Warner Bros. Cartoon Shorts (1930-1955)

The Brutally, Delightfully Honest Language of Comedy

An essay by: Witney Seibold

A friend of mine was recently, in a fit of argumentative playfulness, dismissing most every film produced in America from the end of World War II all the way to the advent of the Beatles in the early 1960s. Sure, he posited, there were classics along the way (“All About Eve” sprung immediately to mind, and “Sunset Boulevard”), but for the most part, all American films of the late 1940s and all of the 1950s were infused with a depressing display of bland, repressive square-ness. He would not get behind the colorful melodramas of Douglas Sirk, the English-language noir classics of Fritz Lang, or the gloriously oddball cinematic uncle that is ‘50s sci-fi.

Despite my ability to defend this period of American film, I am able to see my friend’s point. A lot of the cinema of the 1950s was indeed reflective of the trends of the time, which seemed to be (from what I’ve learned from movies, and from stories told by my elders) trends of repression, conformity, and a passionless, pabulum milquetoast lifestyle. Watch any episode of “Lassie” or “Leave it to Beaver,” and you’ll have the prejudice laid out for you clearly.

There was an entire unmentioned facet, though, of films from the 1940s and 1950s that can easily lay waste to any naysayers with a ‘50s prejudice. Sure, a lot of the mainstream film and television features put squareness to the fore, but I often wonder what was going on at street level. What were the people actually like? What did they drink? What kind of jokes did they tell? I need mention only two words to reclaim the era: Bugs Bunny.

The Looney Tunes cartoon shorts, and later Merrie Melodies, specifically from 1930-1956, were a dominant comic force in the world of cinema. They were made on the cheap by a small sub-sect of the Warner Bros. studio, and often made in the span of a single week. This period encompasses some 170 films. The shorts were greeted openly and enthusiastically by audiences, and occasionally won Academy Awards. The cartoon characters became so iconic, that Bugs Bunny was actually enlisted in the USMC during World War II, and would encourage people to buy war bonds. The shorts were so unique, so manic, that they defined the entire cartoon form; when a critic refers to something as “cartoonish,” they are usually referring directly to a ‘40s cartoon directed by Warner master Bob Clampett.

Indeed, I would go so far as to propose that the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies redefined comedy. It was one thing to see a live-action pratfall, like Margaret Dumont falling down, or the Three Stooges slapping each other about the pates, but it was sometimes seen as cruel, as a real actor had to humiliate themselves at the expense of the joke. When we see a coyote accidentally blowing himself up with a fistful of dynamite, it’s merely carrying the notion of slapstick to its logical extreme. No more is a poke in the eye the pinnacle of pathos. Now we can appreciate the timing and glory of a well-placed anvil crushing an animal person into the ground. Is it violent? Yes it is. But the violence is offset by the cartoon form: this is not an actor or person, it’s a duck.

This extreme type of humorous slapstick has carried on for generations. Thanks to television deals made in the 1960s, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies made their way into the Saturday morning living rooms of every child. I recall vividly seeing them amongst my other, less-skilled action cartoons in the 1980s. Four generations of children are intimately influenced by these cartoon shorts, and all of them innately understand the very basic rules of comedy from these films. Old jokesters in the 1930s were making goofy cheapies that would amuse only themselves. I don’t think they could have imagined the far-reaching impact their films would have on the world of cinema, the language of comedy, or the imaginations of millions of people.

Which one is your favorite? Oh, I’m sure you have one.

Termite Terrace

In 1930, The head of Warner Bros. asked a man named Leon Schlesinger – a producer who helped finance “The Jazz Singer” (1927), famously the world’s first talkie – to head up a fledgling animation department in order to make a few musical shorts, and combat the burgeoning success of the new animation studios run by Walt Disney, and the madcap films of Fleischer Studios, famous for Betty Boop and, later, Popeye and Superman. Schlesinger was equal to the challenge, and set up shop in a disused studio to make his cartoons. The building was so ramshackle that it was nicknamed Termite Terrace.

