I Created a Wabbit

The man in the photo to your right is the creator of Bugs Bunny.

Well, he said he was.

This may confuse you because the man doesn’t look like Tex Avery. Nor Bugs Hardaway. Nor Bob Givens. Nor even Mel Blanc. In fact, he wasn’t even employed by the Leon Schlesinger studio when it made A Wild Hare in 1940.

The person you see in the 1924 Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News photo of “socially prominent young people” taking part in a play is Tedd Pierce.

Yes, Pierce once claimed to create Bugs Bunny. And Porky Pig.

It’s a shame a proper biography of Pierce hasn’t been written as he seems to be the most interesting of the three main writers of Warner Bros. cartoons after the end of World War Two. Chuck Jones, who worked directly with the one-time writing team of Pierce and Mike Maltese, described him in “Chuck Amuck” as “Mickey Rooney in Ronald Colman’s body” and “C. Aubrey Smith at twenty-two playing the role of the world’s foremost authority on the dry martini.”

Alcohol played a part in Pierce’s life. Writer Lloyd Turner said his hangout was Brittingham’s, a restaurant/lounge at Columbia Square, part of the CBS/KNX complex on Sunset and Gower. Pierce was informally monikered “The Duke of Brittingham,” a title referenced in Rabbit Hood, a Jones-directed cartoon written by Maltese. Jones recalled how Pierce, having consumed a considerable volume from a jar of homemade martinis, went into his brother’s house at Laguna Beach, grabbed the urn containing his mother’s ashes, and attempted to discharge them into the nearby Pacific Ocean, only to have the wind blow them back into his face.

While a story in Michael Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons speaks of a rift between Pierce and Maltese, Jerry Eisenberg recalled to me the two put on noon-hour shows for the amusement of the staff when he was a young assistant animator at the studio in the ‘50s. Bill Scott told Jim Korkis, related in Animato, Summer 1990, “You couldn’t get two funnier people going through a storyboard than Maltese and Pierce. Pierce was a very good-looking man. He really had a patrician look to him when he wasn’t bruised—he used to get in a lot of fights off the lot for a variety of reasons. On Mondays he would sometimes show up like death warmed over, or he wouldn’t show up at all. He had a fine New England accent, and he was a tremendous guy, a very funny fellow.”

Pierce’s departure from Warners in the late ‘50s has never, to the best of my knowledge, ever been addressed in any of the many books dealing with the studio. Much like one can assume bar fights and absences detailed by Scott were triggered by alcohol, it’s safe to assume the same thing ended his career at Warners.

However, let’s get back to his claim about Bugs Bunny. It appeared in a story in the South Gate Daily Press-Tribune plugging Pierce’s appearance at a drive-in. This is from April 6, 1951. Whoever wrote the story, in their effort to gush about popular characters, seems to have forgotten about Mickey Mouse, let alone the silent Felix the Cat.

Warner Bros Top Cartoonist to be at Gage Drive-In
The man behind the animal will tell all interested parties about some of his famous proteges Sunday night at Gage Drive-In Theater. Animals, in this case, being Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Tweedy Pie [sic], world's most illustrious rabbit, pig, and canary, respectively.
And the man in this case is Ted Pierce, top story man for Warner Brothers cartoons. Pierce, with the late Leon Schlesinger, created Porky, Hollywood’s most successful pig, and first cartoon character to come through with nationwide appeal.
Pierce also scripted full-length feature cartoons “Gulliver’s' Travels" and “Mr. Bugs Goes to Town," and did a voice in both. His Tweedy Pie won an Academy award in 1948, first bird to be so honoured, and Bugs Bunny, perhaps his greatest creation, has ranked first among motion picture exhibitors for the last seven years.
Howard Nagel, manager of the Gage, has billed three of Pierce’s most popular cartoons with regular bill of "Tomahawk" and "Under the Gun."

Pierce was born at Quogue, Long Island, New York on August 12, 1906. His father, Samuel Cupples Pierce, was a broker on the New York Stock Exchange. It appears his family had lived in California, as his sister Barbera was born there a year earlier, and we find the Pierces living in Pasadena in 1910.

One has to be cautious about biographical research; too often, assumptions are made when there is more than one person with the same name in the same location. But we do know Pierce wrote what passed for humorous stories in the Illustrated Daily News in 1925, accompanied by some of his little drawings, after graduation from Pasadena Polytechnic and Taft School in Connecticut (Warner Club News, Dec. 1944).

Pierce married in 1928, the same year his father died. The 1930 Census puts him in San Francisco, where he was employed as a commercial artist. An article in the Helena Independent of that year reports Pierce was hired to paint murals inside the newly-constructed, 28-storey William Taylor Hotel at Leavenworth and McAllister Streets, including one with a Joan of Arc motif. He was also in the gumball machine business, according to a Warner Club News squib. He was soon back in southern California, living in an art colony at Laguna Beach, where a newspaper report in Aug. 1932 revealed he won a huge copper bowl at a costume contest, where he dressed up at an Olympic athlete, complete with fake muscles.

