Pre/post 1948 cartoons continued (was Golden Collection News))

[Kevin McCorry]

Well, I suspect that the contents are another compromise between the historical/archival stuff and the marketing/character-based demands of Warners. That is, the people who put together the set would presumably prefer to emphasize particular directors, chronological development of the cartoons, etc., while WB (with an eye on sales) would probably prefer to emphasize popular series characters. So the contents feature lots of pre-'48s, lots of animation-buff favorites, but also big chunks of characters who are familiar from Saturday morning repeats, like the Road Runner and Tweety.
Are the cartoons that were shown on Saturday mornings somehow not legitimate animation buff favorites? For that matter, are the post-1948 cartoons, including character series like Tweety and Road Runner, not legitimate favorites for animation buffs? :(

The main reason I'm buying this set *is* for the Road Runner and Tweety cartoons and the post-1948 Bugs Bunnies, plus "One Froggy Evening" and other cartoons like "The Three Little Bops", "Cheese Chasers", and "Mouse Wreckers". Of additional but not primary interest are the Freleng '40s Bugs Bunny cartoons like "Rhapsody Rabbit". The other cartoons in the set are curiosities. :)

I have yet to find a post-1948 Tweety cartoon on our Region 1 releases that was not on one of the three I Love Tweety Japanese DVDs. Still, I feel they're worthwhile content for this collection, and hopefully the commentary on "Ain't She Tweet" will be specific to that cartoon and to Freleng's Tweety series and not another 6-minute accolade for "A Tale of Two Kitties". :rolleyes:

While I think 11 Road Runners in a row will be a bit much even for kids to take in one sitting,
Agreed, but won't the kiddies be mostly getting the Spotlight Collection, which will probably port over only a partial selection, if any, of the Road Runner cartoons? :D And I return to my first question here. Are not the Road Runner cartoons of interest to legitimate animation buffs, i.e. people who can appreciate the stylistic spread of the Road Runner cartoons over the fifties.
:(

I do think from experience that the Road Runner/Coyote and Tweety/Sylvester are extremely popular, both with kids and non-animation-buff parents
Again, can't animation buffs appreciate these cartoons? :(

As regards the popularity of these cartoons, I do sometimes wonder about that. Once upon a time I used to think they were popular, but since coming onto the Internet in 1996, I've seen little more than put-downs of these cartoons. :(

and I think these selections will be very popular and help the set sell well, and besides, there are some great cartoons in the Tweety section that aren't as familiar as they should be (like the hilarious "Snow Business," which I almost never saw growing up).
I agree that "Snow Business" is an brilliant entry in the Tweety and Sylvester series. Freleng and Foster excelled at creating situations of nervous tension for Sylvester, with Tweety as his ultimate craving, and foil. :)

I do agree that considering Daffy's popularity, it's surprising that there's not more of him this time around (maybe the inclusion of the new Daffy short is meant to make up for this in part),
Well, Daffy did share a whole disc of Golden Collection 1 with Porky, and had a couple of selections on the All-Star discs as well.

but there are several very popular characters who are under-represented this time, and are probably being held in reserve for future volumes. I suspect we'll see a bunch of Yosemite Sam cartoons on a future volume, since there's only one Bugs/Sam cartoon this time out.
I'm hoping Volume 3 will have coverage of the Foghorn Leghorn series similar to what we're seeing here with Road Runner and Tweety, and, yes, more Yosemite Sam cartoons, including "Knighty Knight Bugs". Pepe and Speedy could be represented also, with a few more cartoons, and then maybe, in Volume 4, we'll see discs mainly dedicated to them. :)

I'm surprised I'm the only person concerned that these discs might be DVD-14 or DVD-18 flippers, which are much more prone to layer failure, cracking at the more fragile hubs, and scratches. And I do speak from experience. I've got three cracked and/or delaminated Battlestar Galactica set DVDs and a freezing and skipping Flintstones Season 1 Volume 4 disc to prove it. :(

[guy incognito]

Are the cartoons that were shown on Saturday mornings somehow not legitimate animation buff favorites? For that matter, are the post-1948 cartoons, including character series like Tweety and Road Runner, not legitimate favorites for animation buffs? :(

Jaime was responding to the question of why those characters are so heavily represented on the new set. Certainly the post-'48 stuff featured on Saturday morning TV for so many years is as "legit" as any other classic animation, but the point was that those shorts--unlike something like, say, The Daffy Doc--also attract lots of people who *aren't* animation buffs. You can bet Warner is aware of this, which explains why there's so much RR and Tweety on the set.

I don't have a problem with it at all, other than the nagging fear that they'll use up too many of the "crowd-pleasing" titles early on and thus reduce the potential for sales of future volumes.

[Jack]

Are the cartoons that were shown on Saturday mornings somehow not legitimate animation buff favorites? For that matter, are the post-1948 cartoons, including character series like Tweety and Road Runner, not legitimate favorites for animation buffs? :(
One could turn that question around and ask why anyone would think the pre 1948 cartoons don't have enough popular appeal to stand on thier own - why do they need the Road Runner and Coyote to appeal to average people?

But the answer to both questions is how the cartoons were packaged for TV. Most average people grew up with the post 1948 cartoons, and thus love them more. Popular mainstream things get backlash. The pre 1948 cartoons are familiar in animation buff circles, but are unknown to many average people. It's unfortunate because a lot of later cartoons do deserve some critical attention, and many earlier cartoons are much more than "curiosities," but are actually quite definitive.

[Nick]

The main reason I'm buying this set *is* for the Road Runner and Tweety cartoons and the post-1948 Bugs Bunnies, plus "One Froggy Evening" and other cartoons like "The Three Little Bops", "Cheese Chasers", and "Mouse Wreckers". Of additional but not primary interest are the Freleng '40s Bugs Bunny cartoons like "Rhapsody Rabbit". The other cartoons in the set are curiosities. :) Are you saying that you don't like the pre-48 cartoons? I'm not challenging your opinion but I find it interesting and surprising to hear that someone doesn't want to buy this set for old cartoons that look pretty faded and losing colour that are now completely remastered.

I like the pre-48 cartoons and the post-48 cartoons equally myself.

It's unfortunate because a lot of later cartoons do deserve some critical attention, and many earlier cartoons are much more than "curiosities," but are actually quite definitive. I completely agree with you. I don't like it when people say that the later Jones' cartoons 'define' the character's personalities. Friz Freleng's 1940s Daffy has a much more deep personality than the one in "Ali Baba Bunny", just as an example.

[Kevin McCorry]

One could turn that question around and ask why anyone would think the pre 1948 cartoons don't have enough popular appeal to stand on thier own - why do they need the Road Runner and Coyote to appeal to average people?Obviously they can stand on their own, as they sold well when MGM was selling them on VHS. But with Warner now owning the whole kit and kaboodle, surely the company's not going to limit any DVD release to pre-1948 cartoons, telling the people like myself who happen to favor the post-1948s, sorry,
maybe next time. Particularly as most of the signiature characters (the icons of the classic Warner cartoon line) have most- if not all- of their cartoons in the post-1948 range. ..... Who knows? Maybe it will. I don't know.

As far as Road Runner and Coyote are concerned, is it not their turn to dominate a disc, after Porky and Daffy had a disc of their own first time around with Road Runner and Coyote limited to one cartoon? Sylvester and Tweety had a slightly better representation in Volume 1, but still were due to be highlighted on a disc. Hopefully, Foghorn, Pepe, and Speedy will receive similar treatment, and the fact that most if not all of their cartoons are post-1948 oughtn't be to the detriment of such an arrangement. :)

But the answer to both questions is how the cartoons were packaged for TV. Most average people grew up with the post 1948 cartoons, and thus love them more.Here in Canada, that seems to be the case, but I'm increasingly under the impression that the opposite is the prevailing condition south of the border.
Or maybe it is the backlash that I'm seeing. The notion that the post-1948 cartoons are popular mainstream was something I'd accept as gospel 8 years ago. But my experience on the Internet has told a much different story.

pre 1948 cartoons are familiar in animation buff circles, but are unknown to many average people.It would appear from the contact I've received on the Internet over the last 8 years that most people are more familiar with the pre-1948 package. I've lately been wondering if Saturday morning ratings for CBS and ABC were in error and viewership of the Saturday morning show was much lower than reported and that TBS and stations like that were the key medium by which the vast majority of Americans were introduced and raised on Bugs and the gang.

It's unfortunate because a lot of later cartoons do deserve some critical attention, and many earlier cartoons are much more than "curiosities," but are actually quite definitive.I said that to me they are personal curiosities. :) They're interesting to see every now and then, but no emotional or intellectual attachment. They
are evidently much more than that to other cartoon buffs, and that's fine. As long as my own preference is not trivialized in sweeping statement. As long as the post-1948s can be said to be on the DVDs to appeal to appreciative cartoon aficionados like myself as well as the kids and their non-cartoon buff parents, and the cartoons of interest to cartoon buffs are not said to be limited to the pre-1948 period.

Are you saying that you don't like the pre-48 cartoons?
It is true I've been liking them less and less since coming onto the Net. :( You might call it something of a backlash on my part. I saw a whole lot of them for the very first time in the early '90s and thought they were all right. Although I got a good laugh out of some of them, few of them really jumped out at me, engaged me emotionally or aesthetically. I didn't appreciate the way the characters were acting, or the less abstract and somehow drab looking backgrounds. Film print condition didn't help, but I don't think it was much of a factor in and of itself. As it turns out, I've been inspired a whole lot more by what I've seen of the post-1948 cartoons as they appeared on network TV, how they were compiled on the TV shows, and so on. As my insights have more or less been dismissed online and I was more or less told that, no, these cartoons you grew up with and lived with for 30 years and now love are no longer where it's at; these earlier ones are better; you should now fancy these instead, I guess a backlash reaction was inevitable. And the fact those earlier cartoons have no nostalgic connection to my treasured youthful past doesn't help.

Having said all this, I do in fact like a sizeable number of the pre-1948 cartoons, particularly the ones closest to 1948 where the characters look and act fairly close to what I've grown used to and in which there's rather more
inventiveness to the settings and situations, and a few others of earlier years ("Rhapsody in Rivets", for instance, is brilliant, and I can't wait to see its eventual DVD release).

I'm not challenging your opinion but I find it interesting and surprising to hear that someone doesn't want to buy this set for old cartoons that look pretty faded and losing colour that are now completely remastered.It's nice, of course, to see the improved picture quality, clarity and color, but after watching the new transfers of the earlier cartoons once or twice, I don't feel compelled to watch them again, whereas I'm again and again all over the later cartoons on DVD, marvelling at the detail and crispness and enjoying them with that much more vigor. Improved print color on the earlier cartoons is nice, but as I lack an emotional connection with those cartoons to start with, it doesn't really stir up a good deal of compulsion to rewatch. And depth of color is but one aspect of the look of the cartoons. There is, after all, the mixing and juxtaposing of color, background and character design, animating style, and story premise, structure, and pace. The colors may be deep and vibrant, but if the style of their presentation in the picture doesn't hold much appeal, then I'm still going to be partial to watching, responding to, and contemplating the later cartoons. I really had to push myself to sit through "Elmer's Candid Camera", "Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears", etc.. Even with those beautifully restored prints.

I like the pre-48 cartoons and the post-48 cartoons equally myself.Can't argue with that. :) I wish I shared that taste. But I seem unable to.

[Jack]

As far as Road Runner and Coyote are concerned, is it not their turn to dominate a disc, after Porky and Daffy had a disc of their own first time around with Road Runner and Coyote limited to one cartoon? Sylvester and Tweety had a slightly better representation in Volume 1, but still were due to be highlighted on a disc. Hopefully, Foghorn, Pepe, and Speedy will receive similar treatment, and the fact that most if not all of their cartoons are post-1948 oughtn't be to the detriment of such an arrangement. :)
I never said they didn't deserve it.... I didn't grow up seeing only a fraction of the WB output, I saw black and white cartoons, pre 1948 cartoons, post 48 cartoons, and even post 1964 cartoons sicne my family had cable - so I have fondness for a wide array of cartoons (and a lack of fondness for others...), mostly loving the cartoons from the late 30's to the mid 1950's.

Here in Canada, that seems to be the case, but I'm increasingly under the impression that the opposite is the prevailing condition south of the border.No, it's the same here, though to a lesser extent. I regularly run into people who have never seen a pre-1948 cartoon. It's only at online message boards (which usually aren't a good indicator of what everyone everywhere thinks) like this, where the members have sought out or have been exposed to the pre 1948 cartoons that there is a lot of fondness for them. Read the many Golden Collection Vol. 1 reviews that appeared in newspapers and you'll get what more mainstream people think. I don't think I saw any reviews that gave attention to the hanful of pre 1948 cartoons, but praised the 1950's Chuck Jones entries and complained about the lack of "What's Opera Doc?"

Or maybe it is the backlash that I'm seeing. The notion that the post-1948 cartoons are popular mainstream was something I'd accept as gospel 8 years ago. But my experience on the Internet has told a much different story.
I experiences the exact opposite when I first came online. I remember reading some really cruel reviews of the Golden Age of Looney Tunes sets because they didn't have any of the classics on them, and lacked the Road Runner. These people completely overlooked the numerous classics that did appear.

It would appear from the contact I've received on the Internet over the last 8 years that most people are more familiar with the pre-1948 package. I've lately been wondering if Saturday morning ratings for CBS and ABC were in error and viewership of the Saturday morning show was much lower than reported and that TBS and stations like that were the key medium by which the vast majority of Americans were introduced and raised on Bugs and the gang.
As I said before, the post 48 package is the most well-known still. I myself watched both packages and didn't notice a startling difference. It was the early early 30's cartoons and the cartoons made from the mid/late 50's onward that seemed the most different, with the late 30's-mid 50's cartoons being my favorites.

Having said all this, I do in fact like a sizeable number of the pre-1948 cartoons, particularly the ones closest to 1948 where the characters look and act fairly close to what I've grown used to and in which there's rather more
inventiveness to the settings and situations, and a few others of earlier years ("Rhapsody in Rivets", for instance, is brilliant, and I can't wait to see its eventual DVD release).
I must admit I don't see the drab backgorunds and off-characterizations you see. The backgrounds in Friz Freleng's cartoons didn't change much at all between 1942 and 1952 in terms of looks and colors (if anything, they got a little less abstract), while Chuck Jones' cartoons from 1942-1945 are more abstract than the cartoons made between 1948-1953.

As for the characters, it depends how you look at them. In my opinion, the "mature" years of WB cartoons started in 1942/43. It was this time that Bugs and Daffy were defined in both personality and design, and characters created after this time were pretty much fully formed in their initial appearances. I can see someone being turned off to the early Robert Givens Bugs Bunny design, but anything after that is too nitpicky. The difference Between the look of 1943 Bugs Bunny and 1953 Bugs Bunny isn't as jarring when compared to the Bugs Bunny in a cartoon like "Transylvania 6-5000."

At any rate, I imagine that when the next golden Collection comes out most reviewers will focus on the Chuck Jones cartoons included.


Jack :bosko:

[Jaime_Weinman]

I've been inspired a whole lot more by what I've seen of the post-1948 cartoons as they appeared on network TV, how they were compiled on the TV shows, and so on. As my insights have more or less been dismissed online and I was more or less told that, no, these cartoons you grew up with and lived with for 30 years and now love are no longer where it's at; these earlier ones are better; you should now fancy these instead, I guess a backlash reaction was inevitable. And the fact those earlier cartoons have no nostalgic connection to my treasured youthful past doesn't help.Kevin, while I appreciate and enjoy your analysis of the later cartoons, I'd point out that your attitude toward the earlier cartoons is much more "extreme" than almost anybody's attitude toward the later ones. Yeah, I've encountered a few Clampett-firsters who basically dismiss everything made after Clampett's departure (with the possible exception of Art Davis's cartoons) as a sad breach of the faith. But I haven't encountered many of them on this board or the last board. In other words, you seem to dismiss the pre-'48s much more than most people here would ever dismiss the post-'48s, since I daresay most people here, even those with an overall preference for the earlier stuff, would be able to name a lot of favorites from the late '40s and early '50s.

