{"id":114288,"date":"2019-12-07T00:41:05","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T07:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=114288"},"modified":"2019-11-14T22:45:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T05:45:05","slug":"what-better-day-than-saturday-for-an-appreciation-of-looney-toons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2019\/12\/what-better-day-than-saturday-for-an-appreciation-of-looney-toons.html","title":{"rendered":"What better day than Saturday for an appreciation of Looney Toons?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My pal, Deacon Steven Greydanus, writes an encomium to the sheer greatness of these cartoons that says everything I could ever say and more.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a taste<\/a>, but read the whole thing:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to believe that many American children had their first experience of Sylvester and Tweety Bird in a 2011 computer-animated short, \u201cI Tawt I Taw a Putty Tat,\u201d accompanying\u00a0Happy Feet Two<\/i><\/a>. Hard to believe, first, that Sylvester and Tweety made it back to the big screen \u2014 and, second, that these iconic animated characters that defined Saturday morning for decades and were beloved big-screen icons before that have become pretty much strangers to many of the current generation of kids. How did\u00a0that<\/i>\u00a0happen?<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t seen \u201cI Tawt I Taw a Putty Tat,\u201d but I saw last year\u2019s \u201cCoyote Falls,\u201d the first in a new series of computer-animated Looney Tunes shorts from Warner Bros. (I can\u2019t think when or where I saw it, since it played before\u00a0Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore<\/i>, which I happily skipped.) \u201cCoyote Falls\u201d isn\u2019t bad, although it\u2019s one gag after another with no down time: no scenes of Wile E. plotting, pacing back and forth, drawing up blueprints, receiving packages from Acme, and such.<\/p>\n

\n

In any case, there\u2019s no touching the classics. Looney Tunes are still part of my Saturday morning ritual: Every week, my kids and I watch a few shorts from the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs. Recently Warner Bros released the first installment in its new\u00a0Blu-ray Platinum Edition collection<\/a>. If you didn\u2019t jump on the Golden Collection bandwagon, the Platinum Collection is a good place to start.<\/p>\n

In my youth, as with many of my generation and others, Looney Tunes was a key gateway into a larger world of comedy, entertainment and culture. I don\u2019t remember the first time I encountered Charlie Chaplin or the Marx Brothers, or the first time I saw\u00a0Casablanca<\/i>, but whenever it was, I came to them with some inkling of what lay in store thanks to Looney Tunes. Before I ever saw a John Ford film, Monument Valley\u2019s buttes and mesas loomed in my imagination thanks to the Coyote and the Road Runner. I\u2019ve never read\u00a0Of Mice and Men<\/i>, nor have I seen the 1939 film, but if I ever spot Lon Cheney as Lennie while flipping through channels, I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll recognize it right away.<\/p>\n

And music! Wagner, Mozart, Strauss, Rossini, Mendelsohn \u2014 I encountered them all on Saturday mornings over Cheerios, along with Raymond Scott, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and so on. How many people hearing the strains of \u201cWe\u2019re in the Money\u201d on NPR\u2019s \u201cMarketplace\u201d know it from Looney Tunes? Would \u201cMarketplace\u201d even use that song if not for Looney Tunes? (On the other hand, I can only mentally hear the\u00a0wrong<\/i>\u00a0notes to \u201cBelieve Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms,\u201d the song used in the familiar exploding xylophone gag.)<\/p>\n

The Looney Tunes brand was launched by producer Leon Schlesinger in 1930, followed a year later by Merrie Melodies. Both brands were obviously inspired by Disney\u2019s Silly Symphonies series, although the felicitously named animation team of Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising added a unique spin with the \u201cHarman-Ising\u201d name. At first the two series had different identities, but by 1943 they were interchangeable.<\/p>\n

No one director, writer or artist is ultimately responsible for the brilliant heights that Looney Tunes ultimately reached. Key contributors obviously include Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, but also Friz Freleng, Bob McKimson and others, as well as a stable of unsung gag writers and animators. On the other hand, the entire Looney Tunes output from 1936 on is indebted to three men who all joined Schlesinger\u2019s stable that year, who defined the\u00a0sound<\/i>\u00a0of Looney Tunes for decades.<\/p>\n

Composer Carl Stalling, a former silent-film musician and conductor who had helped create Disney\u2019s Silly Symphonies series, brought his penchant for musical \u201cMickey-Mousing\u201d and on-the-nose musical references to some 600 cartoons over 22 years, averaging one score a week. Sound effects artist Treg Brown created all the shotgun blasts, explosions, anvil crashes, zipping road runners, boinging elastic bands, crackling fires and zizzing saws the studio needed. Brown also hired the chameleonic Mel Blanc, who reinvented the voice of Porky Pig and created Daffy Duck in his first short, and went on to create voices for nearly every major Looney Tunes character (the notable exception being Elmer Fudd, voiced by Arthur Q. Bryan).<\/p>\n

Key characters were refined over time, developing from initially one-dimensional players into rounded, flexible characters who could adapt to fit different comic situations and needs. Porky Pig, the series\u2019 first popular star, became a foil for the antics of the more potent figure of Daffy Duck, in some ways anticipating the role of Elmer Fudd. Later, as Daffy developed from a mere capricious screwball into a vain, ambitious would-be star, Porky eased into a straight-man sidekick role, slyly showing up the bigger star in shorts like \u201cDrip-Along Daffy\u201d (1951) and \u201cRobin Hood Daffy\u201d (1958).<\/p>\n

Bugs Bunny, like Daffy, started as a troublemaking loon, evolving over time into a nonchalant trickster with an underlying sense of fair play, only messing with those who mess with him first, and often repeating Groucho Marx\u2019s line, \u201cOf course you realize this means war!\u201d As a rabbit, Bugs\u2019s natural foil was of course the hunter Elmer Fudd, and Elmer figures in some of Bugs\u2019s greatest achievements, including \u201cThe Rabbit of Seville\u201d (1947) and especially the transcendent \u201cWhat\u2019s Opera, Doc?\u201d (1957) \u2014 possibly Bugs\u2019s finest moment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My pal, Deacon Steven Greydanus, writes an encomium to the sheer greatness of these cartoons that says everything I could ever say and more.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a taste, but read the whole thing: It\u2019s hard to believe that many American children had their first experience of Sylvester and Tweety Bird in a 2011 computer-animated short, \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-114288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-at-the-movies"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat better day than Saturday for an appreciation of Looney Toons?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My pal, Deacon Steven Greydanus, writes an encomium to the sheer greatness of these cartoons that says everything I could ever say and more.\u00a0 Here's a\" \/>\n<meta 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