He hired two animators who recently left Disney to help him. Their names were Rudolf Ising and Hugh Harman. The pair invented the first Warner Bros. cartoon star, Bosko, a mildly racist character who would have musical mishaps. Imitating the name of the successful Disney shorts called Silly Symphonies, they chose to call their shorts Looney Tunes. Ising and Harmon also had successes with now-obscure characters like Foxy, and now-famous characters like Porky Pig. The shorts from this era were mostly musicals, and were actually intended to actively oust the live organists that were still in residence at most cinemas. Ising and Harman parted with Schesinger in 1933, and moved to MGM.

When color film became more readily available, the name Looney Tunes was turned to the more musical Merrie Melodies. By 1944, Schlesinger left the studio (having already produced hundreds of successes, including John Wayne’s first films, and numerous government-only shorts produced strictly for the military), and was replaced by Eddie Seltzer. Schlesinger dies in 1949. By this point, Warner Bros. began to openly acknowledge the contributions the Termite Terrace was making, and officially changed the Terrace’s name to the Warner Bros. Animation Department. From 1933-1956, the studio produced its funniest, best, most lasting material, and pioneered some of the most recognizable characters in pop culture history. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Pie, Foghorn Leghorn, the coyote and the road-runner. They also had successes with lesser, but often recognizable characters like Marvin the Martian, Pete Puma, Hubie and Bertie the sadistic city mice, the Tasmanian Devil, and a character that appeared in only one cartoon, a dancing frog.

Names to know

I am going to try to give credit where credit is due, and go through each of the men responsible for making these comedy classics. Each one contributed a vital element in the hugely funny comic whole, and I will take their work individually and in turn. If I am remiss, it is only a lack of due diligence and not lack of respect that is responsible. I feel I have covered my bases, but feel free to e-mail me if you feel there are some icons I have not mentioned. After each mentioned name, I will recommend the Warner Bros. cartoon short that I feel best exemplifies their work.

Leon Schlesinger: The Founder

It was Leon Schlesinger (1884-1949) whose vision and sense of humor led to the hard work and innovation of all the directors and artists who worked underneath him. It was Leon’s laidback savvy, and subtly domineering quality-control that shaped the studio at large. Schlesinger had little direct creative input, other than large, vague suggestions to his directors and animators, but it was his gumption that fueled the studio.

Schlesinger worked so closely with his staff, and was so game to entertain, that he even appeared, live-action, in a Porky Pig cartoon called “You Ought to Be in Pictures.” He and Porky debated over Porky’s contract. It was rare in those days for characters to break the fourth wall, and the Warner Bros. cartoons did this frequently, often extracting scripts, and shouting at the animators; they displayed a self-awareness not seen in most of cinema.

Cartoons to see:

“You Ought to be in Pictures,” directed by Friz Freling, 1940.

Frederick Bean “Tex” Avery: The Gag Man

Tex Avery animating for MGM head Fred Quimby

Tex Avery (1908-1980) joined the Termite Terrace in 1935. He was hired specifically to write visual gags, and his powers lay in cartoons that followed no real story. Some of his more famous works were spoofs of the documentary shorts at the time, but he added to them a surreal, slapstick bent. Avery, like the best comedians, treated the comic form les like a rigid rulesheet, and more like a sheet of music to be improvised upon. The best comedians are less like stylists, and more like jazz musicians. In an Avery cartoon, nothing was included for the sake of mood or character, it was all for the joke. One can only admire that sort of dedication to the comic form.

Avery’s name is often associated with madcap wackiness, thanks in part to wolf characters he invented for MGM later in his career, but largely thanks to his pioneering of the character of Daffy Duck. In a cartoon called “Porky’s Duck Hunt” (1937), audiences saw a nameless duck hoot wildly, and exit the screen screaming and flailing. This “damn fool duck” was to become Daffy Duck. Daffy Duck was alternately off-the-wall and bitterly enraged in his career. He is the one character most people can relate to, because he is driven by his ego. As I understand it, most of the Warner Bros. animators loved Daffy more than any other character.

Also worth noting was the cartoon “A Wild Hare,” which is largely acknowledged to be the first appearance of Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny was a rundown New York wiseguy in the body of a rabbit. He took nothing seriously, especially when inept hunters pointed guns at him. He was the hero through which low-down wiseguy audience members could live vicariously. Bugs had the casual courage and natural comic domination that made his fame little wonder.