Look, it's not surprising that critics would pay more attention to the earlier cartoons. It's not just that the earlier cartoons are "wackier" or have broader animation, it's just that there's more to talk about. From 1948 to 1964, you've basically got Jones, Freleng and McKimson (plus one last year of Art Davis). Great directors all. But discuss 1946, and you've got Jones, Freleng and McKimson plus Bob Clampett, the last of Frank Tashlin and the first of Art Davis. You've got the end of the wartime cartoons and the beginning of the postwar era. Go back a little earlier and you've got Tex Avery to talk about. That's not a conspiracy against the post-'48 era, just an acknowledgement of the fact that the studio had more directors making more cartoons in the '40s. (Also, critics naturally gravitate to "experimental" cartoons -- like "Dover Boys" or "Coal Black" -- and there were more experiments and one-shots in the '40s, whereas in the '50s the studio was concentrating more on series cartoons, which are harder to analyze. But a highly unusual or experimental cartoon from the '50s, like "One Froggy Evening" or "What's Opera Doc," will get just as much critical attention as anything from the pre-'48 era.)

Finally, I think the whole pre-'48/post-'48 division is basically bunkum anyway. There are several dividing lines in WB cartoon history: Avery's departure, Clampett's departure, the firing of Art Davis, the shakeups around 1950/51 (with the budgets shrinking, the length of the cartoons shrinking, and McKimson and Freleng "trading" story men), the 3-D shutdown, the departure of Maltese and Foster. None of these things coincides exactly with the start of what is described as the post-'48 era (Davis's last cartoons as a director appeared in 1949, so that comes the closest). The only reason 1948-1964 is considered some kind of coherent "era" in and of itself is because that's the era that Warners still owned and was able to package for TV. But honestly a cartoon like "Daffy Dilly" has much more in common with a cartoon from 1942 than a cartoon from 1963, both in terms of time period and style. I grew up on the Saturday Morning packages too, but I do think it's a mistake to analyze the cartoons based on the way they were packaged for TV, because they are films, not TV shows, and should be analyzed that way. (I'm not pointing the finger at you, Kevin, because you've done some very fine and interesting analysis of '50s cartoons as stand-alone films.) And I think that now that we're about to get a DVD set that finally includes a more or less equal number of post-'48s and pre-'48, including a Bugs Bunny disc arranged chronologically from the early '40s to the late '50s, it's really time to drop the idea of two separate eras of WB cartoons, because it no longer holds true. There are separate eras of WB cartoons, but the dividing line is no longer in 1948; that was an artificial partition created by Warners and the people who bought their early film library. Sort of like all the trouble caused by the British dividing up the Middle East. :)

[Kevin McCorry]

No, it's the same here, though to a lesser extent. I regularly run into people who have never seen a pre-1948 cartoon. It's only at online message boards (which usually aren't a good indicator of what everyone everywhere thinks) like this, where the members have sought out or have been exposed to the pre 1948 cartoons that there is a lot of fondness for them.
Yes, I can't dispute that. :) The facts speak for themselves. What I find quite perplexing, though, is that if the post-1948s are as popular as they've been said to be, why it hasn't translated into some appreciable level of interest and support on message boards. Even if the level of support is markedly lower than in the public at large, it shouldn't end up being a small
minority. The only person who seems to be of my preference or persusion, in this discussion anyway, is me. :(

This being the case, it is understandable that some might say that it's the pre-1948s that are for the animation buffs. ;)

Read the many Golden Collection Vol. 1 reviews that appeared in newspapers and you'll get what more mainstream people think. I don't think I saw any reviews that gave attention to the hanful of pre 1948 cartoons, but praised the 1950's Chuck Jones entries and complained about the lack of "What's Opera Doc?"
It could be that the pre-1948s on the first volume weren't the stand-out
ones that merited special mention (quite a few of the post-1948s on Volume 1 weren't mentioned either). Volume 2 will have a lot of those. I saw one newspaper atticle online a day or two ago about the coming second volume
and it of course mentioned "What's Opera, Doc?" and "One Froggy Evening" but also "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", "Porky in Wackyland", "Old Glory",
and other pre-1948s, as well as "French Rarebit" and "Hyde and Hare".

I experiences the exact opposite when I first came online. I remember reading some really cruel reviews of the Golden Age of Looney Tunes sets because they didn't have any of the classics on them, and lacked the Road Runner. These people completely overlooked the numerous classics that did appear.
I'd be interested to see them, just out of curiosity. :) Most of the discussion I've come across about the laserdiscs mention only the GAOLT discs and didn't even acknowledge, or if they did only in a cursory fashion, the 12 single-disc Warner releases.

As I said before, the post 48 package is the most well-known still. I myself watched both packages and didn't notice a startling difference. It was the early early 30's cartoons and the cartoons made from the mid/late 50's onward that seemed the most different, with the late 30's-mid 50's cartoons being my favorites.
I guess you'd have to be raised almost entirely on one set for the first 25 or so years of your life on network TV and then sit down and watch the other set on independent TV stations or public domain videotapes. :) The difference seems plain as day. Only time as a kid I ever saw pre-1948 cartoons was "Hare Trigger" and "Along Came Daffy" on CBC in 1974 as filler after an unexpectly short football game on a Sunday afternoon. I knew intuitively that these cartoons would never be seen on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, which I'd been watching on CBC for several years. I don't know how I knew; I just did. And it wasn't the film print quality. At least I don't think so. CBC's film prints were always of a very high standard, and I don't remember the prints of these two cartoons looking all that haggard.

I saw "Hyde and Hare" in 1972 (syndie package), and that one strangely enough DIDN'T feel like a cartoon I'd expect to see on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. For quite awhile (virtually until it turned up in French one night in 1989 on a Bugs Bunny et ses amis show), I thought it to be 15 minutes long (that's how it had been slotted back in '72), some kind of dark Bugs Bunny special.

I later saw "Racketeer Rabbit", "Hare Force" and a few others on WLBZ Bangor's My Backyard show and thought the same thing again. That these were a different breed of Warner Bros. cartoon. Still later I saw syndie packaged prints of "Rabbit Hood", "Napoleon Bunny-Part", "Hurdy-Gurdy Hare", "Guided Muscle", "Which is Witch?", and "Bowery Bugs" on WLBZ and remember thinking that these cartoons (except for "Bowery Bugs", which seemed a bit different) could be on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show and puzzling over why they weren't.

But it wasn't until I stumbled upon public domain tapes in the video rental age
(late '80s) and discovered "Wacky Wabbit", "Falling Hare", and other really early cartoons that I knew there was a distinctly different large set of cartoons, with these ones evidently being completely excluded from network TV broadcast for some reason. I couldn't understand why the post-1948 syndies weren't on network TV but I seemed to think that these earlier ones didn't fit the network show, and that's why they were excluded.

I didn't learn about the AAP deal, Ted Turner, and all of that until I was almost 25, and wasn't exposed en masse to pre-1948s until our cable TV company started offering TBS in 1992. By then, the stylistic difference was
glaring to my eyes.

I must admit I don't see the drab backgorunds and off-characterizations you see. The backgrounds in Friz Freleng's cartoons didn't change much at all between 1942 and 1952 in terms of looks and colors (if anything, they got a little less abstract), while Chuck Jones' cartoons from 1942-1945 are more abstract than the cartoons made between 1948-1953.
Even if I could put into words the different visual style I perceive (and I don't think I can, not much beyond what I've said already), it would still, I guess, not be convincing. The UPA style of design to express character would be a good starting point, but it doesn't apply to all post-1948 cartoons, or even most of them. I do, for example, find the ship in "Mutiny On the Bunny" to be a more detailed and even more inviting setting than the ship in "Buccaneer Bunny". It's still unconvincing, unless you can actually see my perceived difference in style yourself, even provisionally.

But where characterization is concerned, yes, I can certainly articulate that. :)

Sylvester. The Sylvester in the post-1948 cartoons is a victim. A desperate victim. At times a mentally anguished victim. Victim of Tweety, of Speedy, of Hippety Hopper, of bulldogs, various mice, a kitten, and an abusive little girl. In McKimson's cartoons, he's a victim. In Freleng's cartoons, he's a victim. And in Jones' cartoons pairing him with Porky, which admittedly portray Sylvester in a manner significantly different from the Freleng-McKimson Sylvester, Sylvester still usually gets the worst of it. In 3 pre-1948 cartoons, "Kitty Kornered", "Doggone Cats", and "Back Alley Op-Roar", Sylvester is not victim but heckler. He heckles. No, no, no, no. I just don't get that. That's not the Sylvester I know. It could be any old cat. "Back Alley Op-Roar" is actually a remake of a cartoon, "Notes to You", where it *was* any old cat doing the heckling. In another cartoon, "Catch as Cats Can", though he is a loser, Sylvester doesn't sound like the Sylvester I know. Off-putting? Yes.

Tweety. Well, I think it goes without saying that Clampett's Tweety is a far cry from Freleng's. When I saw him pull a worm out of an apple and eat it and break into a wide grin, I thought, nah. The Tweety I grew up with doesn't grin much at all. His beak is petit, and so is his grin. An exception might be "Home Tweet Home". But his grin in that cartoon is meant to endear himself to his protector in the park. He daintily eats bird seed out of a bowl. And if he sees a worm, he thinks it's spaghetti to be protected from chickens. That's the Tweety I know and love. When I heard him bellow, "Put out those lights!", I thought, nah. The Tweety I know doesn't shout. Even when transformed into a Hyde monster, he may cackle and laugh dementedly, but he doesn't shout. Tweety can be sadistic and physically aggressive but only because he's been provoked by an attempt on his life (like in "Home Tweet Home" when he's pounding Sylvester's butt with a stick after Sylvester has tried to eat him) and then in proportion to his size. Whacking Sylvester with a stick is one thing, but with a full-size shovel in "Tweetie Pie"? No.

Bugs. The Bugs I know wouldn't pull out a gun and shoot someone in the audience for coughing. He might hold up a sign saying, "Throw the bum out," but he wouldn't attempt to maim or murder a member of his own audience. Not without sufficient provocation. And coughing ain't sufficient motivation. The hotheaded little conductor in the Pink Panther cartoon, "Pink, Plunk, Plink", does the same thing. That I can believe. But Bugs Bunny? Not on your life. The Bugs I know wouldn't trick Elmer Fudd into a grave and then, cackling, cruelly compound the deed by shovelling the dirt in to bury Elmer alive. If he did, at the very least he'd say, "Ah, I can't do it, I just can't do it. I couldn't do it to the nimrod." Nor would he dupe a dog into wishing it were dead and then provide the gun for the dog to do the deed- or worse still, do the deed himself. And what's with a cartoon taking place underwater? There are some physical laws that I always was led to believe still applied to Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies. Bugs *is* underwater in "Water, Water Every Hare", but not for very long. Foghorn Leghorn says in "A Fractured Leghorn" that he needs air. Sylvester needs an air tube in "Tugboat Granny" as does Ralph Wolf in "Don't Give Up the Sheep". Pepe Le Pew is a skunk and can hold his breath for a long time, granted. But the exception is expressly stated.

Bugs as the Masked Marauder? And bellowing, "Stink you fool, stink!" Nah, don't buy it. Bugs even saying the words, "You fool." Nope. And I've never liked the Cecil Turtle cartoons. That's not the Bugs I know. Losing not because he deserves to by a weakness or vice of his own, or even because he made a mistaken assumption. He loses because the turtle always wins. It's futility for Bugs. No matter what he does, he has to lose. I just don't like the scenario. The Bugs I know may lose, but only by way of some shamefully indulged vice of his own. The Bugs I know is self-assured and confident. He should not lose a race against that smug, cocky turtle. I just don't like the Cecil Turtle cartoons. They wrong-foot me every time I see them. Bugs is set up to lose right off the bat, because he's in the tale of The Tortoise and the Hare. I understand the intention to use that tale as a basis for a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I see how it sprung to mind, but I don't think they should have gone ahead with it, much less make 3 cartoons about it. Bugs seems to fit into every historio-literary scenario he's put in- and they were most inventive in doing that post-1948. All but this one. Ultimately, I can only just assimilate these cartoons into my conception of Bugs by saying they're part of Bugs' youth, where anything goes as Bugs is still learning. But I still don't like 'em.

Daffy. The Daffy I grew to know is an overweening, self-aggrandizing, or plain greedy loser, sometimes a heckler, but with the understanding on the viewer's part that if he heckles he could very well get it in the end, finish up in bad shape. And if he doesn't, it was probably because his opponent deserved to lose even more than he did. That smug, muscular duck in "Muscle Tussle", for instance. Daffy is really a complex character. He can win sometimes if he's set up to do so by the story and doesn't go overboard in his methods. He can can be greedy but also cowardly. He can stand up to hunters and yet, if he goes too far, end up with his beak blasted off. He doesn't just jump around going, "Woo, woo, woo." Bugs and Daffy are almost interchangeable rambunctious hecklers in many pre-1948 cartoons.

"The Stupid Cupid". Straight-and-narrow Elmer as the impish Cupid? Elmer?!? That's a case, it seems to me, of casting a character to a part because he looks the part. And while we're on the subject of Elmer's looks. What is that... that thing that's supposed to be Elmer in several early '40s cartoons? These things definitely wrong-footed me on the pre-1948s. And that's beyond the overall visual aspect. In the pre-1948s, Elmer is also too easily driven to hysterics. In his post-1948 cartoons, he's resolute. He gets angry, not despondent. And even when giving in to defeat, he still won't be taken alive. Look at him in "Ant Pasted". When he does crack, it's sudden, after a build-up of years of failure. And even then, it's not with hysterics, but a mental collapse and delusions.

Prissy, bachelor Porky is not a hero in the post-1948s but a put-upon victim, or a hero by default only, because Daffy is failing to do what needs to be done. And even then, Porky is understated. He doesn't cheer. In early cartoons Porky's a cheering hero, and has a girl-friend or wife. They started to make Porky rather prissy and set-upon by pests in the '40s, and that's where my appreciation of his cartoons kicks in.

Pepe. Married, and his French accent a put-on? No, no, no, no. It may be his first cartoon, but I still don't like it.

Foghorn and Sam are very close to what they became, but there are still some notes to their portrayals in their pre-1948 outings that seem a bit off.

As for the minor characters like Sniffles, Babbitt and Catstello, and Conrad Cat. Nope. Don't like 'em. Babbitt and Catstello are simply annoying. The human characters they were based on, likewise. Don't like the Three Bears until "What's Brewin', Bruin?" Never cared for Beaky Buzzard, even in the post-1948 cartoons he's in. Inki and the Minah Bird are all right, but then I was introed to them by "Caveman Inki".

Interestingly, most of the pre-1948s I do hold in higher esteem are those without the regular or even the minor characters. One-shots like "Rhapsody in Rivets", "Pigs in a Polka", "Holiday For Shoestrings", "Bone Sweet Bone", and "A Hick, a Slick, and a Chick".

I remember being quite excited to see "The Impatient Patient" when I saw it on the video store shelf on a public domain video in 1989 and the synopsis told of Daffy meeting Jekyll and Hyde. Wow! This should be good! But once I'd viewed it, I was scratching my head and asking, "What the heck was that?!?"

