And I enjoyed it. GHOST WANTED; GOOD NIGHT ELMER; BEDTIME FOR Q: From your very first cartoons, you ROCKET SQUAD; HEAVEN SCENT; ROCKET-BYE BABY; made a great effort to find those plots and SNIFFLES; ELMER'S PET RABBIT; SNIFFLES BELLS THE BROOMSTICK BUNNY; GEE WHIZZZZ; DARBARY COAST situations that are so basic that there's no CAT. need for dialogue-so often, you've opted BUNNY. 1957 DEDUCE, YOU SAY; THERE THEY GO- for pantomime cartoons. Is it simply a mat- 1941 TOY TROUBLE; THE WACKY WORM; INKI AND THE ter of your preference for vis ual rather than GO-GO!; SCRAMBLED ACHES; GO FLY A KIT; STEAL WOOL; verbal wit? There must be more to it, since LION; SNOW TIME FOR COMEDY; JOE GLOW THE FIREFLY; when you use dialogue, you use it in a spe- ZOOM AND BORED; TO HARE IS HUMAN; ALI DADA cial or unique way. BRAVE LIITLE BAT; SADDLE SILLY; THE BIRO CAME A: I could understand a person's inabil- BUNNY; BOYHOOD DAZE; WHAT'S OPERA, DOC?; TOUOfE ity to express himself more than I could his C.O.D.; PORKY'S ANT; CONRAD THE SAILOR; PORKY'S ability to express himself. Like Daffy say- AND GO. 1958 HARE-WAY TO THE STARS; HOOK, LINE, ing, \"You're despicable! And not only that PRIZE PONY; DOG TIRED; THE DRAFf HORSE; HOLD THE you're pickable, etc.\"; he was always AND STINKER; ROBIN HOOD DAFFY; WHOA, DE GONE!; TO reaching for it. Frustrating verbal expres- LION, PLEASE; PORKY'S MIDNIGHT MATINEE. 1942 THE sion seems to me to be more effective be- ITCH HIS OWN. 1959 BATON BUNNY; HOT ROD AND cause, well, that's what I know best. SQUAWKIN' HAWK; FOX POP; MY FAVORITE DUCK; TO Q: Friz Freleng's characters, on the other REEL; CAT FEUD; HIP HIP- HURRY!; REALLY SCENT. hand, were always more vocal. DUCK OR NOT TO DUCK; THE DOVER BOYS; CASE OF THE A: Yeah, there's a classic example, when 1960 FASTEST WITH THE MOSTEST; WHO SCENT YOU?; he has Yosemite Sam telling Bugs to shut MISSING HARE; PORKY'S CAFE. 1943 FLOP GOES THE up . .. RABBIT'S FEAT; WILD ABOUT HURRY; READY, WOOLEN Q: And Bugs answers back, \"Sure I'll WEASEL; SUPER RABBIT; THE UNBEARABLE BEAR; THE AND ABLE. shut up, of course I'll shut up, I'll shut up any time anybody says so. I'm the kind of ARISTO CAT; WACKIKI WABBIT; FIN 'N CAITY; INKI AND 1961 HIGH NOTE; HOPALONG CASUALTY; THE ABOM- person who shuts up whenever I'm told to, I'm the best shutter-upper you ever THE MYNAH BIRD. 1944 TOM TURK AND DAFFY; ANGEL INABLE SNOW RABBIT; A SCENT OF THE MATIERHORN; saw, I'm ...\" A: And then Sam screams, \"Shut up PUSS; FROM HAND TO MOUSE; THE ODOR-ABLE KITTY; LICKETY SPLAT; ZIP 'N SNORT; THE MOUSE ON 57TH shutting up!!\" Anyway, it is a different STREET; COMPRESSED HARE. 1962 LOUVRE COME BACK way to approach the character, and I guess BUGS BUNNY AND THE THREE BEARS; THE WEAKLY I never used dialogue to that extent. TO ME; BEEP PREPARED; A SHEEP IN THE DEEP; NELLY'S Q: I'd say that you had a more self- REPORTER; LOST AND FOUNDLING. 1945 TRAP HAPPY contained Bugs ... FOLLY; ZOOM AT THE TOP. 1963 MARTIAN THRU A: Maybe. I'd suspect that Friz's Bugs PORKY; HARE CONDITIONED; HARE TONIC; HUSH MY would be more of a scamp, and Tex GEORGIA; NOW HEAR lHIS; HARE-BREADTH HURRY; I Avery's more a controlled lunatic, a bril- MOUSE; FRESH AIREDALE; QUENTIN QUAIL; HAIR RAIS- liant controlled lunatic. Bob Clampett's WAS A TEENAGE THUMB; WOOLEN UNDER WHERE. 1964 was a thoroughly amoral lunatic, with ING HARE; THE EAGER BEAVER. 1946 ROUGHLY flashes of greatness. All these WAR AND PIECES; TRANSYLVANIA 6-5000; MAD AS A characters-Bugs, Daffy, Pepe, Porky-in SQUEAKING; SCENT-IMENTAL OVER YOU; FAIR AND MARS HARE; TO BEEP OR NOT TO BEEP. a way are like the multiplications of our own foibles. And if they weren't, of WORM-ER; A FEATHER IN HIS HARE. 1947 LITTLE OR- CHUCK JONES AT MGM course, they wouldn't be valuable at all, they wouldn't be funny. But I suspect that PHAN AIREDALE; WHAT'S BREWIN' BRUIN; HOUSE (all Tom and Jerry cartoons unless indicated by·) all humor is based on that fact: the recogni- HUNTING MICE; HAREDEVIL HARE; INKI AT THE CIRCUS; 1963 PENTHOUSE MOUSE. 1964 THE CAT ABOVE AND tion in others, in a multiplied form, of something that we ourselves are capable A PEST IN THE HOUSE; RABBIT PUNCH. 1948 YOU WERE THE MOUSE BELOW; IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE MOUSE; of. It's like what Orwell said: \"I've never MUCH ADO ABOUT MOUSING; SNOWBODY LOVES ME; met a person that was any worse than I NEVER DUCKIER; MISSISSIPPI HARE; MOUSE WRECKERS; UNSHRINKABLE JERRY MOUSE. 1965 THE DOT AND THE am.\"%. SCAREDY CAT; MY BUNNY LIES OVER THE SEA; AWFUL LINE *; AH SWEET MOUSE-STORY OF LIFE; TOM-IC ORPHAN; THE BEE-DEVILED BRUIN; DAFFY DILLY; ENERGY; BAD DAY AT CAT ROCK; BROTHERS CARRY LONG-HAmED HARE. 1949 FRIGID HARE; RABBIT HOOD; MOUSE OFF; HAUNTED MOUSE; I'M JUST WILD ABOUT OFTEN AN ORPHAN; FAST AND FURRY-OUS; FOR SCENT- JERRY; OF FELINE BONDAGE; YEAR OF THE MOUSE; CAT'S IMENTAL REASONS; BEAR FEAT; HOMELESS HARE . 1950 ME-OUCH. 1966 DUEL PERSONALITY; JERRY JERRY QUITE CONTRARY; LOVE ME, LOVE MY MOUSE (with Ben THE HYPO-CHONDRI-CAT; DOG GONE SOUTH; THE Washam). 1967 THE BEAR THAT WASN'T'; CAT AND SCARLET PUMPERNICKEL; 8-BALL BUNNY; THE DUPLICAT. DUCKSTERS; RABBIT OF SEVILLE; CAVEMAN INK!. CHUCK JONES FEATURE FILMS 1951 TWO'S A CROWD; A HOUND FOR TROUBLE; RABBIT 1962 GAY PURR-EE (story). 1971 THE PHANTOM TOLL FIRE; CHOW HOUND; THE WEARING OF THE GRIN; A BOOTH. BEAR FOR PUNISHMENT; BUNNY HUGGED; CHUCK JONES TELEVISION SPECIALS 1970 HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. 1971 HOR- SCENT-IMENTAL ROMEO; CHEESE CHASERS; TON HEARS A WHO; THE POGO SPECIAL BIRTHDAY DRIP-ALONG DAFFY. 1952 OPERATION: RABBIT; WATER, SPECIAL. 1973 A CHRISTMAS CAROL (executive pro- WATER EVERY HARE; THE HASTY HARE; ducer); THE CRICKET IN TIMES SQUARE; A VERY MERRY CRICKET. 1974 YANKEE DOODLE CRICKET. 1975 MOUSEWARMINGi DON'T GIVE UP THE SHEEP; FEED THE RIKI-TIKI-\"!\"AVY. KITTY; LITTLE BEAU PEPE; BEEP BEEP; GOING! GOING! GOSH!; TERRIER STRICKEN; RABBIT SEASONING; KISS ME CAT. 1953 FORWARD MARCH HARE; WILD OVER YOU; BULLY FOR BUGS; DUCK AMUCK; MUCH ADO ABOUT NUTTING; DUCK DODGERS IN THE 24'/2 CENTURY; ZIPPING ALONG; FELINE FRAME-UP. 1954 PUNCH TRUNK; FROM A TO ZZZZ; BEWITCHED BUNNY; DUCK! TEXAVERY TEXAVERY ATMGM 1942 THE EARLY BmD 0000 IT; THE BLITZ WOLF. 1943 TEX AVERY AT WARNER BROTHERS 1936 GOLDDIGGERS OF ' 49; PORKY THE RAINMAKER; I'D RED HOT RIDING HOOD; DUMB-HOUNDED; WHO KILLED WHO?; ONE HAM'S FAMILY; WHAT'S BUZZIN' BUZZARD. LOVE TO TAKE ORDERS FROM YOU; PLANE DIPPY; I LOVE TO SINGA; MILK AND MONEY; MISS GLORY; THE VILLAGE 1944 BAlTY BASEBALL; SCREWBALL SQUIRREL; HAPPY- SMITHY; PORKY THE WRESTLER; lHE BLOW-OUT; DON'T GO-NUTTY; BIG HEEL-WATHA. 1945 THE SCREWY LOOK NOW. 1937 PICADOR PORKY; PORKY'S DUCK HUNT; TRUANT; THE SHOOTING OF DAN MCGOO; JERKY TURKEY; I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU; PORKY'S GARDEN; AIN'T WE SWING SHIFT CINDERELLA; WILD AND WOOLFY. 1946 GOT FUN; UNCLE TOM'S BUNGALOW; I WANNA BE A SAILOR; EGGHEAD RIDES AGAIN; SUNBONNET BLUE; LONESOME LENNY; THE HICK CHICK; NORTHWEST LITTLE RED WALKING HOOD; DAFFY DUCK AND HOUNDED POLICE; HENPECKED HOBOES. 1947 RED HOT EGGHEAD; THE SNEEZING WEASEL. 1938 THE PENGUIN RANGERS; HOUND HUNTERS; UNCLE TOM'S CABANA; PARADE; THE ISLE OF PINGO-PONGO; CINDERELLA MEETS FELLA; JOHNNY SMITH AND POKER-HUNTAS; A SLAP-HAPPY LION; KING-SIZE CANARY. 1948 WHAT FEUD nIERE WAS; DAFFY DUCK IN HOLLYWOOD; THE PRICE FLEADOM; LrrTLE TINKER; THE HALF PINT PYGMY; MICE WILL PLAY; HAMATEUR NIGHT. 1939 DAY AT THE THE CAT THAT HATED PEOPLE; LUCKY DUCKY. 1949 BAD ZOO; THUGS WITH OIRTY MUGS; FRESH FISH; BELIEVE IT OR ELSE; LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT FUN; DANGEROUS LUCK BLACKIEi SENOR DROOPY; OUTFOXED; DOGGONE DAN MCFOO; DETOURING AMERICA; SCREWBALL TIREO; LITTLE RURAL RIDING HOOD ; WAGS TO RICHES; FOOTBALL; THE EARLY WORM GETS THE BIRD. 1940 COUNTERFEIT CAT; THE HOUSE OF TOMORROW. 1950 CROSS COUNTRY DETOURS; THE BEAR'S TALE; A GANDER AT MOTHER GOOSE; A WILD HARE; CIRCUS TODAY; CEIL- THE CUCKOO CLOCK; VENTRILOQUIST CAT; GARDEN ING HERO; HOLIDAY HIGHLIGHTS; WACKY WILD LIFE; OF GOPHER; THE CHUMP CHAMP; THE PEACHY COBBLER. FOX AND HOUNDS. 1941 TORTOISE BEATS HARE; HOL- 1951 COCK-A-DOODLE DOG; DARE-DEVIL DROOPY; LYWOOD STEPS OUT; PORKY'S PREVIEW; CRACKPOT QUAIL; THE HECKLING HARE; AVIATION VACATION; DROOPY'S GOOD DEED; SYMPHONY IN SLANG; DROOPY'S HAUNTED MOUSE; ALL THIS AND RABBIT STEW; THE BUG DOUBLE TROUBLE; THE CAR OF TOMORROW. 1952 THE PARADE; THE CAGEY CANARY. 1942 ALOHA HOOEY; MAGICAL MAESTRO; ONE CAB'S FAMILY; ROCK-A-BYE CRAZY CRUISE. BEAR. 1953 LITTLE JOHNNY JET; THE THREE LITTLE TEXAVERY AT PARAMOUNT PUPS; TV OF TOMORROW. 1954 DRAG-A-LONG DROOPY; 1942 SPEAKING OF ANIMALS DOWN ON THE FARM; BILLY BOY; HOMESTEADER DROOPY; FARM OF SPEAKING OF ANIMALS IN A PET SHOP; SPEAKING OF TOMORROW; THE FLEA CIRCUS; DIXIELAND DROOPY. ANIMALS IN THE ZOO. 1955 FIELD AND SCREAM; THE FIRST BAD MAN; DEPUTY DROOPY; CELLBOUND. 1956 MILLIONAIRE DROOPY. 1957 CAT'S MEOW. TEXAVERY AT UNIVERSAL (WALTER LANTZ) 1955 I'M COLD; THE LEGEND OF ROCKABYE POINT; CRAZY MIXED-UP PUP; SH-H-H-H. 38 JAN .-FEB . 1975