Avery left the Terrace in 1941 when Schlesinger re-edited one of his cartoons (“Heckling Hare”) against his will. Avery moved to MGM, and later to Walter Lanz, where he did make several terrific cartoons, including “Swing Shift Cinderella” (1945) and “Red Hot Riding Hood,” (1943) two I am very fond of.

Cartoons to see:

“I Love to Singa” (1935) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYnJno_IUhY

“Porky’s Duck Hunt” (1937)

“Isle of Pongo Pongo” (1938) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbNrpx4fehM

“A Wild Hare” (1940) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JMmyHWO424

“Hollywood Steps Out” (1941) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEzKuKY3xFc

“Crazy Cruise” (1941)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VYGTzYJRz4

Frank Tashlin: The Man Behind the Scenes

Frank Tashlin (1913-1972) was a helpmate and manager for the studio. He was often credited as “associate director” on many cartoons. He was not necessarily a creative force, but his name must be mentioned for the hard work he did. Despite his relatively small contribution, he was still a founding member of the Termite Terrace, and, hence, a vital part of the creative team.

Tashlin worked for the Termite Terrace starting in 1943, and his most notable single contribution is his production of a series of cartoons featuring a character named Private Snafu. Private Snafu was an inept soldier who would accidentally lead his platoon to ruin through a series of comic mishaps. Few have seen the Private Snafu cartoons, as they were intended for presentation to soldiers and to soldiers only. Of course, this gave Tashlin license to make the cartoons edgier and dirtier than the theatrical shorts could ever be. Drunkenness, course language, and sex jokes were common. And who said that the ‘40s and ‘50s were a square, squeaky-clean time?

Michael Maltese: The Idea Man

Michael Maltese (1908-1980) was hired by Leon Schlesinger in 1941. If you’re hired as a cartoon writer, and there aren’t a lot of cartoons in the world yet, where do you get your ideas? Well, you could directly imitate Disney, but that was contrary to the spirit of the Terrace. Well, why not simply take the things you are interested in, and ramp up the overblown comic slapstick? This was the approach of Michael Maltese, the innovator and writer of the best of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.

He likes westerns, so he put Daffy Duck and Porky Pig in a western setting. He liked opera, so he has Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd sing to one another. Science Fiction began to grown in popularity in the late 1940s, so he put Daffy in Space, and called him Duck Dodgers in the 24½^th Century. It was Maltese’s idea to have Daffy Duck directly address the unseen animator in “Duck Amuck.”

I cannot cite his best films, as Maltese is responsible for every cartoon mentioned in this essay produced between the years of 1941 and 1956, including the best of them.

Bob Clampett: The Mad Genius

Bob Clampett (1913-1984) joined the Terrace in 1931 as one of the earliest animators, and became a signed director in 1937. Clampett was a maniac who shamelessly self-promoted himself, was argumentative, and often flouted his friendship with Leon Schlesinger to get what he wanted. Other of the Warner animators claimed that he stole a lot of their ideas, and would belittle them and threaten them when confronted.

I cannot praise Clampett enough. His contributions are strange, innovative, and achieve a level of comic anarchy not seen anywhere else. When we think of Bugs Bunny, we usually see and simplified and streamlined modern version of him. When we see Bugs in a Clampett cartoon, it’s almost not even the same character. Bugs has wrinkles in his face, and pores. He shrieks and cries and throws tantrums. His movements are chaotic and unnerving. And yet, it’s imminently watchable.

One of his early famous cartoons was called “Porky in Wackyland” (1930), in which Porky Pig travels to a country that looks as if it was designed by Salvador Dalí in order to find the last of the Dodos. This cartoon is surreal in the extreme, and utterly hilarious. Shapes merge and dissipate. Characters only seem to exist to constantly tell one joke. It’s as if the entire artifice of art has been stripped away, and we’re left with a bare, clean, pure form of comic image. Rarely, if ever, is the cartoon form so compellingly and completely dissected and exploited.

Watch a Clampett cartoon, and, if you can, click it on the video player in slow-motion, seeing it frame-by-frame. The character you are watching will not look like it’s moving at all; the movement panels have no in-betweeing, and seem to be completely unrelated. But when played in cartoon form, you get a shimmering, realistically exaggerated movement. When people express emotions, they don’t have a store of faces they shoose, they have an infinite number of expression, subtly altered in many ways; no one is ever just “happy,” they are happy in hundreds of ways. Clampett, with his chaos, was able to tap into that infinity of the human face. He never worked with bare models, he worked for a blank slate each time.