Ultimately I could only say, these were the early, experimental cartoons, before the style I grew up with and appreciate took hold. And the characters still in their infancy, or early life. I can assimilate them on that basis.

I'm sorry to go on so long about this, but I do feel that at least an attempt of explanation for my POV is in order.

As for the characters, it depends how you look at them. In my opinion, the "mature" years of WB cartoons started in 1942/43. It was this time that Bugs and Daffy were defined in both personality and design, and characters created after this time were pretty much fully formed in their initial appearances. I can see someone being turned off to the early Robert Givens Bugs Bunny design, but anything after that is too nitpicky. The difference Between the look of 1943 Bugs Bunny and 1953 Bugs Bunny isn't as jarring when compared to the Bugs Bunny in a cartoon like "Transylvania 6-5000."

I find Bugs in "Transylvania 6-5000" to be indeed quite like the Bugs in, say, "The Hasty Hare" (witness his pose at the end of both cartoons as he talks to I. Frisby and to the "goyles", while leaning out of the flying saucer and out of the window). He's more self-assured in the former (or should I say, latter) case but let's face it, he has the experienced, composed finesse and suavity down pat in the 1952 cartoon also, even as he confusedly asks, "What's biting him?" as Frisby is walking away in convulsion. Contrast that with the early to mid-'40s, where he's screaming "You fools! I'm the rabbit!", or looking up in boyish innocence to the Gildersleeve character as he's being led to the taxidermy room or reacting in exaggerated fear at the image in his mirror and leaping off a building in "Hare Conditioned".


At any rate, I imagine that when the next golden Collection comes out most reviewers will focus on the Chuck Jones cartoons included.You may be right. Time will tell. :tweety:

Jamie, I'll respond to your message later tonite. Until then. :bugs1:

[Sean Gaffney]

Yes, I can't dispute that. :) The facts speak for themselves. What I find quite perplexing, though, is that if the post-1948s are as popular as they've been said to be, why it hasn't translated into some appreciable level of interest and support on message boards. Familiarity. We've loved the classic cartoons such as What's Opera, Doc? or Rabbit Seasoning for so long that there's no longer a great need to reiterate the praise we have given. How many times can one go on about Maurice Noble's backgrounds?

Whereas if a cartoon like, say, Greetings Bait gets on a collection, it's a cartoon that wasn't in constant play on the Bugs Bunny shows or in syndication, and you can discuss the reasons for its Academy Award nomination or the influence Jerry Colonna had on the LT and MM cartoons. It hasn't been analysed to death.

We want to see all the cartoons, but there's less of a need with something like What's Opera, Doc? or One Froggy Evening except to admire a masterwork one more time. Just nod at it and make impressed "mmm, mmm" noises. :daffy:

As for the characterization problems you mentioned, I feel one simply has to hold multiple impressions of characters in your head. The WB characters HAD to contradict themselves, as the directors did so much. Especially in their formative years. The only WB characters I can think of who are note perfect in their debut exactly as they would be in the future are Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn.

But if you try to reconcile Clampett 1943 Bugs with Jones 1957 Bugs, you'll just give yourself a migraine. :bugs1:

[Jaime_Weinman]

Kevin's point of view is always interesting to hear. I'd analyze your point of view, Kevin, as being that you prefer characters to follow certain rules of characterization -- and that leads to a preference for the '50s cartoons, where the characters were narrowed in scope. Chuck Jones came to feel that comedy was better if you gave it more rules and "narrowed" it, whereas Bob Clampett was the opposite; he liked characters to be as broad as possible and to change from cartoon to cartoon if necessary (so Daffy could be a lunatic in one cartoon and a craven coward in the next). If you prefer characters to be broader in terms of what they can do, you'll go for the '40s Bugs and Daffy; if you prefer more rules and consistent characterization, you'll prefer the '50s. (I actually don't go as far as some people on this, because I think you can, too, take a cartoon character "out of character" -- or at least, I don't think Bugs is a very appealing or interesting character in some of Clampett's cartoons, which is my problem with Clampett as a Bugs director.)

While I really hate the idea of evaluating the cartoons by the way they were shown on television ("The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show" is not a real show; it's just a chopped up collection of old films), I do think there's an analogy to be made between the '50s cartoons and a TV show. The '50s cartoons follow more rules and have more consistent characterizations; an entry in the Tweety/Sylvester series offers more or less the same characters every time, like an episode of a TV show. The '40s cartoons are more like stand-alone films that happen to utilize some familiar characters; they don't follow the rules of continuity and consistency that a TV show requires.

I prefer the earlier stuff, ultimately, because I don't think comedy comes from narrowing the scope of a character. Bugs is a far better character in "Haredevil Hare" than in "Hare-Way To the Stars," because in "Haredevil" the writer and the animators put him through every possible emotion and reaction, whereas in "Hare-Way" he's just kind of smug and blase all the way through. To me every character gets duller as he gets more limited; this is true even of the Coyote, who had a wider range of emotions in the first half of the '50s than in the late '50s and '60s. To say that the Sylvester in "Back Alley Oproar" is not the Sylvester we know is not a bad thing, IMO. He moves like Sylvester; he talks like Sylvester; the animators make him physically "act" like Sylvester -- it is Sylvester, except he's in a different mood; he's taking a break from his victim status and having some fun doing what cats do at night (singing really badly). That's an advantage of a character who hasn't been "narrowed" yet -- he can display a broader range. It's sort of like the early episodes of a sitcom are sometimes more fun than the later ones, because the characters can do more things and aren't limited by the audience's expectation that they will always say or do the same kind of thing.

But this is a difference of opinion. Again, the thing I'd dispute is the attempt to talk about "post-'48" as some kind of coherent era in itself. That's not justified by the facts; it's just a trick of the fact that those cartoons were packaged together.

[guy incognito]

To say that the Sylvester in "Back Alley Oproar" is not the Sylvester we know is not a bad thing, IMO. He moves like Sylvester; he talks like Sylvester; the animators make him physically "act" like Sylvester -- it is Sylvester, except he's in a different mood; he's taking a break from his victim status and having some fun doing what cats do at night (singing really badly). That's an advantage of a character who hasn't been "narrowed" yet -- he can display a broader range.
Agreed. Personally, I don't find Sylvester's performance in Oproar to be any more jarring than, say, Jimmy Stewart's in Vertigo.

[Kevin McCorry]

Jaime, I've really covered most of the ground on my reasons for siding as I do on this pre- and post-1948 debate, and promise not to go very much longer on this topic. The thread has rather diverted from its initial subject for discussion, and I take responsibility for that. :)

Kevin, while I appreciate and enjoy your analysis of the later cartoons, I'd point out that your attitude toward the earlier cartoons is much more "extreme" than almost anybody's attitude toward the later ones. Yeah, I've encountered a few Clampett-firsters who basically dismiss everything made after Clampett's departure (with the possible exception of Art Davis's cartoons) as a sad breach of the faith. But I haven't encountered many of them on this board or the last board. In other words, you seem to dismiss the pre-'48s much more than most people here would ever dismiss the post-'48s, since I daresay most people here, even those with an overall preference for the earlier stuff, would be able to name a lot of favorites from the late '40s and early '50s.
I can name a goodly number of pre-1948s, mainly from the post-war period, that I like, some more than certain post-1948s, but point taken.;)

My attitude, although admittedly extreme as you say, Jaime, may be something of an aberration in animation fan circles, but it isn't unique. A fellow Canadian I've been corresponding with for the past few years told me last fall after he'd bought Golden Collection 1 that he found "Wabbit Twouble", "Elmer's Candid Camera", "Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears", "Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid" and "Tortoise Wins By a Hare" to be virtually unwatchable and he asked me why. He and I discussed this at some length, and our conclusions were similar to what I said above in my reply to Jack. We were put off by the visual aspects, the characterization, and the story structure. Incidentally, this same fellow Canuck sent me an appraisal of "Hyde and Hare" last January after seeing it for the very first time via the DVD release. It astonishingly ran parallel to my impressions and yet was different, more or less along the lines that "Hyde and Hare" is a statement about the dangers of homoerotoic sexuality (the Liberace reference being the icing on the cake) and a moral of being wary of proposing to strange men in the park. He brought in the carrot as a phallic sex symbol, and everything else fit. His analysis of the cartoon was thorough and fascinating. It made me look upon it in yet another new light, as well. It's a line of interpretation that had only partially occurred to me, but he had it spelled out in crystal clear detail.


But I digress... :)

Look, it's not surprising that critics would pay more attention to the earlier cartoons. It's not just that the earlier cartoons are "wackier" or have broader animation, it's just that there's more to talk about. From 1948 to 1964, you've basically got Jones, Freleng and McKimson (plus one last year of Art Davis).
If you're comparing director's styles and so forth, yes. But interpreting, comparing, and contrasting cartoons and series of cartoons, or the pre-1955 Bugs with the post-1955 Bugs, let's say; there's just as much of that that can be done for the post-1948s as for the pre-'48s. There's so much that I feel has yet to be written about the post-1948 oeuvre. As Sean says, maybe "What's Opera, Doc?" and some others have been over-evaluated and over-analyzed, but there are several hundred other cartoons in the mix.

That's not a conspiracy against the post-'48 era, just an acknowledgement of the fact that the studio had more directors making more cartoons in the '40s. (Also, critics naturally gravitate to "experimental" cartoons -- like "Dover Boys" or "Coal Black" -- and there were more experiments and one-shots in the '40s, whereas in the '50s the studio was concentrating more on series cartoons, which are harder to analyze. But a highly unusual or experimental cartoon from the '50s, like "One Froggy Evening" or "What's Opera Doc," will get just as much critical attention as anything from the pre-'48 era.)
Although I didn't like very many of them, I did have a healthy tolerance of the pre-1948 cartoons. I never understood their appeal to the critical animation buffs, but I was prepared to respect it and try my best to accommodate and assimilate it. My sour disposition arose around 1998 with the discovery of Michael Barrier's highly acclaimed book and with the coinciding tide of popular opinion on the Internet and, yes, on the message boards preceding this one, contrary to the once-accepted wisdom that Chuck Jones was the dean of Warner Brothers cartoons and that his post-war work was the pinnicle of excellence- and Barrier's put-downs of the huge body of Jones-Freleng-McKimson output being touted as the new orthodoxy among animation aficionados. In the past 5 years, I've seen people on this message board's prior incarnation say that mediocrity set in right there with "You Were Never Duckier", that the backrounds and overall visuals deteriorated very fast, the characters lost their "edge", and so on.

Furthermore, there was once a time when it appeared that the bar was set re. quality vs. deficient cartoons at about 1960. I could always understand that since it was an established fact that the '60s saw a sharp decline story-wise with the break-up of the writing department and visually with budgets and talent diverted to the TV show. But when did the line get pulled back to include the mid-to-late '50s? And will it be pulled back even further? I'm not alleging a conspiracy per se but more a receeding of collective appreciation for the post-1948 cartoons. This broadening of the "good-bad" dividing line of the post-1948 period seemed to me to coincide with the re-evaluation in Barrier's book, i.e. that Jones, Freleng, and McKimson had all lost their creativity part-way through the '50s and that their character series and one-shot cartoons were no longer of merit; the morose Freleng-Foster team created nothing whatsoever of substance; the McKimson unit was similarly but not entirely sterile; and that even Jones' most noted works, "What's Opera, Doc?" and the Road Runner series, were no longer above sharp criticism. And as it turns out, the cartoons in which I'm most interested are of that year bracket, 1954-1960, and the product of those morose and creatively stagnant men. Naturally, I'm apt to bemoan and oppose such a critique as it appears to be reiterated by seemingly more and more people. For every less-than-articulate Amazon.com reviewer complaining about the lack of "What's Opera, Doc?" on Golden Collection Volume 1, there was a high minded and literate proponent of everything pre-1948 advocating a concentration of future DVDs on the earlier cartoons. We know which side of the equation ended up coming across the best on such reviews.


Essentially, the pre-1948 cartoons being used against the cartoons of the '50s is what fuels my sense of indignation and this extreme attitude you are
noticing. I've seen this exact same process happen in my other entertainment
interests, time and time again, and that makes me so seemingly strident.


Finally, I think the whole pre-'48/post-'48 division is basically bunkum anyway. There are several dividing lines in WB cartoon history: Avery's departure, Clampett's departure, the firing of Art Davis, the shakeups around 1950/51 (with the budgets shrinking, the length of the cartoons shrinking, and McKimson and Freleng "trading" story men), the 3-D shutdown, the departure of Maltese and Foster. None of these things coincides exactly with the start of what is described as the post-'48 era (Davis's last cartoons as a director appeared in 1949, so that comes the closest). The only reason 1948-1964 is considered some kind of coherent "era" in and of itself is because that's the era that Warners still owned and was able to package for TV.
Accepted, but the TV package for quite some time did tend to omit the Davis cartoons, bar "Quackodile Tears". There was quite an interesting formula for determining which cartoons went in what package all through the '70s and '80s. I'm not sure yet what criteria were used, but I feel there is something there deserving careful study.

Like yourself, Jaime, I don't think there is an arbitrary division between "Haredevil Hare" and "You Were Never Duckier". It's more discrete than that, I feel. With the combination over a few years of Clampett and Tashlin departing, Davis' unit being shut down, Jones, Freleng, and McKimson streamlining their output into consistent character-driven cartoon series, and the gradual spread of UPA style among the units, the cartoons did settle into an overall format that lasted essentially for the remainder of the studio's existence. I maintain there is a stylistic divide between the cartoons that were made prior to that and after. Again, I guess you had to be exposed to them as I was. And as several of my countrymen were, maybe.

But honestly a cartoon like "Daffy Dilly" has much more in common with a cartoon from 1942 than a cartoon from 1963, both in terms of time period and style.
I think it makes a nice companion piece to "Fast Buck Duck", though the style is quite different, true. Daffy does seem to be quite a commanding figure in "Daffy Dilly", an indication that character is rising in importance, and he is in his rather greedy persona in "Daffy Dilly". In that case, he gets what he
wants, but it's a mixed blessing as we see.

I grew up on the Saturday Morning packages too, but I do think it's a mistake to analyze the cartoons based on the way they were packaged for TV, because they are films, not TV shows, and should be analyzed that way. (I'm not pointing the finger at you, Kevin, because you've done some very fine and interesting analysis of '50s cartoons as stand-alone films.)
I certainly do appreciate and thank you for the positive feedback, Jaime. I do hope, however, that my work on the TV compilations can be valued as well. It fascinates me and always will. The way the cartoons were assembled into the television programs was still a creative process in and of itself. I'm not sure if it was a process fully conscious of the elements, themes, nuances of the cartoons, but it merits study nonetheless, IMO. We may have to agree to disagree on this one.

And I think that now that we're about to get a DVD set that finally includes a more or less equal number of post-'48s and pre-'48, including a Bugs Bunny disc arranged chronologically from the early '40s to the late '50s, it's really time to drop the idea of two separate eras of WB cartoons, because it no longer holds true. There are separate eras of WB cartoons, but the dividing line is no longer in 1948; that was an artificial partition created by Warners and the people who bought their early film library. Sort of like all the trouble caused by the British dividing up the Middle East. :)
As long as people like myself and my correspondent in Canada are noticing differences in the cartoons' style and appeal, the partition, artificial or no, gradually subtle or sharply pronounced, will continue to be discussed and debated. The 40 years of television history are there. Generations were raised in the television model. I'm afraid it's an indelible part of animation history, and one that I will forever appreciate and contemplate. :)

[guy incognito]

Essentially, the pre-1948 cartoons being used against the cartoons of the '50s is what fuels my sense of indignation and this extreme attitude you are
noticing. I've seen this exact same process happen in my other entertainment
interests, time and time again, and that makes me so seemingly strident.
I do sometimes get the impression that the pre-'48 (and pre-WW2 in particular) LTs, whatever their inherent merits, enjoy a certain "snob appeal" with the cognoscenti precisely *because* your average Joe Sixpack is less likely to be familiar with them. But as you say, that game really isn't peculiar to animation buffs.