the other members of his unit and the Warners animation ward who contributed material to the cartoons. Whoever did it, the dialogue in Jones's films is invariably complex, multi-leveled, and literate. Bugs, Daffy, et al. are more fully characterized by Jones's dialogue than by any other unit's, although the lines are sometimes so deeply welded to the individual character's per- formance that they pale on paper, as the DUCK AMUCK continuity reproduced here shows. In RABBIT HOOD (1949), a Jones character says, \" Odds fish! The very air abounds in kings!\" In RABBIT FIRE (1951), while setting out spurious \"Rabbit Season\" signs, Daffy explains, \"Survival of the fittest, and be- w sides, it's fun! Woo-woo! Woo-woo!\" In ~ RABBIT SEASONING (1952) , he locates the ~Q; cause of his problem: \"Aha! Pronoun C5 trouble!\" Elmer says to Bugs, returned as ~ an angel in DUCK! RABBIT' DUCK! (1954), ~ \"Golly, Mr. Wabbit, I hope I didn't hurt ~ you too much when I killed YOu.\" Or take Q Daffy's final speech to Elmer in the same Top left: Bugs disguised as Daffy, Daffy disguised as Bugs, in RABBIT FIRE (1951). Top right: Elmer bowled over by film: \"Shoot me again, I enjoy it! I love the Bugs' charmingly inept huntress (RABBIT FIRE). Bottom left: \" Aha! Pronoun trouble! \" in RABBIT SEASONING smell of burnt feathers and gunpowder (1952). Bottom right: Daffy dressed as a farmer against a snowscape in DUCK AMUCK (1953). and cordite! I'm an elk, shoot me, go on, it's elk season! I'm a fiddler crab, why don't you shoot me, it's fiddler crab season. What have I done? Where did I take the wrong turning?\" This is spiced with Daffy's excellent miming of an elk and a fiddler crab through tangled arrangements of angular black limbs and digits. by Richard Thompson Jones is also more interested in the use of written words, in letters and signs, than Ch~ck Jones and Daffy Duck go way earlier in these pages, Jones has also pur-' most animators: sometimes for labels, back. Jones began working with Daffy sued an interest in accurately adapting sometimes for real-movie iconographic around 1939, with DAFFY AND THE animal movements, anatomy, and references, sometimes in the unem- DINOSAUR, and consistently from 1942 on. behavior. The \"disciplines\" he talks about phasized manner of modern filmmakers. The team separated after ROBIN HOOD are narrative and structural elements In ONE FROGGY EVENING (1957) , the con- DAFFY in 1958; Jones continued with Bugs which stress form, repetition, limits, and struction worker leaves the worksite with Bunny films, \"Roadrunner\" cartoons, the les regles du jeu. His tendency toward the the frog in the box, tiptoeing past a back- \"Wolf and Sheepdog\" series, and many of black and the bleak outstrips even Avery's, ground wall with a \"DANGER\" sign on it. his one-shots after that, until the Warner probably because it is presented through Brothers cartoon shop shut down in 1962. simple, step-by-step logic. Jones experimented with his idea of dis- Their best work together spans the ciplines most starkly in the \"Roadrunner\" 1948-1958 period. Jones is outstanding with his actors . He series. Sometimes he organized a cartoon uses the best, never stuck with Foghorn around extrinsic material: in WHAT ' S The importance of other Warners Leghorn (a weak ham) or Tweety-Pie (who OPERA, DOC? (1957) the internal disciplines animators shouldn't be underestimated, trades on her cuteness as Shirley Temple of the Bugs and Elmer characters are but it's clear that Jones made the best of the did). Yosemite Sam is Freleng property, played off against references outside to films with Daffy. In contrast to Friz Fre- rightly: Sam's style, always at top register, FANTASIA and Beyreuth-style Wagner. leng, who represents the zenith if not the is incompatible with Jones's method. The More often, he chose to create extremely acme of the classical tradition, Jones takes test is working with Porky, Bugs, Daffy, simplified situations with few elements. the characters and the formal aspects of his and Sylvester; and here Jones has no peer, These discipline-situations served as ar- cartoons far beyond standard limits. He whatever criteria for acting are applied. matures for the characters, intenSifying developed an eloquent naturalistic depic- their impact on us. tion of facial expression-as opposed to Jones's verbal range also separates him Tex Avery's expressionist or surreal ap- from his colleagues. I won' t try to fix re- In the \"Roadrunner\" series this is mod- proaches. As indicated in the interview sponsibility among Jones, his writers ified as the wordless characters and the Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce, and all emphasis on repetition create an emotional distance, and finally a sense of serenity: a series of four or five shots emphasizing the graceful arc of the Coyote against a lovely sky being drawn along by his jet harpoon or whatever, calling attention to the curve rather than the disaster; or the contempla- tive moments provided as he diminishes from our view toward the canyon floor. This intensification can be deflected, as in FILM COMMENT 39

DUCK AMUCK CONTINUED through, Woo-woo!, a duck who's main priate costumes and attempts to speak and ALI BABA BUNNY (1957), when Daffy's re- line was ''I'm just daffy!\" Elmer is the play the role ala Robin Hood or Buck Ro- tribution is miniaturization; or it can be hunter amid the woods and mountains of overshadowed by the sheer spectacle in hunting season. The continuing gag is gers. Daffy longs to be a movie hero. Bugs BEANSTALK BUNNY (1955) . But in Jones's Bugs trying to convince Elmer it's duck looks suave in his pearl gray outfit trim- hunter trilogY-RABBIT FIRE , RABBIT season, and vice-versa with Daffy. The med in white; Daffy's all black, less sleekly SEASONING, and DUCK! RABBIT' films in the trilogy share the same points: contoured, ring-necked (oh, the indignity!) DUCK!-Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer are locked how dumb can Elmer be (pwetty dumb); -his main feature is the canti-levered into unavoidable three-way combat, and how clever can Bugs be; how much can orange-yellow beak that indicates the the stakes are much higher for the charac- Daffy suffer. center of his character. He looks different ters: beyond dignity to sanity and survival. from all the other characters. Even his For our purposes, the issue is: how do place in the decoupage is different: Bugs's Jones sha res the responsibility for Bugs and Daffy differ? Bugs is a winner reaction-shots present a wide range of maturing Daffy from an eccentric one- and Daffy is a loser. Greg Ford has pointed emotions, responses, comments; cuta- dimensional zany in the Thirties to a full out that in these three films we have the ways to Daffy have only two functions, and responsive instrument in the Sixties: clearest definition of general roles: Elmer either to show him recognizing his im- elongating and angularizing the form, never knows what's going on; Bugs al- pending doom, or to document the dam- making it less ducklike, and overseeing ways knows what's going on and is in con- age done. Mel Blanc's development of a rounded trol of events; Daffy's bright enough to fig- vocal personality. In the Fifties, Jones took ure out what's up and understand how to At the end of the last who-shoots-who Daffy on an odyssey through the genres, be in control, but he never makes it. Both argument in RABBIT SEASONING, Bugs nar- as far as the NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN Bugs and Daffy are con men and talkers, rows Daffy's choices down to whether BREAK \"reality joke\" of THE SCARLET PUM- but Daffy talks too much. Both are vain, Elmer will shoot him here or wait till he PERNICKEL (1948). Aside from exploring but Bugs's vanity is indiscreet, leading him gets home. \"Oh, no you don't,\" says Daffy's range thoroughly, the main effect into situations he must, and can, resolve; Daffy, \"he'll wait till he gets home.