John Kricfalusi, the creator of the revolutionary “The Ren & Stimpy Show” is a huge admirer of Clampett, and tends to work in the same idiom. Kricfalusi is also, notoriously, just as difficult to work with as Clampett was. Both, however, try to work comic animation into something compelling and human and a thing that taps into the uncomfortable humorous soul of us all.

Clampett left the Terrace in 1946.

Cartoons to see:

“Porky in Wackyland” (1936)

“Wabbit Twouble” (1941) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i11dg1EtWwA

“Bug Bunny Gets the Boid” (1942) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luKU53ihiK8

“Falling Hare” (1943) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUYZYJ7XueI

“Tortoise Wins by a Hare” (1943) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70GiK5OJ1E

“The Bashful Buzzard” (1945) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyhsJuU-Pgc

“Book Revue” (1946) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqrXNIny8p8

“The Great Piggy Bank Robbery” (1946) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dwvw_wMUC4

Robert McKimson: The Character Man

Robert McKimson (1910-1977) may not have invented a lot of the stable of familiar characters, but he did indeed refine many of them. He was promoted to director in 1946 after Tashlin left the studio. What McKimson can be cited for is his use of method acting in his characters. He attempted the bend the anarchic comedy with a strength of character rarely seen in animation. His characters would move in a relatable way, rather than in an expressionistic way.

And he did indeed invent stable characters himself, the most famous of which were the boatful noisy southern rooster Foghorn Leghorn, named for a radio character named Senator Claghorn, and Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse in Mexico. He was also behind numerous hilarious Sylvester cartoons in which he taught a protégé how to hunt, usually very poorly.

McKimson continued to make cartoons for Warner Bros. into the 1960s.

Cartoons to see:

“Gorilla My Dreams” (1948)

“Hippety Hopper” (1949)

“The Foghorn Leghorn” (1948)

“Leghorn Swoggled” (1951) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaoP73OJBa8

“Corn Plastered” (1951) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMVKvfF6R7M

“Cat Tails for Two” (1955)

“The Slap-Hoppy Mouse” (1956)

Friz Freling: The Dramatist

Friz Freleng (seated) with Hawley Pratt

Isadore “Friz” Freling (1906-1995) was a bit of a dictator, and it’s been openly rumored that the character of Yosemite Sam was base don him. Freling was on board the Terrace from the early days, having animating from the 1930s. Friz Freling took every talent listed in the men above, and synthesized them into a single, talented powerhouse. His character had the relatable movements of McKimson, the wild chaos of Clampett, the jokiness of Avery, and it was all tempered with a well-balanced, overbearing calmness. It’s hard to really pin down any of his stylistic flourishes other than to say he directed solid and funny cartoons. He is often credited for inventing Porky Pig in 1935’s “I Haven’t Got a Hat.” He most certainly invented the characters of Sylvester the Cat and Tweety, and directed the bulk of those cartoons. He, like Maltese, often incorporated his own interests in the cartoons, making for some truly bizarre experiments, including a great film called “The Three Little Bops,” and anything in which Bugs Bunny meets a gangster named Mugsy, or a monster from Jekyll & Hyde.

Cartoons to See:

“I Haven’t Got a Hat” (1935)

“Rhapsody in Rivets” (1941) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTlWMRf4Hjs

“The Hare-Brained Hypnotist” (1942)

The Private Snafu cartoons.

“Baseball Bugs” (1946) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZctK3J-o4I

“I Taw a Putty Tat” (1948)

“Canary Row” (1950) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NZTOgx9qNo

“Ballot Box Bunny” (1951) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBFnuScfizc

“Lumber Jerks” (1955)

“The Three Little Bops (1957) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33g5jn7p18

“Bugsy and Mugsy” (1957) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ComYu6OiUp4

Carl Stalling: The Music Man

And where would any of these cartoons be without that music? Without the characteristic character cues? Without the subtle quotation of popular hits one second, and Wagner opera the next? Without the uncanny ability to make inanimate objects dance, melodies powerful, and cues bordering on the abstract? Without that famous slide guitar introducing every cartoon?