[Nick]

Agreed. Personally, I don't find Sylvester's performance in Oproar to be any more jarring than, say, Jimmy Stewart's in Vertigo.I agree with that and I would also say that it is not jarring to see Sylvester acting as a heckler in "Kitty Kornered" or "Doggone Cats", because he is a victim in both of those as well. He gets kicked out in the snow by Porky and is tortured by a bulldog. He only get's his revenge, when he finds a weakness or a no choice situation to those characters (Porky's fear of martians and Wellington's errand to deliver a parcel which he can't let go of). And Sylvester is not out of character in "Catch As Cats", only his voice is different. Those four cartoons are some of my favourites, probably because it's nice to see Sylvester come out on top, like he did in "Scaredy Cat".

Pepe. Married, and his French accent a put-on? No, no, no, no. It may be his first cartoon, but I still don't like it.I thought that scene was hilarious and is it any worse than the way Pepe acts in the post-48 cartoon, "Odor Of The Day"?


Foghorn and Sam are very close to what they became, but there are still some notes to their portrayals in their pre-1948 outings that seem a bit off.
What seems a bit off? They seemed perfect to me.

Daffy does seem to be quite a commanding figure in "Daffy Dilly", an indication that character is rising in importance, and he is in his rather greedy persona in "Daffy Dilly". In that case, he gets what he
wants, but it's a mixed blessing as we see.
I can't see the Daffy in "Daffy Dilly" and any cartoon before "My Little Duckaroo" to be any different to the Daffy before.

And about the fact that there is great difference in styles between "Haredevil Hare" and "You Were Never Duckier", I don't think there is any difference. There was only a difference in 1955, IMO.

[Kevin McCorry]

Before I begin, here's the link to that article I mentioned on the coming of Volume 2.

http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=cat&category1=Video&newsitem_no=11291

Kevin's point of view is always interesting to hear. I'd analyze your point of view, Kevin, as being that you prefer characters to follow certain rules of characterization -- and that leads to a preference for the '50s cartoons, where the characters were narrowed in scope. Chuck Jones came to feel that comedy was better if you gave it more rules and "narrowed" it, whereas Bob Clampett was the opposite; he liked characters to be as broad as possible and to change from cartoon to cartoon if necessary (so Daffy could be a lunatic in one cartoon and a craven coward in the next). If you prefer characters to be broader in terms of what they can do, you'll go for the '40s Bugs and Daffy; if you prefer more rules and consistent characterization, you'll prefer the '50s. (I actually don't go as far as some people on this, because I think you can, too, take a cartoon character "out of character" -- or at least, I don't think Bugs is a very appealing or interesting character in some of Clampett's cartoons, which is my problem with Clampett as a Bugs director.)
Characters, in my estimation, are the most important aspect to any entertainment. They're the focal point of interest for the viewer, who the viewer identifies with, forms an attachment to, and feels an empathy with in the proceedings of the story. It becomes difficult to connect with characters if they're wildly inconsistent from one story to the next and the inconsistency has no significantly provoked basis within the context of the storyline. If I don't connect with the character I've come to know, then the cartoon loses me. I'm out of it. Uninvolved. It is the same for any entertainment, actually.

And no, the differences between Jones, Freleng, and McKimson's post-1948 Bugs Bunny really weren't all that jarring.

Maybe the characterizations did narrow to be defined to a set of traits and rules that must be followed. And perhaps it did limit the extent of humorous interaction. I'm just not convinced that it made the characters less interesting. I think there's far more texture to the personalities of, say, Sylvester and Bugs, in the 1950s cartoons than in the cartoons of earlier years when they were simply being zany and for the sake of a cartoon being funny or outrageous or whatever.


If the characters did in the main narrow to become consistent and predictable, it's the settings and situations of the cartoons that expanded to imaginatively include virtually any place, any era, any literary story for the characters' adventures and conflicts to take place in, with new, funny, different portrayals of the adversarial interaction relative to the locations. The cartoons opened up so very much more as a result.


For the record I do agree with your assessment of Clampett and Bugs Bunny, but then I would, wouldn't I?;)

While I really hate the idea of evaluating the cartoons by the way they were shown on television ("The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show" is not a real show; it's just a chopped up collection of old films), I do think there's an analogy to be made between the '50s cartoons and a TV show. The '50s cartoons follow more rules and have more consistent characterizations; an entry in the Tweety/Sylvester series offers more or less the same characters every time, like an episode of a TV show. The '40s cartoons are more like stand-alone films that happen to utilize some familiar characters; they don't follow the rules of continuity and consistency that a TV show requires.
I like the analogy. Maybe that's the reason why, long before I knew of AAP and Ted Turner and all that, I felt the earlier cartoons weren't ones I'd expect to see on the network TV show. I think it's a most astute observation. :)

I prefer the earlier stuff, ultimately, because I don't think comedy comes from narrowing the scope of a character. Bugs is a far better character in "Haredevil Hare" than in "Hare-Way To the Stars," because in "Haredevil" the writer and the animators put him through every possible emotion and reaction, whereas in "Hare-Way" he's just kind of smug and blase all the way through. To me every character gets duller as he gets more limited; this is true even of the Coyote, who had a wider range of emotions in the first half of the '50s than in the late '50s and '60s.
Yes, the Coyote did have a wider range of emotions in the early '50s, but he wasn't devoid of them later on. I think there some quite remarkable instances of the Coyote showing emotion in the later cartoons. How about the ending of "Zoom and Bored" and "The Fastest With the Mostest"? And the expression on his face during the Batman outfit sequence in "Gee-Whiz-z-z-z!" And most of "Lickety-Splat!" And "Hopalong Casualty".


I can appreciate the preference for "Haredevil Hare" on certain merits, but "Hare-Way to the Stars" has its merits, too. And plenty of them. For the record, I prefer "Hare-Way..." in every respect.

All right. Firstly, let's leave aside Bugs breathing on the Lunar surface for most of the former cartoon. Yeah, I know. He does reach the latter's space platform without requiring a space suit, but it's a quick journey after he's been bumped off the rocket by a satellite, over and done with in seconds of screen time, and for the balance of that cartoon, he's on a space platform, which could well have a life-support system on it. We know the Moon in its natural state has no air. Then again, maybe the vacuum of space is a flexible concept in the Looney Tunes universe, a particular physical law that need not apply. It's never directly addressed, whereas respiratory distress at prolonged underwater conditions is. So, leaving it aside...

What captures my imagination, my fancy the most? What looks more ominous
and future-shocky? The barren, grey Moon, or a highly stylized space platform. Which looked more frightening? Marvin Martian's humungous planet destroying energy cannon powered by the Iludium PU-36 Explosive Space Modilator, or some portable rocket projecting out of the Martian's Moon-parked space coop. I guess both can get the job of planet-destroying done, and we actually see the one in the earlier cartoon blast away most of the Moon, but when dealing with suggestive aesthetics of spatial spookiness and techno-terror, Maurice Noble's artistry does wonders.

Which version of Marvin has the definitive voice? Which was the more frightening Martian minion? The dopey dog with the goony voice or fearsome buzzard creatures formed from watered seeds? Which, the grey Moon as depicted- an arid landscape with a nighttime sky- or the space platform with all those swirls of stars around it, gives a greater impression of the feel of being off the Earth? "Hare-Way to the Stars" was influential in interesting me in science fiction. It just nailed the spacey feel. I never saw "Haredevil Hare" until 1992. It's unlikely it would have had the same or greater impact had I seen it at the same point in life as "Hare-Way...", but we'll never know for sure.

On arriving at the platform, Bugs is rather blase, but Bugs by this time is a seasoned traveller of many times and places. A strange setting shouldn't phase him, even one in space. When he hears what Marvin is planning, he freezes in horror and heroically snatches the modulator fuse and runs off, cleverly evading the Martian buzzards and gaining possession of a flying saucer. Well, we know the rest. With dispatch, Bugs returns Marvin's modulator/fuse so that it explodes in the Martian's midst, and returns to Earth, where quite by accident, Bugs activates all of the Martian buzzards. An open-ended ending, and one I must confess to not being entirely comfortable with, but Bugs will somehow prevail... He is himself, after all. And he did defeat the Martians on their turf. I prefer this variant of Bugs vs. Marvin with Earth at risk to the one in "Haredevil Hare", but I actually do like "Haredevil Hare" somewhat.


The range of emotion displayed by Bugs in "Haredevil Hare" is appropriate as he'd not been in space before. I don't like that long face-pulling and belching, funny-walk scene on the Moon. The story comes to a halt for a prolonged zany display. But his reactions inside the rocket are spot-on.

I agree with that and I would also say that it is not jarring to see Sylvester acting as a heckler in "Kitty Kornered" or "Doggone Cats", because he is a victim in both of those as well. He gets kicked out in the snow by Porky and is tortured by a bulldog. He only get's his revenge, when he finds a weakness or a no choice situation to those characters (Porky's fear of martians and Wellington's errand to deliver a parcel which he can't let go of). And Sylvester is not out of character in "Catch As Cats", only his voice is different. Those four cartoons are some of my favourites, probably because it's nice to see Sylvester come out on top, like he did in "Scaredy Cat".
Yes, he did mostly come out on top in "Scaredy Cat", and not because he heckled. He was loyal to Porky and deserved some manner of victory. And yet he didn't completely win. There was still a mouse in the house, the one that malleted him on the head. Where the other three cartoons are concerned, we'll just have to disagree. The Sylvester in those cartoons isn't the Sylvester I'm used to. Again, in order to assimilate it, all I can do is attribute it to a younger, more carefree pussy cat. Who knows, maybe that's acceptable. But I'd rather watch a post-1948 Sylvester cartoon any day.

I thought that scene was hilarious and is it any worse than the way Pepe acts in the post-48 cartoon, "Odor Of The Day"?
"Odor of the Day" is atypical Pepe, yes. We don't even know if it's set in France. Some people even refuse to accept that it's a Pepe Le Pew cartoon. The situation isn't Pepe standard. But Pepe being married and his accent not real is a whole lot more difficult to accept in the context of his overall career than Pepe in one cartoon being quietly intent (even to the extent of putting aside his horniness and verbosity) on finding accommodations for the winter. This might still be the single, amorous, French Pepe we know. And there is, after all, no feminine character in this cartoon to arouse him. He's different, yes, but not as drastically different as he's made out to be at the end of "The Odor-Able Kitty".


What seems a bit off? They seemed perfect to me.
In "Hare Trigger", Sam is easily distracted by a picture drawing contest and actually eager to hear Bugs' reaction to his drawing, and offended when Bugs says, "Eh, it stinks." The Sam I grew to know cares nothing for Bugs' opinion, and is hardly that slow to detect a ploy for time or for further heckling. The scene of Sam and the oars in "Buccaneer Bunny" is another off-note incident. It goes on for too long and really doesn't pay off all that much, in my opinion anyway. Sam is not as bright as he should be on occasion, but he's quicker-witted than that. And "Bugs Bunny Rides Again", the dance scene down the mine shaft. Sam should have caught onto that one sooner. The Sam I know is rather harder to dupe. I suppose these things could be attributable to it being early in his relationship with Bugs and his not knowing how tricky Bugs can be. Actually, though, I'm fond of all three of these cartoons. "Hare Trigger" has a childhood connection with me. So, natually I love it. For many years I used the expression, "bread and butter", to the amusement of friends, and didn't know where the heck I got it from. When I finally saw "Hare Trigger again, I got my answer.

Foghorn was just a bit more blustery than what I'm used to. I'll have to look at the two pre-'48 Foggys again. Haven't seen either of them for a number of years.

I can't see the Daffy in "Daffy Dilly" and any cartoon before "My Little Duckaroo" to be any different to the Daffy before.
In "Daffy Dilly", Daffy has a big-money purpose in mind. He takes charge and deals with the butler. He dominates the narrative in pursuit of his goal. He isn't just there for zany prankishness for plot purposes. He's not reacting to a hunter or some other pest or interloper into his world. And he gets down to business straight away. He sees what he wants and at lightning speed is on site. He is impeded from his goal by the butler. The whole cartoon revolves around the paired-down conflict, and leading up to its resolution, there is a black-out gag or two (a hallmark of the '50s style) as Daffy tries again and again to gain entry to the house. This kind of scenario is quite standard for the cartoons of the '50s. He does gain entry, and by slippery accident he accomplishes his mission. The ending is clever, because Daffy gets what he wants- but with a catch. Isn't there always a catch? Such is life. Daffy didn't expect he'd have to endure pies in the face for an indefinite period in order to earn the million bucks from Cubish. But... it's a living. Very similar to the line he delivers at the end of "Beanstalk Bunny", isn't it? Though in that case, he's more of a prisoner. I see the Daffy in "Daffy Dilly" as serious business, far, far removed from the zany reveller in mischief of his early cartoons. "My Little Duckaroo" is typical '50s Daffy with heroic ideas above himself, going up against a fearsome opponent with bravado, and being pummelled for it. The earlier Daffy would dance circles around Canasta, heckle him with a lot of zaniness. Some might think that makes for a better cartoon. I don't.:)

And about the fact that there is great difference in styles between "Haredevil Hare" and "You Were Never Duckier", I don't think there is any difference. There was only a difference in 1955, IMO.Where's the partition in 1955? Between what particular cartoons?:coyote:

[Nick]

Characters, in my estimation, are the most important aspect to any entertainment. They're the focal point of interest for the viewer, who the viewer identifies with, forms an attachment to, and feels an empathy with in the proceedings of the story. It becomes difficult to connect with characters if they're wildly inconsistent from one story to the next and the inconsistency has no significantly provoked basis within the context of the storyline. If I don't connect with the character I've come to know, then the cartoon loses me. I'm out of it. Uninvolved. It is the same for any entertainment, actually. I agree with that but not to the extent that you do. I feel that a character may be tweaked a bit once in a while to fit in with the story and make a funny cartoon (see "Draftee Daffy", where Daffy's cowardly funtions are built up or the Cecil Tortoise cartoons where Bugs' cockiness in built up), but if they over do it, like the Daffy and Speedy cartoons where Daffy is completely out of character and unlikeable, then no.


Who knows, maybe that's acceptable. But I'd rather watch a post-1948 Sylvester cartoon any day. But the three cartoons that you mentioned were the only pre-48 cartoons where Sylvester was a heckler (and not a perfect one, like Bugs or Daffy, as he gets blown up and dies at the end of "Back Alley Op-Roar" and stupidly mallets him and his friend in "Doggone Cats", but in "Doggone Cats", his orange friend does more heckling to Wellington than Sylvester, anyway. Not excepting them because Sylvester acts a little differenly is just missing out on some very funny cartoons in my opinion) in other cartoons he was the Sylvester you've come to accept, like in the first Hippetty Hopper cartoon, "Hop, Look And Listen" and others like "Life With Feathers", "Peck Up Your Troubles" and "Crowing Pains".

"Odor of the Day" is atypical Pepe, yes. We don't even know if it's set in France. Some people even refuse to accept that it's a Pepe Le Pew cartoon. The situation isn't Pepe standard. But Pepe being married and his accent not real is a whole lot more difficult to accept in the context of his overall career than Pepe in one cartoon being quietly intent (even to the extent of putting aside his horniness and verbosity) on finding accommodations for the winter. This might still be the single, amorous, French Pepe we know. And there is, after all, no feminine character in this cartoon to arouse him. He's different, yes, but not as drastically different as he's made out to be at the end of "The Odor-Able Kitty". I accept that, but what about in "Really Scent"? Doesn't that ruin Pepe's character more than "Odor-Able Kitty" (which shouldn't count because it's his first appearance) and "Odor Of The Day"?