By then, wanderlust had overtaken Pierce, and he pulled up the family and moved to Papeete in Tahiti. Pierce wrote about his life there in a feature story in the Los Angeles Times of April 23, 1933, but on October 10th, he was back in California. It was then Pierce was hired as a writer at the Leon Schlesinger studio (from the Warner Club News, as above) and became head of the story department after Tom Armstrong left in the mid-30s.

Pierce had appeared in amateur plays in the 1920s, and he put his acting talents to use at the Schlesinger studio. Keith Scott’s two-volume set on voice actors in the Golden Age of Cartoons reveals Pierce’s first role was as the egg-laying coach in Along Flirtation Walk (1934). He did imitations of radio characters, including Elmer Blurt and Tizzie Lish (sounding more like Lish in the early 1950s than the 1930s). He was quite accomplished imitating Bud Abbott in A Tale of Two Kitties (1942). He appeared on camera, too. A superimposed silhouette of Pierce enacted a prolonged death scene in Daffy Duck and Egghead (1937) after being shot by a character on-screen.

While at Schlesinger in his first tour of duty, he became president of the local animation union in 1936. Tom Sito’s Drawing the Line said it met in secret, sometimes in cellars.

In 1939, Pierce jumped his contract to get a job with the Fleischer studio in Miami. He wrote stories and voiced characters. And, as Len Higgins reported in his syndicated column of March 15, 1941:

We don't know whether Ted Pierce, artist and writer at Fleischer Studio in Miami, Fla., ought to be ashamed of himself or not.
A month ago he broke his left leg, but bad, when he slipped in the bathtub. For a month he lay In a hospital bed, each day having to answer sympathetic questioners concerning the state of his health. He grew thoroughly weary not only of the questions, but of his busted extremity.
Then he came back to work at the studio on, of all things, "Superman,” the "Man of Steel," who can bust a battleship with one blow of his fist. He forgot all about his crutches and almost about his injury— until the 400-odd employes of the cartoon plant began questioning him about his poor, poor leg.
Disgusted, he became diabolic. He got a piece of flesh colored paper, drew a horrific realistic replica of his wound in color, pasted it over the plaster paris cast on his leg.
To each questioner thereafter he merely pulled up his trouser, pointed to his illustration. Nobody in the studio even talks to Artist Pierce; they never invite him to lunch either.

Pierce returned to Schlesinger’s in June 1941, at the behest of Jones, who credited him with being “good at structure, and it was a humorous structure—but it wasn’t gags.” Still, Pierce worked on the first Pepé Le Pew cartoon, and Jones wrote it was pretty much impossible for Pepé to have been created without Pierce around. Chuck Amuck reveals Pierce’s enthusiasm for the opposite sex—he remarried in 1946—but he was living on his own in an apartment by 1950. By now, Pierce had added a second 'd' to his first name; Jones observed it had been done in response to puppeteer Bil Baird dropping a second 'l' in his first name.

Jones and Friz Freleng shared Pierce and Maltese until a shuffling left Pierce with Freleng, his first solo cartoon was Hare Splitter (Production 1059), released in Sept. 1948. Another shuffle saw Pierce dumped into the Bob McKimson unit, starting with Hillbilly Hare (Production 1130), released Aug. 1950. McKimson unhappily described the change as a political move by Freleng, and once denigrated his unit for being full of “drunks and queers”; Pierce could certainly be described as the former. He was involved in a serious car crash; the Warner Club News of April 1952 said he required 22 stitches.

With the McKimson unit being disbanded in early 1953 (several months before a shutdown of the cartoon studio), Pierce landed at UPA, returning after the studio re-opened in 1954 to work with Jones (until Mike Maltese returned from the Lantz studio) and McKimson. His last Warners short was Jones’ The Abominal Snow Rabbit (Production 1551), released in May 1961. Dave Detiege replaced him.

Without going into a list, Pierce’s name shows up as a writer, with Bill Danch, on The Alvin Show in 1961. The two of them freelanced for Walter Lantz in the 1961-62 theatrical season. I once asked Jerry Eisenberg if Pierce had ever been considered for work at Hanna-Barbera, especially as the studio was looking for writers in the 1960s. He didn’t think so and didn’t understand why.

Cartoon characters were perfect fodder for children’s records, and Pierce penned lyrics for some at Capitol Records, including “The Woody Woodpecker Polka” (1951), “Bugs Bunny and the Pirate” and “Chin Chow and the Golden Bird” (both 1954, all with Warren Foster). He also co-wrote “We Were Meant For We” with Scotty Harrell in 1947.

Pierce died in Los Angeles on February 19, 1972.