\" He of these films was to establish a new role Daffy's vanity is disastrous. Bugs stands and Elmer go off arm-in-arm into Elmer's for Porky: second banana and caustic back from a situation, analyzes it, and cabin. Explosion. Blasted Daffy returns to interlocutor. makes his move; Daffy becomes emotion- tell Bugs, \"You're despicable.\" ally involved, loses his distance, and blows Jones then brought Warners' two super- it. He's stuck with a one-track mind which In DUCK! RABBIT! DUCK! Daffy goes crazy stars into direct confrontation: Bugs and fixes on one facet of the problem and loses (the elk-and-fiddler-crab dialogue). Elmer, Daffy. It' s as if he created the opportunity sight of the larger pattern. confused by all the signs for Skunk, to explore each character in terms of the Pigeon, and/or Mongoose season, pleads other, and to refine the differences. With a This sort of difference is clear in their be- with a game warden (Bugs in disguise) to sense of roots, Jones returns to Avery's havior in period pieces. When thrust into know what season it is. Baseball season, WILD HARE and subsequent films, in which another time period, Bugs rarely appears Bugs replies, and Elmer goes nuts too, Elmer the hunter first glimpsed the rough as anything but present-day Bugs among bounding off after a ball Bugs has thrown. beginnings of Bugs and, ricocheting costumed rustics; Daffy wears the appro- Daffy has a remission and the ensuing dialogue occurs: Above and below: Daffy, debea ked or not debeaked DUCK AMUCK. D: Got rid of him, eh? B: Yup. Dat takes care of him. Eh, now tell me: just between the two of us, what season is it really? D: Eh-heh-heh, don't be so naive, Buster. Why, everybody knows it's really duck season. Walking away, Daffy is suddenly sur- rounded by hunters who blast him into a graphic black smudge on the snow. Barely alive, he croaks: \"Gasp ... gasp ... you're despicable.\" Daffy's beak is used indexically in these films, anticipating such a use of his entire body in DUCK AMUCK (1953). Each time he suffers a shooting, his beak is rearranged on his head-or parted from it-m some wrong fashion: upside-down and mounted over his eyes, so that he thinks

everything is upside-down; in Kwakiutl There's a lot of schlemiel in the mix, and a D: Here yare, Leatherstocking, all nice and legal .. . Hurry up, hu rry up, the fine thunderbird mask arrangement, so that lot of proto-Jack Lemmon. print doesn't mean a thing ... Hurry up, his entire face is inside the open jaws; Elmer is in the cartoons as the source of hurry up! BLAM! DafJtJ is blasted blJ Elmer. spinning around his head like a shooting danger and as a dupe. H e's dangerous be- D: H ere, le t me see that thin g. gallery target; or simply crumpled like tin- cause he's a hunter with a gun, and conse- \"Fricasseeing Duck.\" Well, I guess I'm the goat. (Surprised:) What? foil after sticking his head out a hole to see quently .quite certain he's there to shoot (Bugs raises a \"Goat Season Open \" sign. if Elmer's still there: \"Still lurking about,\" so mething: also because he's dumb and BLAM on DafJt;.) he says. unstable. To Elmer, reality is w hatever he's D (to Bugs) : You're a dirty dog. B(to Daffy): And you're a dirty skunk. Another physical method of placing just been conned into thinking it is. D I'm a dirty skunk? I'm a dirty skunk? (Bugs raises a \"Skunk Season\" sign. BIAM Bugs and Daffy in these films is their entry The principal differences a mong RABBIT 011 Daffy.) D (disgusted with self): Brother, am I a into shots. Bugs is usually discovered by a FIRE, RABBIT SEASONING, and DUCK! RABBIT! pigeon . cut, immobile in the center of the frame or DUCK' are their endin gs. Signs on trees (Bugs raises a \"Pigeon Season \" sign . ... ) rising into it from his hole. Daffy is found cl aimin g \" Du ck Season\" or \"Ra bbit The final stage of these narratives in- volves va riati on s on role and id e ntity either by walking into a fixed shot, or by Season\" are major props in all three films, through imitation and disguise. Bugs and Daffy try to further confuse Elmer by dress- cutting from a static s hot of Bugs and tho ugh we usually don't know wh ether ing up as each other. These broadly comic episod es are surprising and funn y beca use Elmer to a moving-camera shot, tracking they're true or not, or who puts them up. of our knowledge of each character and our interest in ho w each chooses to ape the with Daffy as he moves toward them ulti- At the end of RABBIT FIRE, Bugs and Daffy other, rather like Walter Brenna n doing John Wayne at the end of RIO BRAVO. Jones mately into the framelines of the first shot are pulling such signs off a tree, and under provides feather dusters, swim fins, and a shower cap for Bugs' dumber and noisier as he joins Bugs and Elmer. All of which each sig n is the opposite sign , back and versio n of Daffy. Daffy' s vers io n e m - phasizes slick belligere nce. The coup de indicates to the viewer that Bugs is at the forth until the last sign is revealed: \"Elmer grace is Mel Blanc's creation of the voices of Daffy imitating Bugs, etc. Finally, we see\" center of these events, the hub, nearly (but Season. \" Elmer does an aside \" Uh-oh\" Bugs's drag act, for which Elmer is always a sucker. Bugs as charmingly inept lad y not quite-yet) the lnel7eur du jeu; and as take, and we cut to Bugs and Daffy in huntress in va riably bowls Elmer over, often to Daffy's disgust. Sometimes Daffy corollary, that Daffy's constan t movement, uniso n and huntin g cos tume as Bugs joins in by playing Bugs's hunting dog, doing an excellent impression of the Frisky sometimes eccentric, is an attempt to find a says, \" Be vewwy vewwy quie t: we' re Dog character Jones used earlier in TERRIER similar spot at the eye of the storm. hunting Ewmers ,\" and Daffy says, STRICKEN (1952), etc. DUCK AMUCK is Daffy's Book of Job . It is In the first stage of each cartoon, Bugs \"Huh-huh-huh-huh.\" one of a handful of American animation and Daffy are actually under Elmer's gun B (reading from \"1,000 Ways To Cook A masterpieces, and likely the most cerebral of them . Daffy makes the most of his op- muzzle as they attempt to get each other Duck\"): Duck polonaise under gla ss . portunity for a definitive solo tour-de- force. It is at once a laff riot and an essay by shot. Bugs always wins by playing on Um-mmm. demonstration on the nature and condi- tion s of the animated film a nd the Daffy's impatience and perversity. \"Duck D (reading from \"1,000 Ways To Cook A mechanics of film in general. (Even a quick check of film grammar is tossed in, via the season,\" Bugs says, and swings the gun Rabbit\"): Rabbit au gratin de gelatin under \"G imme a closeup\" gag.) toward Daffy. The duck says, \" Rabbit tooled leather. Duh-rool, duh-rool. The basic concept in DUCK AMUCK is the idea of the frame and frame lines . The season,\" and swings the gun back to Bugs . B Barbecued duck meat with broiled strategy w ithin those lines de velops through frustrating incongruities. The This repeats, speeding up, until some- duck bill milanaise, Yumeey um. comic pay-off is the reflection of these themes in Daffy's character, his responses where in the middle Bugs says, \" Rabbit D: Chicken-fried rabbit w ith cottontail and-within the world of the cartoon-his literally cosmic humiliation. The film is ex- season,\" and feints with the gW1, leaving it sauce braised in carrots. Mmm-mmmmm. tremely conscious of itself as an act of cinema, as is much ofJones's work. E: I'm sowwy, fewwows , but I'm a veg- The swashbuckler credits set the scene etawian, I just hunt for the sport of it. for another adventure epic like THE SCARLET PUMPERNICKEL. With extreme Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh. economy, Jones plays out the first se- quence in an unbroken right-to-left (the B (accus ingly) : Oh, yeah! Well, there's hard way) tracking shot. That the entire world of the cartoon is not inside the frame other sports besides huntin', yo u know. D (emu lating Bogart's Broadway jive en - trance, in whites with raquet): Anyone for tennis? (BLAM!) Nice ga me. The process is more involved in DUCK! RABBIT! DUCK! when Elmer identifies Bugs as a stewing rabbit and invites him to say his prayers. B: Look, doc. Are yo u looking for trou- ble? I'm not a stewin' rabbit. I'm a fricas- \" Hey!! Not me, yo u slop artist! \" seein ' rabbit. (Shows label on ankle: \"Fricasseeing rabbit. \") pointed at himself. \"Duck season!