In "Daffy Dilly", Daffy has a big-money purpose in mind. He takes charge and deals with the butler. He dominates the narrative in pursuit of his goal. He isn't just there for zany prankishness for plot purposes. He's not reacting to a hunter or some other pest or interloper into his world. And he gets down to business straight away. He sees what he wants and at lightning speed is on site. He is impeded from his goal by the butler. The whole cartoon revolves around the paired-down conflict, and leading up to its resolution, there is a black-out gag or two (a hallmark of the '50s style) as Daffy tries again and again to gain entry to the house. This kind of scenario is quite standard for the cartoons of the '50s. He does gain entry, and by slippery accident he accomplishes his mission. The ending is clever, because Daffy gets what he wants- but with a catch. Isn't there always a catch? Such is life. Daffy didn't expect he'd have to endure pies in the face for an indefinite period in order to earn the million bucks from Cubish. But... it's a living. Very similar to the line he delivers at the end of "Beanstalk Bunny", isn't it? Though in that case, he's more of a prisoner. I see the Daffy in that cartoon as serious business, far, far removed from the zany reveller in mischief of his early cartoons. "My Little Duckaroo" is typical '50s Daffy with heroic ideas above himself, going up against a fearsome opponent with bravado, and being pummelled for it. The earlier Daffy would dance circles around Canasta, heckle him with a lot of zaniness. Some might think that makes for a better cartoon. I don't.:)Wow! I guess I never saw it that way, even though I don't agree with you. :)

Where's the partition in 1955? Between what particular cartoons?:coyote: Well, the characters were redesigned and perhaps more simplified (most noticably in Daffy Duck) , the backgrounds got more stylized and abstract, the Tweety series became more focused on Sylvester :sylvester, there were less one-shot cartoons and McKimson's unit suffered from the loss of capable and great animators (Rod Scribner, Charles McKimson, etc). There are more differences, but those are the most noticable.

Interestingly, most of the pre-1948s I do hold in higher esteem are those without the regular or even the minor characters. One-shots like "Rhapsody in Rivets", "Pigs in a Polka", "Holiday For Shoestrings", "Bone Sweet Bone", and "A Hick, a Slick, and a Chick". I think those are great cartoons as well. It's good to see that we agree on something. :tweety:

[Jack]

Kevin gave me way too much to reply to in his last response to me, but here goes.

I noticed in your Bugs analysis that you most often focused on Clampett's cartoons, but what about the Bugs cartoons made by Freleng and Jones from the same period? I will admit that there are a number of pre 1948 Bugs cartoons that don't "fit" with the popular view of bugs Bunny, but these don't outnumber the cartoons that do fit, IMO. With some of the other character analysis I thought you often got too caught up in minor details. For instance, I don't consider a throw away gag in which Bugs shoots an audience member as being grounds for dismissing an entire cartoon as wrong. One could pick on cartoons from post 1948, like "Forward March Hare," where Bugs is rather dumb, "Rebel Rabbit," where Bugs terrorizes the country without any real provocation, "Rabbit's Feat," where Bugs acts like Daffy Duck, "Baton Bunny, " where Bugs is frustrated by a fly, and "Grey-Hounded Hare," where Bugs thinks a race-track rabbit is real. If you must be nit-picky about the pre 1948 cartoons, then you need to hold the post 48s to equally high standards. In my mind these occurrences are more substantial than Yosemite Sam being tricked into drawing a gun, or Foghorn Leghorn being a little bit too blustery. You bring up "Odor-Able Kitty" as being different, but what about "Cat-Tails For Two?" The first Speedy Gonzales cartoon has a crude character that looks dramatically different from the mature Speedy.

As for "Daffy Dilly," while Daffy is more "down to business" and is pursuing money, I don't think those elements alone made the characterization closer to the late 50's Daffy than to the Daffy of a couple years before. Late 50's Daffy wouldn't have taken the Butler's rejection in stride the same way Daffy does in "Daffy Dilly." It's that lightness of spirit and happier disposition that define the earlier Daffy the most. Daffy Duck was bound to be toned down and adapted to the "try/fail" format eventually, but doing this doesn't make him a different personality. It wasn't until they made Daffy more easily frustrated and unsatisfied that he changed. And unlike later cartoons, Daffy is able to fluster the butler in "Daffy Dilly."

As for Sylvester, I never branded certain characters as "winners," "losers," or "victims." Sylvester seems quite in character to me in "Back Alley Op-Roar" because, as someone earlier said, he looks, moves, and talks like Sylvester. To me it makes perfect sense to have a character that normally loses in a particular set of circumstances to still be able to win in a completely different set of circumstances. Sylvester was never as quiet and cowardly in the Tweety cartoons as he was in the Porky cartoons, yet it makes sense because he never had to deal with evil cat-decapitating mice in a Tweety cartoon.

As for "Hare-Way To The Stars" and "Haredevil Hare, " I prefer the earlier cartoon because Bugs goes through a bunch of believable human emotions that make perfect sense considering the circumstances, and I think the backgrounds have an understated elegance about them.

As for opinion shifting in favor of the pre 1948 cartoons online, I think you are partly correct. I feel that the preference among fans hasn’t shifted from the post 1948 period to the pre 1948 period, but instead from the 1948-1960 period to the late 30’s-mid 50’s period. The late 50’s cartoon may have lost some favor because, compared to the early 50’s-and-before cartoons, they come off as “wrong footed” in many respects.

I must admit that you, kevin, are much more articulate and better as expressing his opinions than I am, so I look forward to your response.


Jack :bosko:

[Jeff]

Wow! This thread has been a fantastic read, even though it looks like I came in in the middle. I must say I'm quite impressed with Kevin's comments and analyses and I can sympathize with some of his statements about being wrong-footed.

I'm a Canadian too. I was raised on 10 years of the Bugs Bunny & Roadrunner show, etc and all I ever knew about WB cartoons was what was available on TV.

Last year I started to become interested in these cartoons again (at age 32) and discovered those two Bosko DVDs out there. What the heck, I plopped down some money on Amazon and waited to see what would come of it. Of course I was unpleasantly surprised! The Bosko cartoons are so far removed from what I knew of Looney Tunes that they seem a completely different species.

And yet, I was intrigued. How had such simple, boring cartoons evolved into those hilarious, zany stories involving wacky, complex characters that I had known and loved all my childhood?

Thus, I began my research and stumbled across Toonzone's Termite Terrace Trading Post. I started reading up on the history of Looney Tunes. I bought a couple public domain tapes and saw "Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur", "Porky's Railroad", "Have You Got Any Castles?". What in the heck? Daffy Duck's character design and behavior differs drastically from the character I know and love from Beanstalk Bunny, Rabbit Fire, etc (heck, he might even be brown in my version :(). And Porky Pig: no longer a sidekick to Daffy or as a fuddy-duddy bachelor, but a cute hero with strong resemblences to the Little Rascals heroes like Spanky or Alfalfa. And Castles: singing and dancing book characters with little puns and visual gags? What the heck?

Definitely a jarring experience! My initial reaction was indeed similar to Kevin's: I just didn't like the cartoons. They were not the same kind of beast that I had been raised on.

I guess the turning point in my attitude was not some sudden about-face but a gradual dawning of realization.

I happened to see "A Pest In The House" and really found it quite funny. Here was Daffy not been greedy or cowardly or mean but actually a happy go-lucky character. And yet, he has the same zest for life and determination that he shows in later Jones masterpieces.

I also saw "Back Alley-Oproar" and like another stated: Sylvester is in a different mood here. The latter Sylvester cartoons are so formulaic that this cartoon was a blast of fresh air to me. And guess what, it's a damn funny cartoon!

I saw Wackicki Wabbit. Here was a recognizable Bugs but his model seems somewhat off, his forehead is more sloped than I remember. And his mannerisms...he's more aggressive and less in control of the situation, yet there's no denying that he is still the same Bugs. He's just in a raw form, undistilled form. And what a funny cartoon! The characterizations of the two castaways are somehow different than cartoons that I remember in their body movement and facial expressions (only later did I learn that they were caricatures). Yet I really enjoyed this cartoon!

"Wabbit Twouble" is another example of Bugs in a raw form. Actually when I first saw this cartoon I found Bugs very off-putting since he goes out of his way to pester a morbidly obese-yet-quite innocent Elmer (I still don't like this version of Elmer). At first, I didn't like this cartoon. Here is Bugs in a wacky, out-of-control mode that just doesn't sit right in light of his evolutionary end-point. And yet, the cartoon is still funny especially the little aside to the audience that Bugs gives ("I do this kind of stuff to him all through the picture").

To a kid growing up on Freleng, McKimson and Jones it was a little disturbing at first to see the wild animations and exaggerations of the Clampett shorts. I saw "Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid" and "The Old Grey Hare". Both cartoons are Clampett classics, yet I found them oddly disturbing in scenes. There's no doubt in my mind that Clampett was a genius and yet there are certain scenes that just disturb me (like Bugs or Beaky crying and thinking they've been smashed to bits after landing buried in some dirt - this gag also disturbs me in Rover's Rival) - I never got that with the post-48 packages (except maybe Chow Hound). Anyway, I've come to appreciate Clampett's style more of late (The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is one of my favourites).

And then there's Avery's A Wild Hare: It seems so natural now, but at the time it was just another experiement with this funny, suave rabbit. Looking at A Wild Hare with nothing under my belt but the post-48 cartoons and the only thing out of place to me was the red nose on Elmer.

Anyway, I began to realize that these characters have such a rich history and I had only been raised on their golden years. I had missed out on their childhood and on their experimental years. Watching these early cartoons are like watching Edison trying to invent the lightbulb...a very fascinating study that I'm thoroughly enjoying the experiments, even if not every one of them sits quite right with me.

For instance, I also don't like the Cecil Turtle trilogy overall. And yet I like to see Bugs' facial expressions of frustration because I've never seen it before when he wails: "How does he DOOO it?!?!"

I wonder what my kids will think when they grow up on Looney Tunes (from my collection, of course). Will they sense a difference?

Regards,
Jeff

[Kevin McCorry]

I agree with tha[/size]t but not to the extent that you do. I feel that a character may be tweaked a bit once in a while to fit in with the story and make a funny cartoon (see "Draftee Daffy", where Daffy's cowardly funtions are built up or the Cecil Tortoise cartoons where Bugs' cockiness in built up), but if they over do it, like the Daffy and Speedy cartoons where Daffy is completely out of character and unlikeable, then no.

You'll get no argument from me there. With few exceptions, I've never thought much of the Daffy/Speedy cartoons. As regards the others you mention, the Daffy in "Draftee Daffy" is a bit like the craven coward I know and love, and I can sure empathize with him. I like that one, actually. It's got a good ending to it as well. One that wouldn't be out of place in the '50s. The Cecil Turtle cartoons, however, are no-sale with me, I'm afraid. Sorry if that seems closed-minded. It probably is. But I just don't see the merit in those as Bugs Bunny cartoons.

But the three cartoons that you mentioned were the only pre-48 cartoons where Sylvester was a heckler (and not a perfect one, like Bugs or Daffy, as he gets blown up and dies at the end of "Back Alley Op-Roar"... Yes, and even in the after-life, he's heckling Elmer, nine times at once. It conflicts with "Satan's Waitin'", where Sylvester loses his lives one at a time, and doesn't go to heaven. ;) But leaving that aside... Actually, there's nothing wrong with this cartoon's storyline per se. It's actually quite clever. It even strikes my fancy when more or less used as an Inspector cartoon ("Le Quiet Squad"). I just don't like Sylvester in it. As for "Kitty Kornered", the Sylvester I grew up with, if booted out of a house on a winter night, would either try to ingratiate, not heckle, his way back in, or else look somewhere else for shelter. I just don't like the whole set-up for "Kitty Kornered". Or "Doggone Cats", for that matter. As for "Hop, Look, and Listen", yes, it's very much typical McKimson Sylvester, but if I want to watch a Hippety Hopper cartoon there are more interesting and more visually appealing ones to choose from. And "Life With Feathers" and "Peck Up Your Troubles" are okay, I suppose, in the characterization department (if seeing Sylvester paired with birds other than Tweety is desirable), but don't much appeal to me visually. "Crowing Pains"? Can't comment much on it as I haven't seen it for quite a few years. I do remember thinking Sylvester's presence in the cartoon to be more than a little odd. Much odder than Daffy's presence in "The High and the Flighty". Ol' Daff the travelling salesman seemed to fit perfectly into the scenario of that cartoon.

I accept that, but what about in "Really Scent"? Doesn't that ruin Pepe's character more than "Odor-Able Kitty" (which shouldn't count because it's his first appearance) and "Odor Of The Day"?

First appearance or no, it was such a radical difference from the Pepe I was used to. Pepe married, and his accent a put-on? Is Pepe not really French?

How does "Really Scent" ruin Pepe? Pepe is still Pepe. As French and as amorous and as much the single seeker of a mate as ever. Okay, he deodorizes himself for this particular cartoon only, but he does so within the context of the cartoon. He's in a different location (New Orleans), and different situation with a girl cat actually born with a skunk's stripe and who can't get a boy-friend other than Pepe. Naturally, Pepe's stink proves to be quite a problem. And for most of the cartoon she's trying to deal with it. He knows she wants him, and he wants her. There's quite a cute twist at the end, of the kind that the post-1948 cartoons do so very well. Pepe smells like a rose, and the girl cat reeks- and she's chasing him. It's a rather similar ending to "For Scent-imental Reasons", n'est-ce pas? ;) I feel kind of strange defending Pepe Le Pew cartoons because I'm not much of a Pepe fan. Still, "Really Scent" is one of those occasional Pepes I do rate quite highly. Different location. Different situation. But still Pepe. Same persona.

Wow! I guess I never saw it that way, even though I don't agree with you. :)

The ending to "Daffy Dilly" could be taken 2 ways. Either Cubish pays Daffy the million bucks for the first pratfall and hires him on full-time as laughter-inducer (we're not actually told this), or Daffy provokes that one good laugh that goes on non-stop, delaying Cubish's demise indefinitely. One good laugh before he passes on. This could be that one, long, long, long good laugh. Daffy dares not leave because if he does, that could reverse Cubish's state of remission, and such being the case, he might be held responsible for Cubish's turn for the worse not get the million at all. Quite a pickle, actually. Either way, the things Daffy will do for money... This is the Daffy I grew to know, through and through, even if he does go, "Woo, woo, woo," as the butler is chasing him at one point.

Well, the characters were redesigned and perhaps more simplified (most noticably in Daffy Duck)Apart from Granny and Speedy Gonzales, I don't see quite a drastic redesigning of the characters in 1955. And if anything, far from simplified, I see a bit more complex drawing of Bugs in the Jones unit. Less curved and more starkly edged- around the feet especially, and the eyes more triangular, all in all suggesting an older, suaver personality. Even this isn't sharply noticable at some precise juncture in 1955. I do think Bugs is somehow different after "Hyde and Hare" and "Knight-Mare Hare", but that's still just a theory. Jones' Bugs Bunny is somewhat more poised and elegant later in the '50s, and it is soon co-opted to some extent in the other two units. I always attributed that as much to how he acts as to how he looks.

