Looney Tunes is an American media franchise owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment. The franchise began as a series of animated short films that originally ran from 1930 to 1969, alongside its spin-off series Merrie Melodies, produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons during the golden age of American animation."Looney Tunes". www.bcdb.com, April 12, 2012 Following a revival in the late 1970s, new movies were released theatrically recently like Coyote vs. Acme. The two series introduced a large cast of characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig. The term Looney Tunes has since been expanded to also refer to the characters themselves.
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were initially produced by Leon Schlesinger and animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising from 1930 to 1933. Schlesinger assumed full production from 1933 until he sold his studio to Warner Bros. Pictures in 1944, after which it was renamed Warner Bros. Cartoons. The Looney Tunes title was inspired by that of Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies. The shorts initially showcased musical compositions owned by Warner's music publishing interests through the adventures of such characters as Bosko, Foxy and Buddy. However, the shorts gained a higher profile upon the debuts of directors Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, and Robert McKimson, and voice actor Mel Blanc later in the decade. Porky Pig and Daffy Duck became the featured Looney Tunes characters, while Merrie Melodies featured one-shot cartoons and minor recurring characters.
After Bugs Bunny became popular in the Merrie Melodies shorts of the early 1940s, Looney Tunes moved from black-and-white to color production between 1942 and 1943 (Merrie Melodies having already been in color since 1934). The two series gradually lost their distinctions, and shorts were assigned to each series arbitrarily. From 1942 to 1964, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were the most popular animated shorts in movie theaters.
Looney Tunes has become one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time, spawning several television series, feature films, comic books, music albums, video games, and amusement park rides. Many of the characters have made and continue to make cameo appearances in television shows, films, and other media. Bugs Bunny, in particular, is regarded as a cultural icon as well as the mascot of Warner Bros., and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Many Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies films are ranked among the greatest animated cartoons of all time, and five of them have won Academy Awards. In 2013, TV Guide counted Looney Tunes as the third greatest television cartoon series of all time, behind The Simpsons and The Flintstones, the latter of which also featured the voice talents of Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet.
History
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were so named as a reference to Disney's Silly Symphonies and were initially developed to showcase tracks from Warner Bros.' extensive music library; the title of the first Looney Tunes short, Sinkin' in the Bathtub (1930), is a pun on Singin' in the Bathtub. Between 1934 and 1943, Merrie Melodies were produced in color and Looney Tunes in black-and-white. After 1943, both series were produced in color and became virtually indistinguishable, varying only in their opening theme music and titles. Both series made use of the various Warner Bros. characters. By 1937, the theme music for Looney Tunes was "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin, and the theme music for Merrie Melodies was an adaptation of "Merrily We Roll Along" by Charles Tobias, Murray Mencher and Eddie Cantor.
1930–1933: Harman and Ising era In 1929, to compete against Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies, Warner Bros. became interested in developing a series of animated shorts to promote their music. They had recently acquired Brunswick Records along with four music publishers for US$28 million (equivalent to $ million in ) and were eager to promote this material for the sales of sheet music and phonograph records. Warner made a deal with Leon Schlesinger to produce cartoons for them. Schlesinger hired Rudolf Ising and Hugh Harman to produce a series of cartoons, impressed by their 1929 pilot film, later dubbed "Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid". The first Looney Tunes short was Sinkin' in the Bathtub starring Bosko, which was released in 1930.
1933–1936: Leon Schlesinger Productions When Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. in 1933 over a budget dispute with Schlesinger, they took with them all the rights of the characters they had created. A new character called Buddy became the only star of the Looney Tunes series for a couple of years but quickly became unpopular. Buddy was usually accompanied in his films by his flapper girlfriend, Cookie, and his dog, Towser. The character would go on to star in 23 short films from 1933 to 1935. Buddy is widely considered to be the worst character in the Looney Tunes franchise. In That's All, Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation, Steve Schneider describes Buddy as "a creature of limitless blandness," and calls Buddy's Day Out "a nondescript adventure spree." Schneider says that "probably the best of the run is his farewell film, Buddy the Gee Man", but "about the most that can be said for Buddy is that he is distinctly forgettable."
New directors including Tex Avery, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett were brought in or promoted to work with animators in the Schlesinger studio, with Avery's unit housed in a bungalow which the animators dubbed "Termite Terrace". In 1935, Porky Pig, the first major Looney Tunes star, made his debut in the Merrie Melodies cartoon I Haven't Got a Hat, directed by Friz Freleng, featuring an ensemble of characters headed by Beans the Cat. However, after Avery's Looney Tune debut Gold Diggers of '49 it was Porky who emerged as the star instead of Beans. The ensemble characters of I Haven't Got a Hat, such as Oliver Owl and the twin dogs Ham and Ex, were quickly dropped. Beans and his girlfriend would be phased out as well by mid-1936, leaving Porky as the only star of the Schlesinger studio.