\" Daffy E: Fwicasseein' wabbit? yells triumphantly, swings the gun over, B: Have you got a fwicasseein' wabbit and commands \"Fire!\" license? The action then escalates into second- E: Well, no, I ... stage, more involved con duels. RABBIT B: Do you happen to know what the FIRE: penalty is for shoo ting a fwicasseein' wab- Bugs is a strong, more traditional bit without a fwicasseein' wabbit license? American hero who reacts to threats upon D (ou traged): Just a parbOiled minute' his person or property with appropriate What is this, a cooking class? Shoot 'im, violence. Daffy is much more complicated. shoot 'irn! He's a coward, he claims, but a live cow- E: But I haven't got a license to shoot a ard. Daffy feels a preemptive necessity to fwicasseein' wabbit. set someone else (Bugs) up for the destruc- D (ex iting) : Don't go away, Daniel tion he knows is stalking any film he's in . Boo ne , I'll be back in a flash ... \"This He initia tes deceit. His yen for heroism, as license permits the bearer to shoot a well as his tenacity and ruthlessness in its fwicasee,\" uh ... fwickass , uh ... Say, quest (or the quest of its appearance) are Bud, how do yo u spell fwickaseein '? balanced by his capacity for self-pity, self- B: \" F-R-I-C-A-S-S-E-E-I-N-G . . . righteousness, and self-aggrandizement. D-U-C-K. \" FILM COMMENT 41

DUCK AMUCK CONTINUED fects . His objections are replaced by vari- DUCK AMUCK lines-that the director, as in live-action ous bird sounds. He is absurdly painted, cinema, uses the frame to selectively show then turned into a parody of the duckbilled ate with this force, Daffy takes responsibil- what he chooses to show-is emphasized Flub-a-Dub and provided with a mirror so ity for the picture upon himself, motivated as Daffy exits and enters past the frame that, like the Coyote perceiving the chasm, both by the egotism of his starhood and a lines as he makes costume changes in a he can understand what's wrong. DUCK futile effort to match the changing scene AMUCK is a good illustration of Noel backgrounds, recalling a sequence from Burch's dialectic idea of film elements: SHERLOCK, JR. Along with the frame-line foreground and background, space and ac- idea, Daffy must be understood as an tion, character and environment, image autonomous character, a put-upon actor and soundtrack are all in conflict with one capable both of playing roles and speaking for himself. This increases the vulnerability another. we witness through Daffy's forced The precise attack on the logic and con- metamorphoses. ventions of the form climaxes as the black- The movement through the first section ness outside the frame lines sags in on Daffy, taking over the screen. After failed from a florid, busily high-style back- attempts to prop this stuff up with struts, ground, past pencil sketchlines of same, to Daffy goes into a rage and shreds the in- plain white background couples with vading black areas, asking that we \"get this Daffy's complaints, the new brushed-in picture started,\" only to be cut off by an backgrounds, and Daffy's continuing iris-in to black superimposed with \"The frustration. The result: the integrity of the expected layout has been destroyed. Jones End.\" goes on to demonstrate that while the Obviously, Daffy is more sympathetic in spirit and personality of Daffy, as abstrac- this film than in the hunter trilogy because tions, are unassailable, his physical person is up for grabs. Daffy is erased, re-drawn , ahe is not preying on anyone else; he is and saddled with inappropriate sound ef- victim instead, no longer of himself but of some irrational power. Unable to ~ooper- DUCK AMUCK: hai-hai-nai-hai-hain. One last embrace, ness knows itisn't as though I haven't kept before we ... mmmmm ... hmmmrnm. myself trim, goodness knows, I've done Dialogue and stage directions that. That's strange, all of a sudden I don't On pan with Daffy, background has been quite feel myself. Oh, I feel alright, and yet All dialogue spoken by Daffy Duck except as downgraded again to sketchiness, and then to I, I uh ... noted . white. Mirror inked in. Daffy sees his reflection. Florid eighteenth-ce/1tury swash fanfares. Buster, it may come as a complete sur- Hey!! You know better than that!! Stand back, musketeers! They shall Erased, redrawn back to normal . prise to you to find that this is an animated Well? sample my blade! Touche! Unh! Unh! Unh! cartoon, and that in animated cartoons Sailor suit provided. Unh! they have scenery; and in all the years I . .. Hmrn, sea picture, eh? I always wanted to do a sea epic. Now Mr. Rembrandt, if Pall with Daffy swordplaying in period cos- Daffy is erased. you'll kindly oblige with a little appropriate tume, past period castle background, past pro- scenery-(Sings:) Over the sea, let's go gressively less detailed sketchlines of the back- All right, wise guy, where am I! men, we're shovin' right off, we're shovin' ground, to a completelyblank space. Re-drawn as singing cowboy, Daffy moves to right off- strum guitar. No audio. He raises a sign, Ocean daubed in, leaving Daffy strallded Musketeers?.. Hmmmm?.. En SOUND PLEASE. He strums again. Guitar mid-air over water. Garde ... ? My blade . .. ? Hey, psst, emits machine-gun soulld. One more strum. Again? Splash. whoever's in charge here? The scenery? Guitar honks Klaxon sound. He throws down Daffy climbs ashore onto faraway island on guitar in anger and ou trage. It crashes, shatters horizon. Where's the scenery? to \"Hee-Haw!\" sound. Daffij tries to protest: a Distallt voice: Hey! Cmere!, c'mere! Brush enters frame, paints ill fannyard. rooster crow comes from his mouth. Anotherat- Gimme a close-up! Stand back, musketeers. They shall tempt: tropical bird calls. Slaps hand over Close-up gran ted, as whole screen reduces to mouth. Tentatively removes it: \"SqueakJ\" Daffy size of postage-stamp to accommodate tiny dis- sample my ... ? Blade ... ? Hmmmm? flips out, voicebox back. tant face in corner offrame . Raarrghbrbrbrbrbr!! And I've never been Okay, have it your way. so humiliated in all my life! Look, Mac, just This is a close-up? A close-up, you jerk, Daffy leaves frame-left, retums with appro- what's going on here? Let's get organized, a dose-up! hmmrn? How about some scenery? priate overalls, hoe, and farmer's hat. Pencil facetiously scrawls in childlike outline Violen t zoom-in for a \"real\" close-up. Overly (Sings:) Daffy Duck he had a farm, ee aye rendering ofa city street. close. Daffy's two enraged red eyes fill screen. That's dandy, ho ho, that's rich I'll say. Daffy turns, walks from camera in disgust. ee aye 0 ... Now how about some color, stupid? Background changes, while panning with Brush paints Daffy with crude colored Thanks for the sour persimmons, polka-dots, stripes. cousin. Now look, buster, let's have an Daffy, to Eskimo snowscape. Hey!! Not me, you slop artist! understanding. . . .And on this farm he had an igloo, Erased, save for eyes and beak. Well, where's the rest of me? Thumping sounds as top and side framelines ee ... aye . . .eee . . .aye ... ooh (revelation). Daffy retumed as crazy-looking purple mu- begin to sag and collapse in. Would it be too much to ask if we could tant with petal-mane and tail that waves a f/ilg Now what? Brother, what a way to run a make up our minds, hmrnm? railroad. Hunh-urgh! Hunh-urgh! Leaves frame, comes back on skis, wearing spelling \"screw-ball,\" picture-rebus fashion. Huhn-urgh! It's not as though I haven't lived up to muffs and winter outfit. (Sings:) Dashing through the snow, ya- my contract, goodness knows; and good- ha-ha-ha-ha, through the fields we go, laughing all the way ... eee ... eee. Background has changed to flowery Hawaiian jungle; Daffy exits, re-enters frame. with lei, ukelele, and wraparound. Sings: Farewell to thee, farewell to thee, the wind will carry back our sad refrai- 42 JAN.-FEB. 1975