Carl Stalling (1891-1972) was a genius. Initially asked to simply write music for some throw-off animated shorts (he was hired in 1936), he took to the task with wild aplomb, employing the entire Warner Bros. orchestra for his projects. He soon fell in with the looney sensibility of his subjects, and was able to not just provide a simple score, but managed to invent some of the famous music cues used today. The musical “sting” was perfected by Stalling. When a piano falls, we hear a piano glissando. When a character is drunk, we hear a harp with an echo pedal. When a character sneaks, we hear a bouncing bassoon or plucked cello.

Imagine being Stalling, and receiving instructions from your pool of wacky co-workers. They need music for a bullfight. He would compose Spanish music, and mix it with the looney comedy. They needed music for a space battle, so he would imitate the sci-fi composers. They want to do a cartoon where Bugs Bunny abuses Elmer Fudd to the Barber of Seville. No problems. No other composer in the history of cinema has had such a wide rage of styles over such a huge number of films.

Indeed, thanks to the works of Carl Stalling, generations have been given a subtle education both classical music and the standards of the 1920s. Any kid you ask will be able to hum Hungarian Rhapsody #5, Wagner Operas, The Barber of Seville, Raymond Scott’s Power House, 1940s Fight songs, Al Jolson, How Dry I Am, The Blue Danube, or the Figaro aria, all thanks to the singular contribution of Carl Stalling.

Many people cite the Disney feature “Fantasia” as the finest use of music in animation. I agree that it is powerful, but I argue that Carl Stalling, with his cute little comic shorts, was able to reach further, and cover far more ground than “Fantasia” even attempted.

Stalling, it must be noted, also pioneered a recording device still used in most modern recording: the click track. When performers are recording in a studio, they will often hear a metronome in their headphones in order to stay on beat. Stalling did not invent the metronome, but he did invent this ingenious use of it. Every studio in the modern world uses this technique.

Cartoons to See:

Any one of them, but notably “Rhapsody in Rivets.”

Treg Brown: The Sound Man

Following close on the heels of Carl Stalling is Treg Brown (1899-1984), the man who invented every single sound effect for the Warner Bros. cartoons. Crashing dishes, clanging anvils, skidding heels, claw punchers, punches, explosions… all Brown.

Brown had an entire garage filled with what looked like junk, but was in fact his collection of noise making devices. Not content to use the old known radio tricks, he would try to create every effect himself, growing the Warner Bros. sound archive by leaps and bounds. Every gunshot, explosion, and mutilation was created originally by brown. Most attuned ears can recognized a Brown sound effect.

Brown would often plunder said archive and use old effects in new innovative ways. When a running character would come skidding to a halt, he would use an old car skid from a Cagney movie.

Brown also worked closely with Carl Staling, to make sure that the best comic effect would be achieved with a blend of music and kabooms.

Mel Blanc: The Voice

On a personal note: the voice of Mel Blanc (1908-1989) reminds me of my own childhood. Blanc appeared in hundreds upon hundreds of films in his day, and I feel like I had seen a hefty portion of them as a child (according to the Internet Movie Database, he has acted in over 1000 films and shorts). His growls, his giggles, the very timbre and cadence of his every word, all remind me of the glorious Saturday mornings I spend sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating breakfast cereals, and staring up in awe at the television. Even if you haven’t seen many of the Warner Bros. shorts, you know the voices of and speech impediments of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the stuttering Porky, and the listing cat Sylvester. All of those voices were innovated and acted by Mel Blanc.

Why does Porky have a stutter? Because Blanc was trying to imitate the short grunting of a pig. Foghorn Leghorn was an outright imitation of Sen. Claghorn. Yosemite Sam was an imitation of a mean-spirited rube and Friz Freling. And, in addition to all the well-known characters, Blanc played just about every supporting character as well.

Imagine the talent and imagination that must have gone into these voices. The range of comic emotions that must have been expressed. He had to scream, bawl, guffaw, and sing, all with equal adeptness. It was the animation directors that gave the characters their look and movement and character. It was Blanc who gave them life and personality. When the Looney Tunes stable is imitated in new cartoons and movies, and entire stable of actors must be hired to do what Blanc could do by himself. Frank Welker, Billy West and Joe Alaskey are amazingly talented people, but they, I think they would admit, are only trying to approach what Blanc so easily attained. That, I think, is the greatest testament to voice acting: when your versatility covers the ground of several of your followers.