1936–1944: More star characters and switch to color The debuts of other Looney Tunes stars soon followed: Daffy Duck in Porky's Duck Hunt (1937), Elmer Fudd in the Merrie Melodies short Elmer's Candid Camera (1940), Bugs Bunny in the Merrie Melodies short A Wild Hare (1940), and Tweety in the Merrie Melodies short A Tale of Two Kitties (1942).
Bugs initially starred in the color Merrie Melodies shorts following the success of 1940's A Wild Hare and formally joined the Looney Tunes series with the release of Buckaroo Bugs in 1944.
Schlesinger began to phase in the production of color Looney Tunes with the 1942 cartoon The Hep Cat. The final black-and-white Looney Tunes short was Puss n' Booty in 1943, directed by Frank Tashlin. The inspiration for the changeover was Warner's decision to re-release only the color cartoons in the Blue Ribbon Classics series of Merrie Melodies. A brief cameo at the end of Tashlin's 1943 cartoon Porky Pig's Feat would be Bugs' only official appearance in a black-and-white Looney Tunes short.
Schlesinger sold the cartoon studio in 1944 to Warner Bros. and went into retirement; he died five years later.
1944–1964: The Golden era More popular Looney Tunes characters were created (most of which first appeared in Merrie Melodies cartoons), such as Pepé Le Pew (debuted in 1945's Odor-able Kitty), Sylvester (debuted in 1945's Life with Feathers), Yosemite Sam (debuted in 1945's Hare Trigger), Foghorn Leghorn (debuted in 1946's Walky Talky Hawky), Marvin the Martian (debuted in 1948's Haredevil Hare), Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (debuted in 1949's Fast and Furry-ous), Granny (debuted in 1950's Canary Row), Speedy Gonzales (debuted in 1953's Cat Tails for Two), the Tasmanian Devil (debuted in 1954's Devil May Hare), and Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog (debuted in 1953's Don't Give Up the Sheep).
It was during this era that the series won five Academy Awards: Tweetie Pie (1947) For Scent-imental Reasons (1949) Speedy Gonzales (1955) Birds Anonymous (1957) Knighty Knight Bugs (1958)
1964–1969: DePatie–Freleng and Seven Arts era During the mid-late 1960s, the shorts were produced by DePatie–Freleng Enterprises (and Format Productions) (1964–1967) and Warner Bros.-Seven Arts (1967–1969) after Warner Bros. shut down their animation studio. The shorts from this era can be identified by their different title sequence, featuring stylized limited animation and graphics on a black background and a new arrangement, by William Lava, of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" which had first been used in the 1963 experimental short Now Hear This directed by Chuck Jones.
In 1967, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts commissioned an animation studio in South Korea to redraw 79 black-and-white Looney Tunes cartoons produced from 1935 to 1943 in color which were syndicated to TV stations from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.
The original Looney Tunes theatrical series ran from 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub to 1969's Injun Trouble by Robert McKimson.
A Cool Cat cartoon called Stage Cat was planned, about Cool Cat being in a stage production, but it was cancelled when Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Animation shut down.
1970–1999: Syndication and return to television and film
The Looney Tunes series' popularity was further strengthened when it began airing on network and syndicated television in the 1950s under various titles and formats. The Looney Tunes shorts were broadcast with edits to remove scenes of violence (particularly suicidal gags and scenes of characters performing dangerous stunts that impressionable viewers could easily imitate), stereotypes, and alcohol consumption.
Production of theatrical animated shorts was dormant from 1969 until 1979, when new shorts were made to introduce the Looney Tunes to a new generation of audiences. New shorts have been produced and released sporadically for theaters since then, though usually as promotional tie-ins with various family movies produced by Warner Bros. While many have been released in limited releases theatrically for Academy Award consideration, only a few have gained theatrical releases with movies.
In the 1970s through the early 1990s, several feature-film compilations and television specials were produced, mostly centering on Bugs Bunny and/or Daffy Duck, with a mixture of new and old footage. These releases include The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (1979), The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie (1981), Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales (1982), Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island (1983), and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters (1988).
In 1976, the Looney Tunes characters made their way into the amusement park business when they became the mascots for Marriott's two Great America theme parks in Gurnee, Illinois, and Santa Clara, California. After the Gurnee park was sold to Six Flags in 1984, they also claimed the rights to use the characters at the other Six Flags parks, which continues to the present. (Warner Bros. parent company Time Warner would own the Six Flags chain in whole or part for most of the 1990s.)
Between 1985 and 1992, AMC Theatres showed selected late 1950s/early 1960s-era Warner Bros. cartoons before several films, most of them comedies and family-oriented movies.
In 1988, several Looney Tunes characters appeared in cameo roles in the Disney film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The more significant cameos featured Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety, and Yosemite Sam. It is the only time in which Looney Tunes characters have shared screen time with their rivals at Disney (producers of the film)—particularly in the scenes where Bugs and Mickey Mouse are skydiving, and when Daffy and Donald Duck are performing their "Dueling Pianos" sequence.