I might be inclined to agree that Freleng's Daffy looks a bit different, but Daffy anyway wasn't used very much by Freleng by this point. And this being said, Daffy's dancing in "Show Biz Bugs" is a stellar bit of animation. Hardly fair at all that he only gets crickets for applause. ;)

...the backgrounds got more stylized and abstractBut is that bad? I think it's quite charming, actually, adding to the visual aesthetic of the cartoons. The city scapes in, say, "Tree Cornered Tweety" or "Stupor Duck", are really quite marvellous, to my eyes. They suggest that this cartoon world exists in a dimension of its own, where buildings can blend into each other, or into a mass of brick and concrete, when seen at a distance.

the Tweety series became more focused on Sylvester :sylvester,Which I feel is a natural progression for them, as we see the toll it's taking on the poor ol' putty tat. One thing I will agree on is that Tweety was being made less accessible, in some particular location that Sylvester spends a whole cartoon trying in vain to reach. But that makes for interesting cartoons as well, depending on how diverse the settings were. And Freleng and Foster- yes, that morose, creatively sterile pair- were really most imaginative in what they did in this regard with the formula. And not every cartoon was taken up with Sylvester trying to gain entry to to some place where Tweety is at. Until the crocodile pond scene, "Tweet Zoo" is mostly a cat-and-bird chase in the classic tradition. And besides, I love Sylvester's scenes with the lion. How can anybody not laugh when the camera pulls back to show the lion in that boat with Sylvester? And the look on its face... "Tweety's Circus", ditto. "Hyde and Go Tweet" is a brilliant twist on the formula (ah, no pun intended). And I'll have words with anyone who says otherwise. :) And the most Sylvester-centric cartoons, like "Birds Anonymous" and "The Last Hungry Cat", have been praised for how articulate they are in examining the "humanity" of our feline friend. There was variety to the formula.

there were less one-shot cartoons and McKimson's unit suffered from the loss of capable and great animators (Rod Scribner, Charles McKimson, etc). There are more differences, but those are the most noticable.Yes, there were fewer one-shot cartoons, but with a few exceptions the ones we did get were IMO quite excellent, especially "The Mouse That Jack Built". And although not technically one-shots, the Honey-Mousers trilogy and "Boyhood Daze". The way Ralph Phillips slips into his reveries is fantastic animation. In some ways, I enjoy that cartoon more than "From A to Z-z-z-z!". And I love the ending of "A Waggily Tale". Never saw it coming, and, man, is it inventive! Dallas would have had a field day using that scenario for its storylines... :D Actually, I think it did...

I think those are great cartoons as well. It's good to see that we agree on something. :tweety:And on more things too, I hope.

Actually guys, this is fun, but I do feel like I'm the Lone Ranger responding to a tag-team ;) Whether I've held my own or not, I really can't say. That's for you to decide. But as more people join in this debate, with me still singularly representing one side of it, I will eventually be unable to keep up. Or my posts won't be as considered & well written (if they are considered and well-written...). Jack and Jeff, I'll answer your posts later today, time permitting. But beyond that, I propose to hang up my hat, and let someone else take the mantle of my position... If any such people exist in these parts... :bugs1:

[Jack]

Thus, I began my research and stumbled across Toonzone's Termite Terrace Trading Post. I started reading up on the history of Looney Tunes. I bought a couple public domain tapes and saw "Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur", "Porky's Railroad", "Have You Got Any Castles?". What in the heck? Daffy Duck's character design and behavior differs drastically from the character I know and love from Beanstalk Bunny, Rabbit Fire, etc (heck, he might even be brown in my version :(). And Porky Pig: no longer a sidekick to Daffy or as a fuddy-duddy bachelor, but a cute hero with strong resemblences to the Little Rascals heroes like Spanky or Alfalfa. And Castles: singing and dancing book characters with little puns and visual gags? What the heck?

Definitely a jarring experience! My initial reaction was indeed similar to Kevin's: I just didn't like the cartoons. They were not the same kind of beast that I had been raised on.

I guess the turning point in my attitude was not some sudden about-face but a gradual dawning of realization.
I was wondering, since the difference in Daffy Duck is most often noted among people who didn't grow up with the pre 1948 cartoons, how did you regard the post 1948 cartoons that still obviously used the "wacky" Daffy? Cartoons like "Boobs In the Woods," "Holiday for Drumsticks," "Riff Raffy Daffy, "Daffy Duck Hunt," etc? It's somethng I've always wondered about since people more familiar with post-48 Daffy tend to only mention the cartoons Chuck Jones did.

Oh, and how I do love "Wackiki Wabbit."

As for your kids seeing a huge dividing line - they probably won't. Theater audiences didn't see some huge difference when the cartoons were new, and I grew up with both periods and didn't see some huge difference either. Your kids may grow up thinking Daffy was wackier and Bugs was rougher around the edges than you did, and they might also think the golden years started earlier than you do.

[Jack]

First appearance or no, it was such a radical difference from the Pepe I was used to. Pepe married, and his accent a put-on? Is Pepe not really French?
But aside for the ending it's pretty much a text-book Pepe le Pew cartoon. I saw it all the time growing up, and the ending never threw doubts into my mind as to whether or not Pepe was French or single - after all, Bugs Bunny was married in one cartoon, yet going after a girl in another, and Daffy Duck was married about seven times. I guess I just don't find it as shocking or jarring as you do since I consider the cartoons to have no real continuity aside for the personalities of the characters. What do you tihnk of "Odor-Able Kitty's" follow up? What pre 1948 character cartoons do you feel are good or fall in line with the post 48 cartoons (tiny differences aside)?

[/size]
Apart from Granny and Speedy Gonzales, I don't see quite a drastic redesigning of the characters in 1955. And if anything, far from simplified, I see a bit more complex drawing of Bugs in the Jones unit. Less curved and more starkly edged- around the feet especially, and the eyes more triangular, all in all suggesting an older, suaver personality. Even this isn't sharply noticable at some precise juncture in 1955. I do think Bugs is somehow different after "Hyde and Hare" and "Knight-Mare Hare", but that's still just a theory. Jones' Bugs Bunny is somewhat more poised and elegant later in the '50s, and it is soon co-opted to some extent in the other two units. I always attributed that as much to how he acts as to how he looks. I think he meant simpler in terms of personality. More controlled/limited personalities don't make for bad cartoons, but if one views that period as the definitive years for all the characters then it does severely limit what a person thinks the characters can do (and thus makes a lot of cartoons unenjoyable). While the 1948-1955 Bugs and Daffy cartoons can be interpretted as falling perfectly in line with the pre 1948 cartoons, it's harder to do this with the post 55 cartoons (mostly for Daffy than any other character). As for picking 1955, the changes that happened in the mid 50's aren't sharp, but the pre/post 1948 differences aren't sharp either. I don't find the 1955-60 cartoons off-putting for the most part, save for some of Daffy's appearances, but it's not the period that I would use to measure the rest of the studio's output.

As for backgrounds, what's wrong with a more restrained use of abstraction like one saw before the later 50s'? The use of stylized sceney seemed a lot more carefully done to fit the cartoons, while in later cartoons it at times seemed to be done in order to make the cartoons look trendy (usually in cartoons by Freleng or Mckimson). I really love wild and bizarre backgrounds, but more when they seem to fit the cartoon perfectly. I think "Scaredy Cat," for example, is by far the scarriest of the Porky/Sylvester trillogy because the restrained backgrounds don't give off a lighter "cartoonie" feeling like the two follow-ups do. I think "literal" backgrounds are far from utilitarian, but can add as much to a cartoon as wildly abstract backgrounds.

As for being alone on your side of the debate, you probably always will be. I don't say that to sound mean. As the pre 1948 cartoons get more expososure, most people will accept them along with the post 1948 cartoons. Nobody on "my side" of the debate dismisses post 1948 cartoons.

[Matthew Hunter]

I used to be kind of in the same boat as Kevin, I liked the post-48 cartoons better because that's what I saw more of growing up (I watched the Nickelodeon and ABC shows primarily). That, and those cartoons were a lot more appealing to look at, to me anyway. The stuff on TNT was all faded and really LOOKED old, and the package had no Road Runner (my favorite character series.) But as I got older and as I got more interested in the cartoons and their history, I began to appreciate the older and newer cartoons equally. I'm glad the new DVD is giving a good mix of both old and new, and it's about time they gave the pre-48 stuff a place to shine the way they were MEANT to be seen. I'm sure my first impression of them would have been a lot different if I'd seen "Haredevil Hare", or "Baseball Bugs" or "Tortoise Beats Hare" like they are on the first DVD.

As for Road Runner, it looks like they selected the very best of the series. I'm glad they are devoting a whole disc to them, I was rather disappointed that there was only ONE on the last set, compared to a lot more Bugs, Daffy, and Porky. These DVDs are a great idea the way they're thought out, because they mix in well-known and popular titles with things that have never been released to home video before, and they give us something for everybody. With the cartoons disappearing frrom TV, that's important. Love or hate Cartoon Network, they used to mix things up pretty well...a good thing to do for a DVD too. :bugs1: :coyote:

[Sean Gaffney]

I used to be kind of in the same boat as Kevin, I liked the post-48 cartoons better because that's what I saw more of growing up (I watched the Nickelodeon and ABC shows primarily). That, and those cartoons were a lot more appealing to look at, to me anyway. The stuff on TNT was all faded and really LOOKED old, and the package had no Road Runner (my favorite character series.) But as I got older and as I got more interested in the cartoons and their history, I began to appreciate the older and newer cartoons equally. I'm glad the new DVD is giving a good mix of both old and new, and it's about time they gave the pre-48 stuff a place to shine the way they were MEANT to be seen. I'm sure my first impression of them would have been a lot different if I'd seen "Haredevil Hare", or "Baseball Bugs" or "Tortoise Beats Hare" like they are on the first DVD. Yup. I grew up watching a *lot* of cartoons in the 70s and 80s. The ABC Saturday morning ones, the CBS specials, and syndicated shows on WOR-9 and WNEW-5. Almost 90% of these were cartoons from 1948 on, and even the earlier ones I saw tended to be color cartoons from the 40s, such as My Favorite Duck.

It's simply a matter, for me, of what's more exciting to see on DVD. I've never seen Streamlined Greta Green, I'd like to see it restored for DVD. I've seen A Hound for Trouble approximately 85 times, and would not care if I ever heard Charlie 'capeesh' again.

BTW, regarding the 30s cartoons, does anyone else think a major division in regarding WB cartoons, more for me than pre or post 1948s, should be 'cartoon written around a song' or not? Even as late as the early 1940s we were still getting the occasional cartoon designed to sell the latest addition to the WB music library. There's a definite difference in the style of cartoon when they had to design the plot and characters around the tunes. On the upcoming DVD, compare the 'built around Old King Cole and title tune' Have You Got Any Castles? with another books-to-life cartoon, Book Revue, this time not based around a 2-3 minute tune performance.:daffy:

[Nick]

I think he meant simpler in terms of personality. More controlled/limited personalities don't make for bad cartoons, but if one views that period as the definitive years for all the characters then it does severely limit what a person thinks the characters can do (and thus makes a lot of cartoons unenjoyable). While the 1948-1955 Bugs and Daffy cartoons can be interpretted as falling perfectly in line with the pre 1948 cartoons, it's harder to do this with the post 55 cartoons (mostly for Daffy than any other character). As for picking 1955, the changes that happened in the mid 50's aren't sharp, but the pre/post 1948 differences aren't sharp either. I don't find the 1955-60 cartoons off-putting for the most part, save for some of Daffy's appearances, but it's not the period that I would use to measure the rest of the studio's output. Yes, that is what I meant.

As for backgrounds, what's wrong with a more restrained use of abstraction like one saw before the later 50s'? The use of stylized sceney seemed a lot more carefully done to fit the cartoons, while in later cartoons it at times seemed to be done in order to make the cartoons look trendy (usually in cartoons by Freleng or Mckimson). I really love wild and bizarre backgrounds, but more when they seem to fit the cartoon perfectly. I think "Scaredy Cat," for example, is by far the scarriest of the Porky/Sylvester trillogy because the restrained backgrounds don't give off a lighter "cartoonie" feeling like the two follow-ups do. I think "literal" backgrounds are far from utilitarian, but can add as much to a cartoon as wildly abstract backgrounds. That is why I prefer the earlier stylized backgrounds (1942-1955) than the later ones (the ones with one shot characters are all right). Another example of the point you made, is the backgrounds in the Roadrunner series. Compare the backgrounds in "Ready, Set Zoom!" to "Scrambled Aches". The former's backgrounds are stylized, but have a lot of nice pale colours that make the character's stand out. The later's backgrounds, however, are basically just a solid yellow. The backgrounds look as though they were quickly done, and you can even see that they sketched a cliff or whatever and then painted over it, you can lines and tiny bits of white that haven't been painted. In some cases, usually when he is falling, because of the horrible yellow colour, the coyote looks almost black.

The backgrounds in earlier Pepe Le Pew cartoons and later ones also look very different. In "Odor-Able Kitty", the backgrounds are painted to suit the mood of the characters, like Disney did in "The Flying Mouse" and what UPA did in "Gerald McBoing Boing", even though to a lesser extent. When the cat is happy, there is green, white and orange in the backgrounds, when the cat is tired out running, the sky is a dark purple/pink. They also mix realistic elements in there, to make them stand out, like the meat in the butcher's shop and the tower where the cat fakes suicide. However in the later Pepe cartoons, like "Who Scent You?" they show too much preference for colours like pink and gold, and look thickly painted.

And backgrounds in cartoons like "Deduce You Say", yuck! Shadows are completely black, light parts are completely yellow and the rest is mostly green! The trendy backgrounds in McKimson and Freleng cartoons (like Jack mentioned) look better than the ones in late fifties Jones' cartoons, I just don't like Maurice Noble's work in those.

The city scapes in, say, "Tree Cornered Tweety" or "Stupor Duck", are really quite marvellous, to my eyes. They suggest that this cartoon world exists in a dimension of its own, where buildings can blend into each other, or into a mass of brick and concrete, when seen at a distance. I prefer earlier city scapes in cartoons such as "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", "Doggone Cats", "Daffy Dilly", "Rhapsody In Rivets", "The Super Snooper", "Porky Pig's Feat" and others. I guess it's because I find them more interesting to look at, rather than flat oblong skyscrapers. I like the later ones as well though.

[MikeH0714]

Wow, this thread is fascinating! Kevin, Jack and the rest are sharing some interesting viewpoints.

I believe it started with questioning the distinction between the cartoons that aired on network TV versus those that did not; and that the latter category consisted usually of just the pre-48 color ("AAP") package.

That wasn't the case for me. I discovered the WB cartoons on WNEW, Channel 5 in NYC during the 1960's, and they may have been one of the few stations that carried both the AAP toons and a post-48 package from WB. And they were pretty good about mixing them up (although they did tend to run the Bugs Bunnys in near-chronological order). So it was interesting that Channel 5's "Bugs Bunny Show" would have, say, BALLOT BOX BUNNY followed by BINGO CROSBYANA and then THE HIGH AND THE FLIGHTY. Or TORTOISE BEATS HARE follwed by GEE WHIZZZZ and then DRAFTEE DAFFY. When Seven Arts acquired the Guild package, these also went to channel 5, who scheduled a half-hour of B&W "Looney Tunes" that might have a Porky followed by a Buddy, followed by a one-shot like JOE GLOW THE FIREFLY. (Of course, the latter package vanished in 1969 when the hand-coloreds came out; Channel 5 got those, too and "The Bugs Bunny Show" became even more schizo!)

So being exposed to nearly all the eras at once made things much more interesting. Of course, I learned in time that when the AAP title came on, I couldn't rely on Bugs or Daffy having one specific design, or even that the cartoon to come would be laugh-out-loud funny. But much later I found that this held true for the post-48's as well.