Blanc played every voice with a few notable exceptions. Arthur Q. Bryan (1899-1959) was the William-Frawley-type actor who played the wonderfully clueless Elmer Fudd, and could match wits with Blanc with surprising ease. In “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Bryan managed to sing with a great deal of skill as well. People like to imitate Elmer Fudd, but none of the imitators can really match the wit and timing and sound of Bryan’s voice.

June Foray played most of the female roles, most notably Witch Hazel and Granny. She’s probably best known as the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha from “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” Foray is still working to this day, and makes frequent appearances at conventions.

Chuck Jones: The Master

And we come to the Master himself. Chuck Jones (1912-2002) started at the Terrace in 1933, and was always seen as one of the leaders of the bunch. Some resented him; some even claimed that he plagiarized. It cannot be denied that he is responsible for the best of the entire Warner Bros. canon. What he did was elevate the silly comic shorts into something cinematic. Using the filmic styles of the day, he turned what is often considered a trifle into a high comic art.

Jones started out like most of his contemporaries imitating the film shorts of Disney. He worked with cutely characters, and a Normal Rockwell palate, and produced some perfectly bland cartoons. He made several funny and compelling stable-character cartoons for the Terrace throughout the ‘30s. In 1942, he directed a film for the Terrace call “The Dover Boys,” involving a trio of college-age heroes trying to protect their doll-like dame from the clutches of an aqua-skinned alcoholic. Fast-paced, funny, and a sharp satire of other film serials of the day, “The Dover Boys” can serve as a clarion call for a fresh new talent.  He then proceeded, throughout the ‘40s, and through most of the ‘50s, to dominate the studio with a long series of great shorts. They are listed below.

What set Jones apart from his contemporaries was his use of style. Most of the other directors were focused on details like character or jokes. Jones had a firm grasp of the characters and the jokes, and managed to add a strongly cinematic Mise-en-scène. Working with background designer Maurice Noble, he created a beautifully expressionistic background palate for his cartoons, making them come across as strangely otherworldly, color-friendly, and comfortably lived-in. Look at any of his Coyote and Road Runner cartoons and note the desert backgrounds. They are starkly minimalist in many cases, but strangely familiar. We know that desert.

Watch “Drip-Along Daffy” and note the angle with which the cartoon is shot. We see Daffy walking through a dusty western town, but from the inside of an upstairs window. From down on the ground, from a porch. He would meticulously edit these shots together to form a calm and hilarious whole. If comedy is all about timing, then it was Jones who was the funniest man of all.

Look at the eyes of Jones’ characters. A comic askance. A sarcastic consideration. A knowing glance at the audience. Other animators have been praised for their use of bodily cartoon “acting,” but it was Jones who was able to tell a joke and set a scene with a very twitch of the eyes.

Cartoons to see:

You can’t really go wrong, but if I were to pick a few highlights…

“The Dover Boys” (1942) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpOPyjmB8SI

“Mouse Wreckers” (1948) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob736TGkCt4

“Fast and Furry-ous” (1949) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iS-9oh8nkc

“For Scent-imental Reasons” (1949)

“The Scarlet Pumpernickel” (1950) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzpDSQSOKSc

“The Rabbit of Seville” (1950)

“Rabbit Fire” (1951) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF88YjwuzRA

“Drip-Along Daffy” (1951) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic146Ox7dgM

“Feed the Kitty” (1952)

“Duck Dodgers in the 24½^th Century” (1953)

“Bully for Bugs” (1953) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVwv_1EhitI

“Robin Hood Daffy” (1958) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPt0sjn0jSw

The three best of the Warner Bros. shorts were all directed by Jones. I will describe each of them below.

“Duck Amuck” (1953)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seVfaII3GjU

Daffy Duck is a Musketeer. He leaps into frame wielding his fencing foil, entreating his unseen enemies to stand back. He lunges forward a few paces. The background of the cartoon passes by him, and he leaps into an empty white space. He looks behind him. He realizes that he has no scenery, and, in a fit of professional pique, entreats the animator to draw some. The animator’s paintbrush and pencil dart in and out of the frame, creating the scene before our very eyes. It’s a farm.