commitment to deliver the entertainment fense job. The difference is clear. medium is more limited, and less pointed. the audience deserves. Appropriately at Daffy's last indignant attempt at self- It' s the difference between bizarre sitcom this moment, his softshoe is disrupted as and go-for-the-jugular comedie noire. The the image rolls out of frame, the frame line assertion begins the final shot of the film. Daffy version, it seems to me, takes us splitting the horizontal of the screen and He literally pulls himself together and much further inside ourselves: it's incan- providing two images of Daffy. This event says, \" . . . who is responsible for this? I descent. The Bugs version is cooler. DUCK dictates that Daffy have a fight with him- demand that you show yourself. Who are AMUCK can be seen as DAFFY'S BAD TRIP. self. you? Huh?\" During the speech, the om- Delusions, his own self-destructive fan- nipotent pencil has lubitsched in a door- tasies, with the rapid, unpredictable, dis- Then there is a turn for the better as frame and a door; and, as Daffy finishes, concerting changes of scene and orienta- Daffy is provided the lead in an aviation tion: it's the final extension of downhill epic. Daffy handles an off-screen crash the eraser end of the pencil nudges the ego-on-the-line dreams . Is it reassuring with good spirits-\"Uh-oh! Time to hit the door closed, settling his hash as finally as when we see, at the end of DUCK AMUCK, old silk!\"-and seems to have resumed Bruce Baldwin's in HIS GIRL FRIDAY . As the the concentric, esophagal Warner Brothers control until his chute is turned into an shot continues, the frame limits are pro- cartoon logo? anvil. The film pivots on this event. Daffy foundly violated. The camera tracks back loses his heroic posture, his last shot at until we see the animation board, and then Perhaps this description of DUCK AMUCK control of the film, his physical well-being, the animator-a gloating Bugs- will provoke more thoughtful criticism of and his grip on reality. He winJs up recit- eight-and-a-half seconds later. Hollywood animation. ing \"The Village Smithy\" while hammer- ing on a sixteen-inch naval shell's Two years afterward, in RABBIT RAMPAGE Chuck Jones said: \"But what I want to detonator. It explodes. This particular (1955), Jones remade this film with Bugs as say is that Daffy can live and struggle on an image is emblematic of his entire career. It the victim and Elmeras the cartoonist mis- empty screen, without setting and without recalls FOREWARD MARCH HARE (1952), one using his powers. It isn't so successful. sound, just as well as with a lot of arbitrary of Jones's Bugs Bunny service comedies, Daffy's the perfect paranoiac (and he has props. He remains Daffy Duck.\" which ends with Bugs testing shells. If his reasons); Bugs is a winner, and doesn't they don't detonate--and none of them quite fit the scenario. And Elmer as the Although short of tits-and-ass, its distil- d~he stamps \"DUO\" on them as his De- all-powerful creator?? In Bugs's version, a lation of paranoia, suffering, and irration- major issue is Bugs's contract and whether he'll live up to it. The play with space and ality make DUCK AMUCK the perfect short to show with Bob Fosse's LENNY. ~:. Daffy now utters incredible shriek as he hys- D#2: Down here? What are you doin' as an anvil. Daffy falls abruptly, crashes below. teriall/y claws and tears at surrounding black- up there? Cut to dazed and battered Daffy after fall , mind- ness. lessly hammering the anvil. Peeved, the second Dafftj steps up to first Alright, let's get this picture started. Daffy to settle dispu te. (Broken voice:) Under the spreading Penultimate fanfare, iris-out, THE END chestnut tree, the village smithy stands; sign inserted. Daffy desperately pushes sign D#1: Listen, bud, if you wasn't me, I'd the smith, a mighty man is he, with strong away. smack you right in the puss. and sinewy . . . No! No! Listen, pal, let's discuss this D#2: Don't let that bother you, Jack. Anvil repainted as bomb. Daffy continues to D#1: Okay, you asked for it. bring doun1 hammer. Explosion . thing sanely, huh? Look, 111 tell you what, First Daffy takes a swing at the seCond. Sec- you go your way and I'll go mine. Live and ond Daffy is erased leaving first twirling around (Nearly destroyed voice:} . . . hands. let live. Right? Right. Ladies and gentle- mid-punch. All resolved as Daffy next is outfit- (Pause.) Awright, enough is enough, this is men, there will be no further delays, so 1 ted as WWI flying ace, in plane against blue sky. the final, this is the very very last straw; shall attempt to entertain you in my own He digs it. who is responsible for this? I demand that inimitabububle fashion. Oh brother, I'm a buzzboy! you show yourself. Daffystartssoftshoeing to \"Way Down Upon Plane engine revs , goes into power dive, The unseen artist draws in door and the Swanee River.\" Film altches in projector crashes into painted-in mountain . Daffy pilots door-frame . gate, so that frameline splits screen in two body-less cockpit. horizontally. There are now an upper and a Who are you?! Huh?! lower Daffy. Uh-oh, time to hit the old silk. Door is shut in Daffy's face. Bugs Bunny re- Geronimo! vealed at the animation board. D#1: Now what? (Looks below.) What are you doin' down there? Bails outsuccessfully, until chute is repainted Bugs Bunny: Ain't 1a stin~er? ~ FILM COMMENT 43

For making the following research into the his- When Winsor McCay died at his home He was soon wooed away to work for five tory and techniques of each of the Winsor McCay in Sheepshead Bay, N.Y. on July 26, 1934 of years on the rival Cincinnati Enquirer. In animated films such an exciting and pleasurable a massive cerebral hemorrhage at the ap- 1903, New York Herald and New York task, the author is grateful to Louise Beaudet, Direc- proximated age of sixty-three (the Herald Telegram publisher James Go\"rdon Bennett trice of La Cinematheque Quebecoise, who arranged Tribune claimed \"not even Mr. McCay Jr. brought McCay to New York as a staff for him to view the films last summe r in Montreal, knew his exact age\"), his fame as one of the illustrator on his papers, covering crimes, and whose knowledge of animation history is sur- greatest of newspaper cartoonists seemed trials, and social events. While at these passed only by her love for it; to Raymond Moniz, secure. His realistic fantasy strip, \"Little papers McCay also created his early strips McCay's grandson , a proud promoter of his Nemo in Slumberland,\" first appearing in \"Hungry Henrietta,\" \"Little Sammy grandfather's reputation; and to John A. Fitzsim- The New York Herald on October 15, 1905, Sneeze,\" \"Dream of the Rarebit Fiend,\" mons, who was Winsor McCay's neighbor, friend, was an immediate success in newspapers and \"Little Nemo in Slumberland.\" After assistant on two of the animated films , and an articu- in America and Europe. Thanks to joining the Hearst Press in 1912, McCay late eye -witness to animation history. McCay's brilliant imagination, and to an continued \"Nemo\" and contributed pow- unsurpassed virtuosity of draftsmanship erful illustrations to accompany Arthur The part of my life of which I am that never fails to astound, it raised Brisbane's written discourses. proudest is the fact that I was one of the comic-strip cartoons to a fine art. first men in the world to make animated McCay's phenomenal energy and drive cartoons ... I went into the business and On his way to such fame, and fortune, enabled him, in June 1906, to devise and spent thousands of dollars developing this Winsor Zenis McCay, the son of a star in his own unique vaudeville act, with new art. It required considerable time, Michigan lumberman, was a painter of which he toured successfully for eleven patience, and careful thought-timing posters and advertisements for traveling years until William Randolph Hearst in- and drawing the pictures . .. this is the circuses, melodrama companies, and freak sisted he sign a contract agreeing to aban- most fascinating work I have ever show museums in Chicago and Cincin- don all stage work and concentrate only on done-this business of making cartoons nati. Early on, he discovered his natural his newspaper commitments; McCay un- live on the screen. drawing ability, and this talent gained him happily signed. Part of the act had McCay a position, before he was twenty, as a staff in front of a large blackboard drawing in - Winsor McCay, artist on the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune. chalk a pictorial \"Seven Ages of Man\": fac- Cartoon and Movie Magazine, April 1927 \") ., -... ......... WINSOR' ,. .. • MCCAY , 4t\"• .~YJohn Canemaker I ( ....)• , r~ 1 V\"\"> § .\" \"\"f~ 1\\ ~ f ....(... ~'\" I o::J I ~ I- -<: Out of the Dar,k Age of film history ~ -, l\\:ozs came McCay the Renaiyance Man, and -.1~ )N.-FEB. 1975 '. .\"his domesti~~ed dinosaur Gertie. ., /.\".. . G c( I'