I rarely watched the Saturday morning network shows. It just bugged me that they chopped off the opening (and closing) titles and credits and replaced them with that unimaginative title card and cheesy music. So my introduction to many of the post-48's has been the video releases... and there are still many I've yet to see (like DAFFY DILLY), and I'm looking forward to it.

I agree that using the copyright date (9/1/48) as the sole dividing line between the "older" and "newer" cartoons isn't very meaningful. There are soooo many more signifcant lines: When the Merrie Melodies became gag cartoons and dropped the song chorus. When the Looney Tunes went to color. When the units were trimmed to three. When the studio re-opened after the 1953 shut-down. When Maltese and Foster departed for H-B. Each of these had a greater impact in the production, animation, graphics and/or types of stories and characterization in the cartoons.

Kevin's viewpoint regarding characterization in pre-1950 cartoons is really interesting. I certainly see where he's coming from, and agree with many of his observations, although I would say that there's not much difference in attitude or personality between the Bugs of LITTLE RED RIDING RABBIT and the one in BULLY FOR BUGS. Some have argued that there are as many characterization "mistakes" in the later cartoons, and I agree with that, too.

Frankly, I consider REBEL RABBIT and BUGS BONNETS among the worst of the Bugs cartoons. The former seems intent on making the rabbit as unlikeable as possible, and the latter suffers from a complete lack of characterization all around. Under Clampett, it might have worked (at least we could have had some extremes to laugh at), but Jones is out of his element trying to pull it off. RABBIT RAMPAGE is fun to watch once or twice, but how can Elmer possibly be the perpetrator of such exquisite torture? And - sorry folks - WHAT'S UP DOC? is a total misfire. I've written extensively about this title for a forthcoming book, but to sum up: IMO, Bugs is portrayed not only as a loser, but a stupid and obnoxiously conceited one to boot. Amazing how one mildly clever running gag has made this cartoon's rep.

The same sorts of things hold true for Daffy, Foggy and most of the rest: they're either brilliant winning strategists, or stupid impulsive losers depending on the adversary, situation, writer, director, etc. The series' that were primarily the property of one unit (Freleng's Tweety and Speedy; Jones' Road Runner) are usually the most consistent. Yet they can also be the most tiresome.

Anyway, since I grew up with both pre- and post-48's, I have favorites in both categories, and don't favor one era over the other. To be sure, I've seen more of the former than the latter, but with twenty years of Warner Home Video releases, I think I've seen the cream of the post-48 crop.

Michael

[Jeff]

Frankly, I consider REBEL RABBIT ... among the worst of the Bugs cartoons.
I agree completely! I've never liked this cartoon...what a flimsy excuse for Bugs to do all those stupid annoying things.

[Jack]

And backgrounds in cartoons like "Deduce You Say", yuck! Shadows are completely black, light parts are completely yellow and the rest is mostly green! The trendy backgrounds in McKimson and Freleng cartoons (like Jack mentioned) look better than the ones in late fifties Jones' cartoons, I just don't like Maurice Noble's work in those.
I have mixed feelings about Maurice Noble's backgrounds from his second stint at WB. He often did lovely work, but sometimes tended to get too fussy or overbearing. "Who Scent You?" probably has the worst backgrounds of all the Pepe le Pews, IMO. Overall, I think that the cartoons tend to work more often than not because both Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble wanted to do abstract backgrounds. The same doesn't seem to be true of Freleng (who tended to much prefer literal backgdrops) and McKimson, which is why I said their backgrounds come off as trying to be trendy more than anything else. I think the talent of Robert Gribbroek makes McKimson's cartoons look quite nice during this period, so his cartoons didn't suffer like Freleng's did for a few years in the mid 50's.

[Kevin McCorry]

I noticed in your Bugs analysis that you most often focused on Clampett's cartoons, but what about the Bugs cartoons made by Freleng and Jones from the same period?Jones took longer to arrive at the look of Bugs to which I'm partial. Freleng's Bugs cartoons are easier for me to assimilate. He is my favorite director. Just a moment of problematical characterization here and there as I've already mentioned. McKimson's easier still. With few exceptions, it's only the look of their pre-48s that I have difficulty appreciating.

Actually, I've been quite fair in singling out cartoons that I can't seem to get into. Some from Freleng, some from Clampett, one from Davis. I've identified a couple from Jones as well. I don't entirely dislike Clampett's work. Some of it actually quite marvellous, but it's not my cup of tea. Likewise Avery and Tashlin. The early Chuck Jones doesn't much float my boat either, but nor was it highly praised by Jones himself.

Something else I think I'll share which might help you all to understand where I'm coming from...

Around the time I was being exposed to huge chunks of pre-1948 cartoons, circa 1989-92, I was coming across interviews with Friz Freleng in magazines like Comics Scene and Animato!. I found them compelling reading, always, because, him being my favorite director, I had and still have a tremendous amount of respect for the man and for his opinion. This man knew his craft, through and through. He could be pithy, incisive, even abrasive by times, and his remarks more often than not, from what I was experiencing of the cartoons, hit the nail right on the head. I just ate up those interviews like a kid in a candy store.

The things he said in the interviews could well have colored my responses to the cartoons of the other directors, and I believe they did somewhat, but I was already having initial reactions to those cartoons before coming upon the interviews.

Freleng said that Avery was an insecure, self-conscious man and that the Avery cartoons reflected this. He said that Avery didn't, couldn't make subtle cartoons, that Avery's cartoons were cloying, trying too hard to impress, to get the gags across, and were therefore slow in pace and sparse in quick wit. With regard to Clampett, Freleng said that Clampett was excellent at stretching animation to its limits, a skilled animation craftsman, but poor, very poor at character.

Freleng said that Clampett didn't understand character. He credited Clampett for pushing the studio toward a more energetic output, but felt that Clampett went too far on numerous occasions. I got the impression that while he had some personal favorites in the earlier years ("Rhapsody in Rivets", "Rhapsody Rabbit" being the two he cited specifically), Freleng definitely favored the direction the cartoons utimately went in. He said he didn't like Clampett's conception of Tweety but felt the character did have potential and decided to use him and refine him- and pair him with Sylvester. And he gave the oft-told story of how he paired the canary with the putty tat.

His assessments really helped to crystallize in my mind why I wasn't responding well to the cartoons of either Avery or Clampett, quite apart from the visual element. Mind, he also said that Clampett didn't always, or even often, use good taste. That one could be taken with a grain of salt, considering it was Friz who gave us "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips". Still, the odd blip here and there aside, Friz's cartoons were quite tasteful.

He also said that Jones tended to overintellectualize Bugs and that he (Friz) and Bob McKimson often had to remind Chuck to keep Bugs from becoming too saavy, too sophisticated. I could see where he was coming from there, too. It's possible that cartoons like "Rabbit's Feat" were an attempt to pull back a bit from Bugs the intellectual. And he said that he liked Bob McKimson a lot and that he and Jones helped McKimson as much as they could.

In Chuck Amuck, Jones held Avery in much higher esteem than Freleng did, but while I enjoyed Chuck Amuck immensely, I felt Freleng's opinions on the earlier material had more resonance for me. And as I discovered more and more cartoons, the more Freleng's perspective prevailed in my mind.

Still, Avery did give us Bugs Bunny. So, on that one at least, I have to tip my hat to him.


I will admit that there are a number of pre 1948 Bugs cartoons that don't "fit" with the popular view of bugs Bunny, but these don't outnumber the cartoons that do fit, IMO. With some of the other character analysis I thought you often got too caught up in minor details.We'll have to agree to disagree on that.:)

For instance, I don't consider a throw away gag in which Bugs shoots an audience member as being grounds for dismissing an entire cartoon as wrong.I don't dismiss "Rhapsody Rabbit" entirely. I think it quite a nice cartoon all in all. I just wish Bugs didn't engage in the gun use. It may be a throw-away gag, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to co-opt.

One could pick on cartoons from post 1948, like "Forward March Hare," where Bugs is rather dumb, "Rebel Rabbit," where Bugs terrorizes the country without any real provocation, "Rabbit's Feat," where Bugs acts like Daffy Duck, "Baton Bunny, " where Bugs is frustrated by a fly, and "Grey-Hounded Hare," where Bugs thinks a race-track rabbit is real. If you must be nit-picky about the pre 1948 cartoons, then you need to hold the post 48s to equally high standards. I feel that each of the examples you cite are cartoons true to the 1950s Bugs Bunny formula. I've never actually paused much to think about why I feel that way, as there are many cartoons I just accepted without qualm in the context of Bugs of the '50s. Bugs is humble, he's modest, he typically doesn't get his dander up until he's wronged, or feels wronged, or sees an injustice being perpetrated- even if his perception of the injustice isn't strictly the correct one. His battles may not be on sound footing in such instances, but once in battle, he finds someone or something that is a bully and deserves to be humbled, and goes for it. I would point out first of all that two of the cartoons you cite are from the '40s, close to the juncture of the decades. In the case of "The Grey-Hounded Hare", Bugs genuinely believes a female rabbit is in danger, and chivalrously acts to protect it/her, and it turns out one of the dogs is a bully who deserves to be brought down a notch or two anyway. As for "Rebel Rabbit", Bugs is indignant that his species has been valued at 2 cents. He's wrongly interpreted the 2 cent bounty, thinking it's value of his species relative to others that's being measured. The Game Commissioner's explanation for this fails to set Bugs straight, and Bugs is off on a spree of being troublesome and damaging. It may be unbecoming of Bugs, but at least it does have an honorable if misguided logic to it. We're just not told at the start of the cartoon that Bugs is some Masked Maurader for no reason other than the gag.


Even in his quixotic battle, he performs mainly damage of property. And even then just to get the nation mad at him so the bounty will be raised. The only personal physical harm he administers is rapping on a guard's shins by a stick. Painful, yes. He does go too far :( , and there are consequences. This could even be seen as a lesson in moderation. He is jailed in "Rebel Rabbit". We have every hope, every expectation that it won't be for long because it had been an honorable if mistaken cause wrongly gone about. He may be jailed, but he is still Bugs Bunny. He'll get out of it somehow. And learn from the experience. There are consequences for the bunny's belligerence.

In "Baton Bunny", even as he deals with the fly that won't leave him alone and which threatens to disrupt his performance, Bugs retains that aura of congeniality. While going into a frenzy at trying to eliminate the fly, he conducts a rousing performance. And even though the audience leaves him, the fly, his antagonist in the cartoon, gives him a standing ovation.

"Forward March Hare". Bugs is like a fish out of water in the military but his heart is in the right place. He genuinely wants to be a good peacetime soldier but lacks experience with all the gear, the military routines, and so forth, while the army is likewise unprepared for him, and in the ensuing problems, they clash- Bugs and his drill sergeant. Bugs inadvertantly manages to bring the bullying sergeant down several notches in rank. He outlasts his drill sergeant in the ensuing battle of nerves, and in this cartoon's rather unorthodox conflict, he wins. Pity he does not realize that his ultimate assignment is so hazardous, but, hey, he is Bugs Bunny. He's a loyal if less than competent soldier. He comes out on top. He outlasted the bully of a drill sergeant assigned to him. "Murdering" the bugler is rather a belligerent act, even if the bugler is not actually alive... See, I don't take every cartoon completely uncritically.

"Rabbit's Feat". He's rather boisterous, and I might have some misgivings about that, but he's still the Bugs I know and love. Note the elegance by which he has coffee and carrot with Wile E.. He doesn't go into fighting mode until Wile E. makes it clear Bugs has been targeted for stew meat. Bugs is being stalked for dinner by Wile E. Coyote, and like any other time in the same situation, he fights back. This time with cunning guile. He has perhaps found that outwitting a genius is easiest by acting even less sophisticated and more coy than usual. His scene in the crib is bizarre, true, but maybe it's all part of the put-on, the pretense. And it's not a condescension to my mind, because he's not doing it for easy or abundant carrots or other vices, or at least that's not evident.

I have a hard time appreciating "Apes of Wrath", but still, there's not a single post-1948 Bugs Bunny cartoon I don't accept, even the handful I don't like. There's always some recognizable trait in Bugs that connects me to him. And it helps that, director's differences aside, he looks more or less the same as in the cartoons before and after.

In my mind these occurrences are more substantial than Yosemite Sam being tricked into drawing a gun, or Foghorn Leghorn being a little bit too blustery.The gun-drawing scene disconnected me just for a little bit from the cartoon. I never said it made me dismiss it outright. I just said a few things were a bit off in Sam's portrayal in his three pre-1948 cartoons. And I've furnished an explanation that he's only just met Bugs Bunny.

You bring up "Odor-Able Kitty" as being different, but what about "Cat-Tails For Two?" The first Speedy Gonzales cartoon has a crude character that looks dramatically different from the mature Speedy.He's Mexican, he's fast, he's cunning. He looks different, he sounds different. Yes, it can be disconcerting. But the cartoon has an overall look I'm happy with. And we've got his enemies, the two cats, who are mostly the focus of the cartoon. I mainly connect to them and their antics.

As for "Daffy Dilly," while Daffy is more "down to business" and is pursuing money, I don't think those elements alone made the characterization closer to the late 50's Daffy than to the Daffy of a couple years before. Late 50's Daffy wouldn't have taken the Butler's rejection in stride the same way Daffy does in "Daffy Dilly." It's that lightness of spirit and happier disposition that define the earlier Daffy the most. Daffy Duck was bound to be toned down and adapted to the "try/fail" format eventually, but doing this doesn't make him a different personality. It wasn't until they made Daffy more easily frustrated and unsatisfied that he changed. And unlike later cartoons, Daffy is able to fluster the butler in "Daffy Dilly."I concede you're right in your assessment of "Daffy Dilly", but maintain the
observations I made of it's connection to the cartoons of the '50s (all right, the early '50s) are also valid. Let's call it a transition cartoon.;)

As for Sylvester, I never branded certain characters as "winners," "losers," or "victims." Sylvester seems quite in character to me in "Back Alley Op-Roar" because, as someone earlier said, he looks, moves, and talks like Sylvester. To me it makes perfect sense to have a character that normally loses in a particular set of circumstances to still be able to win in a completely different set of circumstances. Sylvester was never as quiet and cowardly in the Tweety cartoons as he was in the Porky cartoons, yet it makes sense because he never had to deal with evil cat-decapitating mice in a Tweety cartoon.But Sylvester was reacting to a threat in that one. He had to deal with it because if he didn't it would be so much the worse for him and for Porky. In "Back Alley Op-Roar", he is initiating a problem, not reacting to one, disturbing Elmer's sleep and stirring up conflict that results in both of them being blown to smithereens, for no other reason than an excess of mirthful merriment. He's an instigator, and not for the usual reasons, e.g. appetite, showing off to his son. And knowing that it disturbs Elmer, he persists, trying to be as loud and disruptive as possible.

As for "Hare-Way To The Stars" and "Haredevil Hare, " I prefer the earlier cartoon because Bugs goes through a bunch of believable human emotions that make perfect sense considering the circumstances, and I think the backgrounds have an understated elegance about them.We'll just have to agree to different tastes here, then. :) I like my backgrounds abstract, elaborate, extravagant. Or at the very least of a diverse color palate.

As for opinion shifting in favor of the pre 1948 cartoons online, I think you are partly correct. I feel that the preference among fans hasn’t shifted from the post 1948 period to the pre 1948 period, but instead from the 1948-1960 period to the late 30’s-mid 50’s period. The late 50’s cartoon may have lost some favor because, compared to the early 50’s-and-before cartoons, they come off as “wrong footed” in many respects."Barbary Coast Bunny", "Broom-Stick Bunny", "Hare-Less Wolf", "Wild and Woolly Hare", "Tweety's Circus", "Sandy Claws", all the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons at least those before 1960. These are true to character. I'm at a loss to pinpoint any cartoons that are potentially wrong-footed, except maybe the ones with the excitably greedy Daffy ("Ali Baba Bunny", "A Star is Bored", "Show Biz Bugs"). And those don't bother me. That's the Daffy I got to know on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.