Daffy leaps into frame again, still wearing his Musketeer outfit. He realizes he’s on a farm, and gives the animator an angry glance. A consummate actor, and forever game, Daffy dons a farmer’s outfit. He wanders a few more paces, and realizes that he has passed into the arctic.

Throughout the film, Daffy will be an airplane pilot, a hula dancer, will have an argument with himself, will lose his voice, he will be erased and redrawn and re-colored. By the end, we finally pull back to see that the animator is none other than Bugs Bunny, joyously playing pranks on Daffy.

In addition to being one of the funniest films of all time, “Duck Amuck” is also brilliant in the way in plays with animation conventions. It doesn’t merely break the  fourth wall by referring to itself as a cartoon, but exploits the fact that anything can happen in a cartoon, all at the creators’ behest. Is that not what all cinema is? The images of the creators’ imaginations put unadulterated onto the screen? And how do the characters feel about that? In a way, “Duck Amuck” is a slapstick comedy version of Pirandello.

“What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957)

Jones, like most of the directors at the Terrace, was fond of classical music, and Wagner operas in particular. Why not, thought he, make an opera featuring Bigs Bunny and Elmer Fudd? The result is “What’s Opera, Doc?” one of the more beautiful and ambitious of the Warner Bros. shorts.

It’s a comedy to be sure, but in form and design, it follows the rules of grand opera to a T. The dance movements, the musical quotations, and the scenarios all come from various Wagner operas. Jones may be cutely parodying the tenets of grand opera, but through his accuracy of design and form, he clearly has a deep affection for it. He is not merely riffing on popular images of Wagner, he is making an animated comic homage to it.

I have a theory that one cannot take something truly seriously (including themselves) unless they’ve learned to look at it objectively and even snicker at it. This is what Jones is doing with “What’s Opera, Doc?”

“One Froggy Evening”(1955)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGE8wVTvHF0

Called the “Citizen Kane” of the Warner canon, Jones’ “One Froggy Evening” can easily be called the pinnacle of the cartoon form.

The cartoon is silent, except for the singing of Bill Roberts. A construction worker opens a 100-year-old time capsule he finds at his local demolition site. Inside a cigar box is a frog. The frog picks up a top hat and cane, and begins to sing and dance. The man stares blankly for a moment, and then quickly forms a plan to market this frog to the public. He sees an agent, but the frog will not sing or dance for the agent. Indeed, the frog looks confused and bored by the proceedings; like an ordinary frog. As soon as the unnamed man is out in the hall alone, the frog begins to sing again. In the time it takes the man to get the agent, the frog has stopped.

The same thing happens with a rented theater. Backstage, the frog singe, dances, walks a high-wire. As soon as the curtain goes up, it shuts up. The man is booed by the audiences, and thrown out into the cold. Without money, the man takes to sleeping in a park. Eventually, thanks to this frog that only the man can see and hear sing, he is thrown into a mental asylum. Eventually, the man ditches the frog in a new building foundation.

We fast-forward hundreds of years, and the frog is found again by yet another construction worker. It still sings and dances. The cycle continues.

I will not go on about the brilliance of the facial acing or the comic timing; you get all that from a simple viewing. I will say that the cartoon has an important moral in addition to the humor: mankind is often too greedy to appreciate the beauty and unique glorious absurdity of something like a dancing frog. Man is undone by his need for money and, later, his need to be right.

What a beautiful film.

Which comedies are your favorite? Lubitsch? The Marx Bros.? They fed into the Warner Bros. The romantic comedies of Preston Sturges? The comedies of Billy Wilder? The Three Stooges? The Ealing comedies? Mel Brooks? The ZAZ films? TV sitcoms? Raunchy late-night TV animation?

Every one of those has, in their way, been influenced by the Warner Bros. shorts. The cartoons managed to redefine the language of comedy, bring slapstick to a new artistic height, and influence everyone who was lucky enough to see them. In a way, no now comic paradigm has been invented since the shorts were breaking new ground in their heyday. To watch the Warner Bros. cartoons is to do more than while away the hours, laughing hysterically at funny cartoons; it is to acquire a sneakily complete education in the rules of comedy.

Now go watch some.

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