ing profiles of a man and a woman were leased on December 28, 1914.) A live-action sequence, directed by J.S. taken through progressive changes from Fitzsimmons also remembers the fa- cradle to old age in about forty pictures Blackton (whose own film HUMOROUS drawn at the rate of one every thirty sec- mous bet between McCay and fellow PHASES OF FUNNY FACES in 1906 is regarded onds. Hearst cartoonists George (Bringing Up as the first frame-by-frame animation in Fath er) McManus , Tom Powers , and motion pictures), was attached to the be- As early as 1905, McCay was experi- Thomas \"Tad\" Dorgan, that led directly to ginning and end of the film for commercial menting with animation in the spacing and McCay's first film, LITTLE NEMO: \" .. .the distribution. It was released in moving pic- changes of the visuals in his comic strips, three or four of them were down in a ture theaters on April 8, 1911, and shown and his early vaudeville routine shows a saloon near the old American building at as part of McCay's vaudeville act at New fascination with and understanding of William and Duane Streets right under the York's Colonial Theatre on April 12. basic animation principles. Eventually, Brooklyn Bridge. They got to kidding in McCay found time in his busy life to create there. I think McManus kidded McCay be- John Bunny, Vitagraph's star comedian, ten animated films, exhibited between 1911 cause he was such a rapid worker. I never appears with McCay and others in the and 1921, that are the forerunners of mod- saw anyone who could work like live-action which takes place in a studio set em cartoon films . His painstaking experi- McCay . .. Jokingly, McManus suggested representing the restaurant where McCay ments with timing, motion, characteriza- that McCay make several thousand draw- made the bet with his peers. The tuxedoed tion, and techniques, for which there were ings, photograph them onto film and gentlemen laugh continuously as McCay, no precedents, rightfully place him as the show the result in theaters ...On a dare who resembles James Cagney with a true father of animation . McCay consid- from his friends McCay claimed he would forelock, claims he will complete four ered the animated film a new art form , and produce enough line drawings to sustain a thousand moving drawings. The scene he treated it as a very personal, one-man four or five minute animated cartoon shifts to a hallway outside a door labeled show instead of a factory assembly-line. showing his 'Little Nemo' characters and \"Studio\" as burly workmen deliver barrels He once predicted \" the coming artist will would use the film as a special feature of of \"ink\" and huge cartons of \"paper\" to make his reputation not by pictures in still his already popular vaudeville act.\" the diminutive McCay, dressed in vest and life, but by drawings that are ani- the fedora hat he always wore when work- mated ....\" McCay had to build his knowledge and ing. Inside the studio, amid stacks of paper working techniques of animation from lit- representing animation drawings, one can But McCay never fully explored the erally nothing. At that time, silent movie catch quick glimpses of the \" checking commercial possibilities of animation and projectors were flashing sixteen machine,\" and close shots of a few of the so never became widely recognized or frames-per-second onto the screen, and rice paper sketches. The live portion also wealthy from his work in the new according to Fitzsimmons, McCay \" timed contains a brief scene of the method used medium . everything with split-second watches. to photograph the drawings: sketches That's how he got nice smooth action . For were inserted in to a wooden slot and shot Soon after his death, Winsor McCay's every second that was on the screen one frame at a time by a horizon tal camera. reputation fell into obscurity. Within the McCay would draw sixteen pictures ...He last decade, however, interest in McCay had nothing to follow, he had to work The animation itself is quite wondrous; and all his works has revived. His original everything out himself. \" there is no plot and no backgrounds, so the cartoon strips are selling for about $2,000 pure line drawings delight us by magically each; magazine articles and a glorious book The artist animated his first three films metamorphosing. Flip and Impy appear, of \"Nemo\" strips have been published; his on 6\" x 8\" sheets of translucent rice paper, disappear, and chase each other in limbo, films are regularly included in college film lightly penciling in the animation extreme continually moving, and indicating per- history courses. Gradually McCay is being poses first and filling in the \"inbetween\" spective only through the gradual size restored to his rightful place as an impor- drawings of an action after. He added de- changes in their bodies. Nemo is formed tant American artist, and his veteran col- tails and completed the individual draw- by lines resembling steel filings attracted to leagues are contributing to the restoration ings in Higgins black ink with Gilliot #290 a magnet; he is resplendant in a cape, hat, with their reminiscences of Winsor McCay pens in holders . For accurate registration and plumes (delicate pinks and yellows in at work. from one drawing to the next, crosses were the hand-colored original made by the placed in the upper right and left corners Museum of Modern Art) . He bows and John Fitzsimmons, the artist's friend and and a serial number was assigned to each conducts the Imp and Flip in funhouse- occasional assistant, recalls how McCay drawing in the lower right corner. Next, mirror contortions. Nerno sketches the first became interested in animated motion each rice paper drawing was mounted on Princess and presents her with a rose that pictures: \"The New York American had a slightly larger pieces of quality bristol grows just in time to be picked. A magnifi- Sunday supplement, a half-page of the board to ease handling and photograph- cent green dragon-chariot, brilliantly ani- comic section, a little hea vier than the ing. mated , carries off the two children to news stock. Whoever made it drew a series Slumberland. Flip and Impy return in a of pictures you could cut out and put to- As each sequence reached the mounting jalopy that explodes and they fall onto gether with a rubber band and flick stage, it was then checked for smoothness another McCay character, Dr. Pill. The live through your fingers. We were talking of action on a device McCay built that was sequence shows McCay collecting his bet. about that one day. That must have been based on a penny arcade viewing the start because they were a novelty, they machine. It was a box, 24\" x 12\" x 2(1', open THE STORY OF A MosQurro. A notice in had advertising, some drug company. It at the top with a shaft running through it the Detroit News Tribun e of March 24, 1912, got to be a fad for kids: get these things, cut . onto which a hub containing slits held the describes how McCay was incorporating them out. I know he was talking about it. \" drawings. A crank revolved the hub and his animated films into the vaudeville act: the drawings while a brass rod running \" . .. Part 1 will be a series of blackboard McCay himself confirms this opinion, across the top caught the cards momentar- drawings, entitled 'Youth to Old Age' . Part for he wrote in 1927, \"Winsor, Jr., as a small ily, thus creating the interruption provided 2 will be the 'Little Nemo' moving pictures, boy, picked up several flippers of 'magic by the shutter of a projector necessary for made from Mr. McCay's drawings and de- pictures' and brought them home to me. the illusion of moving pictures. picted on the picture screen by a beauti- From this germ I evolved the modern car- fully colored film, he being the first car- toon movies in 1909.\" (McCay's use of the THE FILMS toonist in America to make animated pic- date 1909 has caused it to be used errone- LITTLE NEMO. Approximately four tures. Part 3 is called THE STORY OF A MOS- ously quite often as the date of GERTIE THE thousand drawings were photographed QUITO and is said to be among the best DINOSAUR 'S debut . In fact, GERTIE was onto one reel at the Vitagraph Studios in comedy series of pictures yet devised by a McCay's third animated film and was re- Br.ooklyn for McCay's first animated film . cartoonist.\" The MOSQUITO film Oal!uary Gertie, the first great lady of animated cartoons, was in- FILM COMMENT 45 corporated into McCay's vaudeville performance in 1914 .