I think the talent of Robert Gribbroek makes McKimson's cartoons look quite nice during this period, so his cartoons didn't suffer like Freleng's did for a few years in the mid 50's.I love Irv Wyner's classy and spooky designs of Dr. Jekyll's digs in two cartoons, hell in "Satan's Waitin'", Roman times, the Sahara desert, the circus in "Tweety's Circus", the beach in "Sandy Claws", the city brownstone in "Muzzle Tough", Napoleon's palace, the shoemaker's shop in "Yankee Dood It", and the overall look of "The Three Little Bops". All of Freleng's background designers are my favorites. But Wyner is especially to my liking.:)

But aside for the ending it's pretty much a text-book Pepe le Pew cartoon. I saw it all the time growing up, and the ending never threw doubts into my mind as to whether or not Pepe was French or single - after all, Bugs Bunny was married in one cartoon, yet going after a girl in another, and Daffy Duck was married about seven times. I guess I just don't find it as shocking or jarring as you do since I consider the cartoons to have no real continuity aside for the personalities of the characters. What do you tihnk of "Odor-Able Kitty's" follow up?
But the Pepe Le Pew cartoons are predicated on Pepe's ongoing search for a mate. It's more a part of what his cartoons are about than it is regarding the other characters you mention. Personally, the Pepe Le Pew cartoon in question doesn't bother me very much anyway, since the character never endeared himself to me much as it is. I have no opinion one way or another on "Scent-imental Over You". But I'd prefer to watch a post-1948 Pepe, if watching one is my inclination, and it often isn't, frankly.;)

What pre 1948 character cartoons do you feel are good or fall in line with the post 48 cartoons (tiny differences aside)?Including all recurring characters, major and minor: "The Goofy Gophers", "Two Gophers From Texas", "Mexican Joyride" (the Mexican settings looked appropriate, and I love bullfight cartoons, Mr. Selzer:D ), "Hare Trigger", "Bugs Bunny Rides Again", "Buccaneer Bunny", "Racketeer Rabbit" (but whatever happened to Hugo?), "Baseball Bugs" (Bugs versus a team of bullies is A-OK with me), "Hare Remover" (Dr. Jekyll Elmer ain't, but I like the attempt- and the reference to Spencer Tracy), "The Unruly Hare" (Tashlin's Bugs Bunnies are fine by me), "Acrobatty Bunny", "Easter Yeggs", "A Hare Grows in Manhattan", "Nothing But the Tooth", "The Birth of a Notion", "Little Orphan Airedale" (Charlie Dog and Porky are note-perfect), "What's Brewin', Bruin?", "House-Hunting Mice", "Roughly Squeaking", "Inki at the Circus", "Draftee Daffy", "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", "Rhapsody Rabbit".

The series' that were primarily the property of one unit (Freleng's Tweety and Speedy; Jones' Road Runner) are usually the most consistent. Yet they can also be the most tiresome.The Tweety and Sylvester formula yields one of the most versatile series of cartoons ever made. Settings are all over the map. Situations vary. Sylvester chases Tweety, and Tweety evades him. Yes, that's formula. But in some cartoons, Sylvester tries to quell his Tweety desire, or protect Tweety, or even run away from Tweety in a monstrous form. Supporting characters vary. Some have Granny, some have the bulldog. Some have Granny and the bulldog. Some have just Tweety and Sylvester. Some have the orange cat. Some have a lion. In one we have a Jekyll/Hyde twist. It just wasn't Sylvester chasing Tweety in Granny's house the whole time. I don't see why Tweety and Sylvester is always singled out for put-down. Surely Pepe Le Pew or Hippety Hopper are more formulaic. The storylines adhere more rigidly to pattern. So does the Road Runner, but it's fascinating how many Road Runner capture ploys Wile E. comes up with and seeing how each one will fail.

Michael, do keep us posted on the progress of your book.:bugs1:

Jeff, thanks for your perspective. I wish I could get the same level of enjoyment from discovering the pre-1948s that you do. I actually found it interesting to see those earlier cartoons as they aired on TBS in 1992. If I've become cantankerous in the years since, it's because I feel that those cartoons are critically bumping off the map the block of cartoons that includes the Jekyll-Hyde trilogy discussed at some length in three of my essays (well, maybe not "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" as that's 1954, still in the pre-1955 block that's still considered quality). I feel like everybody's turning away from the cartoons I'm taken with and writing about. And that's what's souring me somewhat on the pre-1948 cartoons that I've had problems emotionally & intellectually connecting to, but still had abiding interest in. More and more,
the cartoons of the period I'm writing about are being seen as cartoons of insufficient interest for serious cartoon buffs. Plus, my attachment to the post-'48 cartoons through their intriguing presentation on network TV compilations, is perhaps more unwieldy. :)

[MikeH0714]

The Tweety and Sylvester formula yields one of the most versatile series of cartoons ever made.We'll have to agree to disagree on that one, Kevin. :) With the sole exception of BIRDS ANONYMOUS, I just don't find the T&S cartoons particularly memorable. I watch one, I chuckle once or twice, I move on to something better. Even the two "pre-48's" are just okay, IMO. (I don't even know most of the titles, that's how uninteresting I find them to be.)

One problem I have is that Freleng has about five or six gags that he loves, and he does them to death ("T'mon Sylvestah... kiss de widdle birdieeee"). Plus, he repeats plots: the second one remade a much funnier Tashlin one-shot. The Jeckyll and Hyde thing was done with Bugs Bunny (I don't much care for that one, either); same with the Rocky and Muggsy one. SATAN'S WAITIN' - okay, but Tom & Jerry's version of that plot was much, much funnier.

If Granny's in them, Sylvester will be hit with an umbrella. If the bulldog's in them, Sylvester will be chased and sometimes caught and beaten. Sylvester may sometimes want to "protect" Tweety from gangsters or other cats, but it's always with the ulterior motive of devouring the bird himself.

I agree that the Pepe and Hippity Hopper cartoons are also formulaic, but I don't think significantly more so than T&S. I get more enjoyment out the Road Runners, mainly because I find them more versatile than T&S. Even so, when GC2 comes out, I certainly won't be watching the entire RR disc in one sitting.

Michael

[Bugsmer]

...I certainly won't be watching the entire RR disc in one sitting.
Aren't DVDs supposed to last 100 years or so, if you take excellent care of them? These cartoons may not be on tv when your kids or your grandkids are growing up, but they'll be able to watch them nevertheless. Perhaps your DVDs will last a thousand years. There's no telling who some of your descentants will be. There may be a future Napoleon in your family, a Jack-the-Ripper, a President, a terrorist, or a space traveller. Any one of them might be listening to Jerry Beck describing life in the early part of the 20th century, life that may be as alien to somebody in the year 3000 as their culture might be to us.

[MikeH0714]

Aren't DVDs supposed to last 100 years or so, if you take excellent care of them? These cartoons may not be on tv when your kids or your grandkids are growing up, but they'll be able to watch them nevertheless.
Even if they last only the 50 years that some "experts" have predicted, they'll outlive me (I hope)! When my (now teenaged) children were enjoying "Ninja Turtles" and "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," they were getting a healthy dose of Looney Tunes and "Adventures of Superman" from me, and they've long since learned to separate the wheat from the chaff. Hopefully they'll pass that on to their kids, which hopefully won't be too soon.

At the same time, they introduced me to some pretty cool stuff. I get a kick out of "Kim Possible" and still don't understand why Fox's "Mad Jack the Pirate" never caught on with the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" set... it was just as wacky and pop-culture ridden - and the animation wasn't much worse! ;)

Michael

[Matthew Hunter]

I find it interesting that you disliked the gun gag in "Rhapsody Rabbit", Kevin. I don't think it takes away from the cartoon at all. The way it's animated is so brilliant...that look of irritation on Bugs' face before he shoots the coughing guy. He WAS provoked...the guy just kept going. I imagine the gag was just done for shock value more than anything else, and for the fact that the timing was just perfect. But I don't blame you for being bothered by it.

By contrast, what do you think about Rocky shooting Daffy in "Golden Yeggs", or Daffy shooting himself in "Scarlet Pumpernickel"?

[Jeff]

By contrast, what do you think about Rocky shooting Daffy in "Golden Yeggs", or Daffy shooting himself in "Scarlet Pumpernickel"?
In fairness, Rocky is well established as a "bad guy". And Daffy's shooting is self-inflicting...

[Paul Penna]

I find it interesting that you disliked the gun gag in "Rhapsody Rabbit", Kevin. I don't think it takes away from the cartoon at all. The way it's animated is so brilliant...that look of irritation on Bugs' face before he shoots the coughing guy. He WAS provoked...the guy just kept going. I imagine the gag was just done for shock value more than anything else, and for the fact that the timing was just perfect. But I don't blame you for being bothered by it.

Butting in here, I'll disgorge my take on this. I want my Bugs to be able to shoot somebody like that under the right circumstances, i.e., when it's funny. I also want my W.C. Fields able to boot two-year-old kids in the keester and my Groucho Marx able to insult haughty dowagers. I don't want my comic heroes to be role models, I don't want them to be my friends and I don't even care if they're at all admirable as human beings. I want them to be funny.

Bugs shooting the cougher is funny, no, gut-bustingly hilarious, because of the circumstances, the setup, the timing, the surprise, but in particular because it's Bugs. I can't think of another cartoon character who could have brought it off. I can't even think of a human comic who could make a gag like that deliver they way it does here. To me, that means it's a perfect realization of characterization in cartoons, and hardly some inept blunder.

If some find that kind of thing funny, but others don't, well, there you have a capsule history of humor through the ages. It's a matter of personal taste. Which, in fact, is what this thread really all boils down to.

[Jaime_Weinman]

The thing about the gun gag in "Rhapsody Rabbit" (which, by the way, causes audiences to absolutely explode with laughter; among crowd-pleasing moments it's right up there with Bugs slapping the bull in "Bully For Bugs" and Daffy saying "pronoun trouble") is that we all know that gun shots in cartoons are not fatal, or even particularly painful. So it's not like Bugs has horribly killed or maimed someone; he's just taught someone a lesson and done what we would all like to do if it wasn't for social proprieties. Plus, you know, the fact that in real life, if you shoot someone, they tend to die.

The "Throw the bum out" version of the gag (in "Baton Bunny") actually makes Bugs less sympathetic, because he's getting someone else to do his dirty work for him. That's not our Bugs. Bugs doesn't hold up a sign and let someone else do the violence; he goes into action himself. Bugs is at his most sympathetic not when he eschews violence, but when he uses violence against the most annoying people in the world. Like people who cough at concerts. When Bugs has someone else throw the cougher out, he's just another stodgy old musician. Not the Bugs who won our hearts by doing violence when violence is warranted.

[Leviathan]

I find it interesting that you disliked the gun gag in "Rhapsody Rabbit", Kevin. I don't think it takes away from the cartoon at all. The way it's animated is so brilliant...that look of irritation on Bugs' face before he shoots the coughing guy. He WAS provoked...the guy just kept going. I imagine the gag was just done for shock value more than anything else, and for the fact that the timing was just perfect. But I don't blame you for being bothered by it.

By contrast, what do you think about Rocky shooting Daffy in "Golden Yeggs", or Daffy shooting himself in "Scarlet Pumpernickel"?
Mat, What About the Gun Scene in the Ducksters, where Daffy Actually Shoots A Member in the Audience (Like Bugs in Rhapsody Rabbit

[Matthew Hunter]

The thing about the gun gag in "Rhapsody Rabbit" (which, by the way, causes audiences to absolutely explode with laughter; among crowd-pleasing moments it's right up there with Bugs slapping the bull in "Bully For Bugs" and Daffy saying "pronoun trouble") is that we all know that gun shots in cartoons are not fatal, or even particularly painful. So it's not like Bugs has horribly killed or maimed someone; he's just taught someone a lesson and done what we would all like to do if it wasn't for social proprieties. Plus, you know, the fact that in real life, if you shoot someone, they tend to die.

The "Throw the bum out" version of the gag (in "Baton Bunny") actually makes Bugs less sympathetic, because he's getting someone else to do his dirty work for him. That's not our Bugs. Bugs doesn't hold up a sign and let someone else do the violence; he goes into action himself. Bugs is at his most sympathetic not when he eschews violence, but when he uses violence against the most annoying people in the world. Like people who cough at concerts. When Bugs has someone else throw the cougher out, he's just another stodgy old musician. Not the Bugs who won our hearts by doing violence when violence is warranted.

Ah, yes. "Baton Bunny". Love the animation in that cartoon, and the scene where Bugs acts out a frontier Indian war, but the cartoon as a whole just isn't all that funny to me. I actually think it would have fit Jones' Daffy Duck better. Your thoughts on the sign gag bring up a point. There were almost two distinct methods Bugs Bunny used to thwart annoyances. The first one, and the one we see the most of in the 1940's shorts, is actively whooping them into submission. The other is the resourceful, smug way, where he barely has to lift a finger and just leads the adversary to burn himself out. Look at the Rabbit Season/Duck Season cartoons compared to something like "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips". in the former, Bugs doesn't have to do much, as he knows Elmer Fudd is really no threat to him, and knows how to push Daffy's buttons and turn the tables with minimal effort. In the latter, Bugs doesn't care WHO the foe is, he just knows they're a bunch of WWII Japanese soldiers chasing him, and he just goes ballistic on them. I don't really like one approach any better than the other, because I think both schools of Bugs Bunny combat are funny when done right. Take it too far to either extreme, though, and you have a Bugs that seems very out of character. :bugs1:

[Jack]

I actually found it interesting to see those earlier cartoons as they aired on TBS in 1992. If I've become cantankerous in the years since, it's because I feel that those cartoons are critically bumping off the map the block of cartoons that includes the Jekyll-Hyde trilogy discussed at some length in three of my essays (well, maybe not "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" as that's 1954, still in the pre-1955 block that's still considered quality). I feel like everybody's turning away from the cartoons I'm taken with and writing about. And that's what's souring me somewhat on the pre-1948 cartoons that I've had problems emotionally & intellectually connecting to, but still had abiding interest in. More and more, the cartoons of the period I'm writing about are being seen as cartoons of insufficient interest for serious cartoon buffs. Plus, my attachment to the post-'48 cartoons through their intriguing presentation on network TV compilations, is perhaps more unwieldy. :) I think you'd like the pre 1948 cartoons a lot more if you stopped thinking of them as bumping the late 50's cartoons off the map. I have always gotten the impression that fans only familiar with the post 1948 period felt the mid-late 50's was second best - it was mostly early 50's Chuck Jones cartoons that people idolized and tried to imitate (look at the early issues of the DC Looney Tunes comics, you'll rarely get anything other than early 50's Chuck Jones homages). The handful of mid-late 50's cartoons that do get a lot attention, like "What's Opera Doc?" and "One Froggy Evening" actually get more attention than the cartoons from earlier periods.

As for accepting post 1948 Bugs or Daffy cartoons that might not fit with the popular post 1948 conceptions of the characters, I think context has the most to do with it. If Bugs is presented as a cool winner and Daffy presented as a greedy loser in a majority of cartoons as well as in TV bumpers and merchandise, then people will focus on what conforms to those notions and either overlook what doesn't or regard those cartoons as transitional. After all, if cartoons like Rebel Rabbit and Daffy Dilly are being played along with cartoons that conform to the popular post 1948 conceptions, then it's natural to assume they must also conform. The pre 1948 cartoons have never been presented in a particular context, so it's easier to see them as quite different.