The (Cartoon) Sky is Falling!

On July 23, 1962, after being on an unpaid leave of absence for several weeks, Chuck Jones signed an agreement ending his career at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio.

If you were wondering where Jones was part of that time, wonder no longer.

Jones took a trip all the way across the country to Cape Cod. Who Jones knew there, if anyone, I don’t know. But I do know he somehow ended up being interviewed by the Boston Globe.

Jones may have been the most quoted director in Warner Bros. cartoon history. He wrote two books, a third was published featuring conversations with him and he was interviewed (quite willingly) by animation historians when that particular breed started surfacing in the late 1960s. Jones also outlived all the other major Warners directors, passing away in 2002.

This Globe piece may be the earliest one-on-one interview he gave. It was published July 14, 1962. The reference to Tom and Jerry is interesting in light of his being hired in August 1963 to direct new Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM release. The last sentence of the story no doubt is one of Jones’ philosophical musings which the writer didn’t have the space or inclination to examine further. Jones, however, completely misses the reason for the demise of the theatrical cartoon, one Walter Lantz had been pointing out since the 1940s—money. Producers didn’t get make a profit on any cartoons for several years because theatres didn’t make any money showing them, and didn’t need to show them anyway.

Bugs Bunny’s Grandpa Fears Cartoons’ Death
By FRANK FALACCI
Even the faint possibility that quality cartoons might be faced with oblivion leaves you pale and shaking, as if you heard that someone was going to tear down the flag and step on it.
Cartoons are a part of America, like crackerjacks, ball games, home and family. Bugs Bunny is Uncle Sam’s nephew and the Roadrunner and Coyotte [sic] are like the neighbors. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are like . . . well if they go it’s like burying real people.
For Charles M. (Chuck) Jones, vacationing in Cotuit, it would be especially painful. He’s the creator of such characters as Pepe Le Pew, the romantic skunk; Roadrunner and the Coyote and has developed familiar fellows like Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam and Porky Pig. Bugs, by the way, is 24 years old. It was Jones who ventured the idea that the classic cartoons as we know them now may someday disappear. He is concerned with the current vacuum of new cartoonists.

“There are no good, young animators getting into the business,” Jones said. “I doubt if there are a hundred animators in the country today.
“When Walt Disney first started, there were dozens of young cartoonists, me included, eager to start off too. Of course Disney was the first to succeed and then, one by one we followed along to our varying degrees of success.
“But what happens when there is no longer any Disney nor the other animators who came along with him if there is no new blood to replace them?
“Tom and Jerry are already gone. Who can forget the hit and go of Tom the Cat and Jerry the Mouse?”
Here Jones introduced a second threat to theater cartoons—television. It seems the creators of Tom and Jerry and other first-class animators have decided to forsake the painstaking art of animated cartoons for the easier, simpler Tv funnies.
For instance, by taking short cuts you can turn out 150 times more TV cartoon work than you can the theater type, where there is more depth, more motion, expression and far more action.
Of course, TV Networks also show many re-runs of the dated animated theater cartoons. The better known TV-born characters include the Flintstones, Quick Draw McGraw, Deputy Dawg, Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Mr. Peabody.
“I hope,” Jones added, “that as television matures it will create a bigger demand for the theater animated cartoon. Once it does, I’m sure there will be numerous young fellows jumping into the field.”
Jones jumped into the profession 30 years ago with Warner Bros. as an in-betweener (the beginner who draws in between movements of cartoons characters while the chief cartoonist draws the main action).
He later became a top-flight animator and today produces, writes and directs his own cartoons. His wife, Dorothy, helps in the writing department.
Ten of Chuck’s cartoons have been nominated for Academy Awards, and he has won two Oscars. He worked with Friz Freleng in developing Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and others. He is presently doing a full-length feature, “Gay Purr-ee,” about French cats.
When we left, Bugs Bunny wasn’t a rabbit, he was a little boy who likes carrots!