WINSOR MC CAY CONTINUED long neck and swallow the fruit, much to all that remain of this fascinating cel anima- the delight of the audience. \" Gertie also tion . A woman with an upswept hairdo is 1912), his second ink-on-rice-paper ani- drinks a lake, tosses a mammoth over her seen walking, nude to the waist, through a mation , is a gruesomely funny short. shoulder, and dances. Admonished, she birch forest; soon we discover she has the Steve, a spiffy mosquito with a top-hat, cries, and the audience is won over by the . body of a calico horse replete with white discovers a sleeping drunk and bores his inspired touch of a diplodicus weeping like tail. A male centaur throws a rock and hits long proboscis into the man's nose, neck, an over-grown child. Sixty-year-old a vulture. He approaches the female and and dome in gluttonous search for al- GERTrE is as fresh as ever in conception and they slowly walk toward a grandmother coholic blood. Soon he has partaken of so execution-a masterpiece of early person- centaur and a grandfather (who resembles much he can hardly fly; in the end, Steve ality animation technique. George Bernard Shaw), presumably to ask explodes. permission to marry. All the animation ap- THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA. On Fri- pears to be on one cel-level because all the GERTIE THE DINOSAUR. Remarking on day, May 7, 1915, the English Cunard characters start and stop moving at the the LITTLE NEMO and MOSQUITO anima- liner, Lusitania, homeward bound from same time. A baby's head and torso on a tions, McCay once said, \"While these New York to Liverpool, was torpedoed pony's trunk enters and shows off, and the made a big hit, the theatre patrons sus- without warning by a German submarine film abruptly ends. The design of the \"cen- pected some trick with wires. Not until I off the coast of Ireland. The ship sank in taurettes\" in the Pastoral-sequence of drew GERTIE THE DINOSAUR did the audi- eighteen minutes, killing almost twelve FANTASIA might have been influenced by ence understand that I was making the hundred, including over a hundred the McCay film; many of the older Disney drawings move.\" In the April 2, 1912, Americans. The political and emotional re- storymen undoubtedly saw the McCay Rochester Post , McCay announced, sponse to this tragedy was a major factor in films when they were first released . (Dick \"I ...have already been approached by bringing the United States into World War ' Huemer, in fact, re-created the GERTIE 'The American Historical Society' to draw I. \"McCay was especially i!tcensed at such vaudeville routine from memory for a Fif- pictures of prehistoric animals, the present wanton brutality,\" Fitzsimmons recalls. ties Disneyland TV show.) evidences of which are limited to their \"He proposed to make an animated car- skeletons, which would represent some toon graphically depicting the horrible FLIP'S cmcus. Fragments of scenes from connected incident in their lives .. . they tragedy.\" this film-return of the clever Flip. Here he could be shown on screens all over the juggles, balances, and attempts stunts world .\" Released on July 20,1918, this film was with a Gprtie-like creature who eats part of the first McCay animation to use celluloid his car. There are many \"cel flashes\" in this GERTIE was copyright on September 15, instead of paper for the action drawmgs, film indicating light reflections on the cel- 1914, and is McCay's first animation using thus allowing a stationary background to luloid, and three-frame captions could a detailed background. John Fitzsimmons be used that didn' t have to be redrawn mean this was a work print. assisted McCay on the film: \"1 did all the each frame . \"Binding posts were attached background work . . .He had a master to drawing boards,\" says Fitzsimmons, GERTIE ON TOUR. The shortest of the drawing of the background and he would who on this film was again McCay's assis- McCay prints, this fragmented film shows make the drawing featuring the animal. I tant, \"and the sheets of celluloid were Gertie walking near a railroad, looking at a would lay that over the master background punched to fit snugly to them, thus the frog, stopping a trolley car, with back- and trace in pen and ink.\" Fitzsimmons annoying problem of movement or shift- grounds of the New York City skyline, and also observed the filming of GERTIE : \" 1 ing of drawings while being traced was re- a strange scene of Gertie dancing on her went up to the Vitagraph Company on duced to a minimum .. .[It] facilitated the hind legs on a rock surrounded by several Avenue M one night. [McCay] had a photographing of the drawings other dinosaurs. There appear to be two whole series of drawings and we were up immeasurably .. . I did the water, the cel-levels used, one for her head and tail, there for hours ... He went through this waves. He made a set of sixteen waves and and another for her body; again, captions whole thing, photographed the whole numbered them one to sixteen, and those are shown for two or three frames . damn reel . ..They developed the nega- waves would roll nice and smooth. We had tive, made the positive print, put it on the one scene of the Lusitania at night going DREAMS OF THE RAREBIT FrENO: THE PET. screen and every other frame was a differ- across [on] about seven hundred and fifty This first of a series of three DREAMS, all dis- ent shade. Because they were using arc drawings. His number one drawing and tributed in 1921, tells the tale of a man who lights, it would sputter and get bright, then my number one wave would be the same; eats some disagreeable rarebit and dreams go down, get dim, and sputter again . Well, for his seventeenth drawing I would start that his small house pet grows into a ten- the whole damn thing was no good. It had my number one again.\" story high monster after drinking a barrel to be thrown out.\" of \"rough on rats.\" There are impressive The final film contains approximately scenes of the monster pet roamingil la KING The final version of GERTIE was fitted twenty-five thousand drawings on cels KONG through city buildings, and his final with a live-action sequence showing and took twenty-two months to complete. destruction by an army ofbombing planes. McCay and cronies visiting New York' s There is a wonderful use of gray tones, fas- The film reminds one of Tex Avery's Museum of Natural History, roaming cinating patterns of the white and black KING-SIZE CANARY (1947) in which a cat and among dinosaur skeletons, and later, in smoke effects, and McCay' s attention to a mouse drink so much \"Jumbo-Gro\" they tuxedoes again, at a restaurant where detail and perspective in scenes of the can hardly fit on top of the world . McCay bets he can make a dinosaur move submarine submerging while speeding and sets to work drawing. Gertie, the first toward the ship, and of the ship capsizing. DREAMS OF THE RAREBIT FIEND : BUG real cartoon star, shyly makes her screen It is quite a beautiful film, and must have VAUDEVILLE . A hobo complains about a debut peering from behind some rocks . greatly affected audiences of the rarebit handout and falls asleep under a Soon a more assertive personality emerges time-who were unaware that the tree . He dreams he is watching a vaude- and she devours trees, boulders, and fruit. Lusitania had been heavily armed, and ville performance of juggling grasshop- \"1 lectured in connection with the screen that the English Admiralty had been neg- pers, an eccentric-dancer Daddy Long- presentation,\" McCay wrote years later, ligent in protecting the ship. Legs, a trick-cyclist cockroach, and a but- \"inviting Gertie to eat an apple, which I terfly corps de ballet. Finally, the hobo is at- held up to her. Gertie would lower her THE CENTAURS. Fragmented scenes are 46 JAN.-FEB. 1975

