Bugs Bunny is who we want to be. Daffy Duck is who we are.
--Chuck Jones
Humiliation and indifference, these are conditions every one of us finds unbearable–this is why the Coyote when falling is more concerned with the audience's opinion of him than he is with the inevitable result of too much gravity.
--Chuck Jones
Hello Kirk, Your post led me over to Wikipedia, where I read about the squabbles between Jones and Bob Clampett and other cartoonists of the period. It seems that such internecine quarrels were unnecessary in an industry that was largely collaborative, with characters that developed over time, and where there was enough glory to go around anyway. Jones was probably not wrong in his accusations, he just went about them in the wrong way.
ReplyDelete.
At any rate, to paraphrase Joe Keenan, audiences are not interested in behind-the-scenes infighting, they just want to be entertained. Which the golden-age cartoonists provided in heaping measure.
--Jim
Jim, I'm well aware of the Chuck Jones- Robert Clampett feud, but for anyone who isn't, a quick summery:
DeleteAt one point, before they became animation directors themselves, Jones and Clampett were animators under director Tex Avery, the man usually credited with developing the anarchic, wisecracking "house style" that distinguished Warner Brothers cartoons from Walt Disney cartoons. After about a year and a half working under Avery, Jones and Clampett became directors. Meanwhile another development was going on. A Warners director named Ben Hardaway did a 1938 cartoon that had Porky Pig attempting to hunt down a rabbit, with a spectacular lack of success. The rabbit was completely white rather than grey and white, did not speak in a Brooklyn accent, and went unnamed. However, Hardaway's nickname for some reason was Bug. and so around the studio the rabbit was informally referred to as "Bug's bunny." The Porky Pig cartoon did all right, and so the character spent the next year or so being bounced around to different directors. Jones got two tries at the rabbit, and Hardaway one more. Finally, it was Avery's turn. The result was 1940's "A Wild Hare", where you heard Bugs (as he was now officially called) say to Elmer Fudd for the very first time, "What's up, Doc?" This cartoon was wildly successful, and soon what Mickey Mouse was to Disney, Bugs Bunny was to Warners Brothers (at the time just producer Leon Schlessinger's distributer before buying the studio outright a few years later.) If all this is not enough detail for you, I have this:
https://wwwshadowofadoubt.blogspot.com/2017/04/this-day-in-history.html
After Bug's became a star, no one director had a monopoly on him. Avery did a few more BB cartoons before moving on to MGM, and Jones, Clampett, Friz Freling, Robert McKimson and several others took turns on the character. By the dawn of the 1950s, there were just three cartoon directors left at the studio-Jones, Freling, and McKimson--and the BB cartoons were divided among them. Clampett, meanwhile, had left Warners to become an early television puppeteer (Beany and Cecil, later a cartoon series.)
Now we jump ahead to 1975. Somebody decides to do a documentary (Bugs Bunny Superstar) on the Warners Brothers cartoons of the 1930s and '40s (without asking, getting, or needing WB's permission as the studio with a great lack of foresight had sold the early cartoon library, not taking into account television was right around the corner.) Now we finally come to Robert Clampett's great transgression. When he left Warners, Clampett took a bunch of drawings of Bugs and other characters with him and would not let them be featured in the documentary unless he was given complete editorial control and was allowed to narrative the thing! Clampett got what he wanted and went before the camera and told the world that he had "created" Bugs Bunny, forever earning the ire of Chuck Jones (who may have already had a chip on his shoulder concerning Clampett going back to the 1930s.)
To be continued
Delete"...where there was enough glory to go around anyway."
If that were only true, Jim. In fact, these animators all labored in obscurity for many years. Though today he's seen as the genius of Warner Brothers cartoons, as least as far as the 1950s go, Jones may have had been at least as well known, or even more well known, in 1975 for the TV version of "A Grinch Who Stole Christmas." In Clampett's case it would have been "Beany and Cecil", which has since slipped into obscurity. So, unfortunately, yes, the glory seems to have been up for grabs. At least it seemed that way at the time.
"...audiences are not interested in behind-the-scenes infighting, they just want to be entertained."
I'm sure that's true for most of the audience, Jim, and I suspect it's true for you as well, but speaking for myself, I'm interested in the creative process (indeed, it's why I chose the quotes that I did, to shed light on Jones' thinking) and if feuding played some role in that process, I want to know about it. I put the Jones-Clampett feud in the same category as the John Lennon-Paul McCartney feud and the Jack Kirby-Stan Lee feud. I like all six feuding parties and do not hold a grudge against any of them.
P.S. I am really annoyed at the current generation of comment windows for the various blogging systems, which seem to insist on making all comments anonymous, and to avoid which fate one has to run through all sorts of hoops, although usually after the anonymous comment has passed through!
ReplyDelete--Jim
Jim, I think there some bug in the system. Every so often, I'm prohibited from using my name or avatar when replying to a comment on my own blog! I end up having to turn the computer on and off two or three times before I can get it back to normal. Fortunately, it's working all right for me today
DeleteKNOCK! KNOCK!
(Me knocking on wood.)
Yes and yes, with the latter being quite thoughtful.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, if you're going to fall 4,300 feet off a cliff, best to do it when nobody's watching.
DeleteVery perceptive!
ReplyDeleteThere's a motive to all that animated madness, Debra.
DeleteThere’s genius in those words.
ReplyDeleteAnd in those cartoons, Mitchell.
DeleteGood quotes :-D Always liked Daffy!
ReplyDeleteAnanka, of all the Warner Brothers cartoon characters, I laugh the most at Daffy. I love Bugs, but he had too much of a handle on things to be truly funny. The humor arose out of whoever crossed his path.
Delete"every one of us finds unbearable" More so the MAGAs. That's why the refuse to see the obvious.
ReplyDeleteMike, as long as America doesn't go off that cliff with them.
Delete