/ I ,rr-' ~, II ~. ';/\" .1 I 1.-'f..; ,\" . ,\"I' I, I /[;. \\. ;I: I'~,~'' I, y.I·· \", ! ,~ \\ '-.: ...... ~ ~ I -- -'6\" u Top left: Flip, a favoritecharacterfrom McCay' sepic comic strip Little Nemo in Slumber/and, gets the worst of it in a balancing act in FLIP'SCIRCUS. Top right : THE PET swal lows a barrel of \" rough on rats\" and grows into a ten-storey high monster, finally destroyed by an army of ai rplanes and a dirigible (192 1). Bottom left: Steve, a dapper but greedy mosquito, comes to a bad end, in THE STOR Y OF A MOSQUITO (1912). Bottom right: The outer-space effects make DREAMS OF A RAREBIT FIEND: THE FLYING HOU SE (1921) McCay's 2001 , eighty yea rs early. tacked by a large black spider and this impressive, a sort of 2001 of the Twenties. animation; cycle drawings repeating, yes, awakens him. A marvelously entertaining In conclusion, one notices the influence but always well-planned. cartoon, several cel-Ievels, lovely gray- tone background renderings, and clever McCay's theatrical background had on his It seems a pity McCay never continued animation. film subjects and action; most of the films working in animation, with sound and are presented in a rather stagey, as op- color, setting up his own studio, and pro- DREAMS OF THE RAREBIT FIEND : THE FLY- posed to cinematic, way, with extremely ducing more and more cartoon films. But limited use of close-ups. In the first three he never did, for he knew his own need s ING HOUSE. A title card announces the film animations, the action is continuous, as in very we ll. As John Fitzs immons says: was \"Drawn by Robert Winsor McCay \" real time\", and makes no use of cuts; \" First of all, McCay was an artist . I don't using the Winsor McCay process of ani- changes of angle are accomplished by the think he would ever sit in an office and mated drawing .\" This father and son col- movement of the characters. have a dozen people drawing the stuff. He laborative effort is a fantasy of a wife who got more fun out of his own work than eats some rarebit and dreams her husband The emphasis in McCay's animated anybody I ever saw. Every once in a while has equipped their house with rings and a films is on making the impossible seem all of a sudden he'd bust out laughing at propeller in order to flyaway from their plausible. This is accomplished mostly the cartoons he was doing. McCay, he creditors. The animation of the humans is through making the characters change . loved to work. I never saw anybody love to rather stiff and repetitious, but the special shapes, dance, juggle, and fly in masterful work like he did.\" .~;; effects animation of the house flying perspective through space. Limited per- higher and higher into outer space is quite sonality touches, yes, but never limited Copyright John Canemaker 1974. FILM COMMENT 47

Max at drawing board with Ko-Ko. Ko-Ko in BEDTIME. Imminent catastrophe in KO-KO'S EARTH CONTROL. MAf: ANS SAVE The inventor Max and the inventive Dave built a cartoon industry, with alift Max Fleischer was born in Austria in military equipment for Popular Science, he floor. Terrified, they jump on the piece of t 1885 and came to the United States at the was assigned the direction of a series of clay, but Ko-Ko escapes to the drawing age of five . After some training in art and training films. These animated films , HOW board. The men fight until Max realizes J mechanics at the Art Students' League, TO READ AN ARMY MAP and HOW TO FffiE A who is to blame. Ko-Ko sees this, and Cooper Union, and the Mechanics and LEWIS GUN (both 1917), may have been fhe jumps back into the safety of the inkwell. Tradesmen's School, Max sought em- first educational cartoons, although Bray In revenge, Max pours out the ink in sym- ployment at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It is has a similar claim. Dave spent the war in bolic filicide. said that he offered to pay the Art Editor Washington, editing films for the Medical two dollars a week for the training: the Corps. After the end of the war, Max and In MODELING, the Fleischers tried to startled editor hired him on the spot. Dave returned to the Bray Studio, until solve two of the early problems of anima- 1921, when they began to release their tion: elaborate movement, and the illusion Max left the Eagle, and after several years \"Out of the Inkwell\" cartoons through of depth. Through the use of the roto- as a photo engraver, returned to jour- Winkler, then Standard, Arrow, and Red scope, Ko-Ko was able to move in an nalism as the Art Editor of Popular Science Seal Pictures. elaborate and smooth manner through a Monthly, which allowed him to pursue his live set. The Fleischers reveled in the free- mechanical and artistic interests. Encour- MODELING, an early \"Out of the Ink- dom their invention gave them, keeping well\" cartoon (1921), begins, as usual, with their silent cartoons in almost constant mo- aged by Waldemar Kaempffert, the Max at his drawing board. He sketches tion. MODELING illustrates Significant Editor-in-ChieE, Max, with his brother circles that form themselves into the shape themes in the Fleischers' work. The ani- Dave, attempted to develop a method to of Ko-Ko the Clown, who complains that mated characters move without necessary facilitate the production of motion picture he is weak because Max uses stale ink . Max cause, and often in a rhythmic pattern. cartoons by machinery, in order to cut the demands that the clown show more pep, This movement is not limited to change in costs and improve the motion of anima- and prods him in to action with a sharp location. Many things in the film change tion . The result of their experimentation pen. As Ko-Ko cavorts, we see another their shape or properties, such as the was the rotoscope, which projected a film part of the studio, where Dave is modeling drawn circles that transform themselves of a live figure frame-by-frame, serving as a likeness of an ugly client in clay. The into the living Ko-Ko, or the nose of the a guide for the drawing of an animated model complains that the bust looks too sculpture that crawls like a worm along the figure. much like him, and Max, after drawing a floor. These constant transformations run winter scene into Ko-Ko's world, goes to throughout the Fleischer silents. In In 1915, the Fleischers had completed arbitrate the dispute. BEDTIME (1921), Ko-Ko grows gigantic, and their first cartoon by this new method. The stalks, Kong-like, through the streets of film, one hundred and seventy-five feet in Ko-Ko, left alone, slips along the ice, but New York. In KO-KO'S HAUNTED HOUSE length, starred Ko-Ko the Clown, a roto- regains his balance and skates confidently (1928), the inkwell is stretched into a model scoped version of Dave Fleischer in a off screen, sticking out his tongue at us. He house, and Ko-Ko's pet dog Fitz turns clown suit. Cartoon in hand, Max went out reappears over the horizon, and traces a himself inside out. In HAREM SCARUM in search of a distributor, and found John caricature of the model on the ice. A polar (1928), the chopped-off heads of Ko-Ko Bray, his erstwhile colleague on the Eagle, bear steals Ko-Ko's hat, and after a long and Fitz sprout legs and walk back to their whose s tudio was the exclusive producer chase, Ko-Ko rolls the bear up into a giant bodies. The Fleischer cartoon world is one of cartoons for Paramount Famous Lasky . snowball, which he molds into the likeness in which everything is potentially some- Bray hired the Fleischers to produce a of the model. thing else, with a resultingly bizarre imag- series of short cartoons that featured Ko- ery that finds its fullest expression in the Ko, but the First World War interrupted The three men are angered by this dis- cartoons of the early Thirties . the association. play, so Ko-Ko takes refuge in the sculp- ture. Max, Dave, and the model are hor- The plots of most early Fleischer car- In 1917, the Army established a film rified by the subsequent behavior of the toons are cyclical and fatalistic. In studio at Fort Sill to produce training films . bust's nose, as it begins to crawl along the SPARRING PARTNER (1921), a tiny Ko-Ko is Max enlisted in the army, and due to a series of articles he had previously done on 48 JAN.-FEB. 1975