The War Against War Cartoons

Mrs. Besa Short has been credited with saving Tom and Jerry from being one-shot characters when she wondered when theatres in her Interstate chain would be able to show more shorts starring the cat and mouse.

The woman responsible for booking programmes for 175 movie houses in the U.S. Southwest also came to the defence of Bugs Bunny.

The Showmen’s Trade Review of July 4, 1942 published this curious squib:

“For making vicious attacks on Bugs Bunny and short subjects generally, particularly Defense Shorts,” Mrs. Walter Ferguson, syndicated columnist, was placed “in the dog house” in a recent issue of Besa Short Shorts, short subject house organ for Interstate managers down Texas way.

Mrs. Ferguson was a columnist for the Scripps-Howard service and at the time had been writing for newspapers for 12 years. There exists today in Oklahoma a journalism scholarship named for her. I have gone through months of her columns and cannot find any reference to Bugs Bunny, though she took a shot at patriotic films in 1941, including those of the Defence Department, questioning whether were effective, especially with young people.

However, I did find this column from February 26, 1942, where she sends mixed messages about another cartoon character.

Propagandist Duck
By MRS WALTER FERGUSON
USING Donald Duck for propaganda purposes was not a good idea. As a movie fan, I was disturbed to learn that Congress had objected to paying Walt Disney $80,000 for his latest short, "The New Spirit," featuring the nation's favorite feathered hero. But, as a taxpayer, I was delighted by the news.
To the ordinary man and woman $80,000 is still a sizeable sum, although the Treasury may not think so.
Mr. Disney, we are told, was commanded to make the picture so we might be inspired to fork over our income taxes more joyfully. He was promised pay for it — the pay, of course, coming from Mr. Taxpayer's pocket. The Government believes our morale can be improved by the right sort of entertainment, so the entertainment is ordered up and charged to us.
"The New Spirit," now being shown in major theaters, is neither good Donald Duck nor good propaganda, but a hodge-podge of both, which peters out into incongruity. The combination of a cartoon breathing fun and a commentator's voice breathing hate makes for an uncoordinated whole — a headache for adults and a heartache for children.
We must remember that Donald Duck is better known in younger circlet than Donald Nelson. He belongs to a fairy world where the guileless spirit always triumphs over evil, and where blundering by those who are good brings about happy endings. Alas and alack, such is not the case in the grown-up scene where so frequently Right battles futiley [sic] against Wrong.
I think our lovable Mr. Duck has been badly treated and deserves an apology. Surely ten times $80,000 could not compensate his creator for being asked to turn the gay and gallant bird into a propagandist.

She turned her focus onto cartoons, briefly, again in her column of February 15, 1944. Her claim is preposterous. She believed people would not be able to tell real from fiction if they watched a war movie then a cartoon. For years, theatres had been running cartoons and newsreels on the same programme. No one was confused. She must have thought the movie-going public was incredibly stupid. And she pulled out the tired “think of the children” boogie-man. As a kid, I watched Daffy Duck and Fred Flintstone. I also saw Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I could figure out the difference,

War Movies
By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON
A YOUNG air cadet from Newport, Ark. questions the wisdom of my criticism of grim war movies.
“If you refer to the blood-and-thunder Hollywood melodramas,” he says, “I agree.”
“However there have been excellent semi-official reels which depict battle scenes as they truly are.
“If the soldier can look upon and participate in such chaos why can’t the civilian stomach it? The people at home have failed their fighting men if they turn their faces from death and ignore their sacrifices I say more power to official movies which bring home with force the fact that men are giving their lives for freedom.”
His point is well taken, although he seems to have missed mine. What I object to about the official war picture is their presentation. They always come to us tied up with some Hollywood feature or short, which means that the audience gets a hodgepodge of the true and the false.
Duty doesn’t enter into the question. People don’t go to the movies from a sense of duty. They go to be entertained.
A poll taken recently among soldiers shows their preference for the lighter, gayer types.
The cinema is a form of escape. By this means men and women take flight from the drabness of their todays and the hopelessness of their tomorrows. Therefore I contend they are cheated when they go to a show expecting such release and are forced to sit through a program which tears them to bits inside and sends them home upset.
There should be special programs of war picture offered. Perhaps every adult should be required to see them, but the honest course is to separate the phoney from the real. As it is, audiences are asked to skip quickly from a battle to a jitterbug contest or a Looney cartoon. It results in mental confusion. In the end, the war briefs seem as unreal as the movie plot. And what about our children? They jam the movie house these days. What will be the effect of the horror pictures upon their minds and character!

Well, Mrs. Ferguson, kids who watched Bugs and Donald back then survived rather nicely. And Bugs adorned warplanes and other equipment designed to crush the Axis. Bob Clampett once remarked that Bugs was never more loved than during the war years. He was a boost to morale. He was a part of the war effort, where a columnist liked it or not.

Dad's Troublesome Tuba

The gentle Southern father has bought his son Ollie a tuba in Little Boy With a Big Horn, a 1953 UPA cartoon. He regrets it after hearing the boy’s loud practices. He tells the child it’s a nice horn, then yells “But don’t play it when I’m home!” He leaps up and down and becomes split (in outlines; it is a UPA cartoon after all). His wife has to pull him together.



Bobe Cannon loved kids in cartoons. He directed Gerald McBoing Boing. He directed this one. Gerald becomes a radio star despite his noisy handicap. In this cartoon, the noise simply has Ollie banished from his home town. He seems rather nonplussed about the whole thing as the cartoon ends with his puffing on his tuba at a music school (with no teacher in sight).

Bill Melendez, Frank Smith and Tom McDonald are the animators, with George Bruns handling the music score.

Porky the Tashlin Way

Frank Tashlin sure loved huge eyes on Porky Pig. An example from Porky’s Spring Planting (1938). He doted on close-ups for some reason, too.



Oh, and grotesque takes, too.



Joe D'Igalo gets the animation credit in this lacklustre cartoon, written by George Manuell. There are two radio jokes, a Stan Laurel joke and a Jewish joke.

Gene Rayburn's Career Wasn't a Blank

No answers about tinkling, no Old Man Periwinkle, no Brett or Charles.

You wouldn’t find those on the original version of The Match Game which debuted on Boxing Day 1962.

One thing you would find was host Gene Rayburn, asking pretty tame questions like “Name something you eat for breakfast.” (Goodson-Todman Productions got a lot of mileage out of that format. The company shifted it over to Family Feud when the second version of The Match Game was filled with double entendres and celebrities having a few nips in between tapings). Rayburn had been around NBC for a good period of time by that point and was perhaps best-known for being the announcer on Tonight with Steve Allen.

Hosting a game show was not Rayburn’s driving ambition. He wanted to sing and dance. In fact, he did. He replaced Dick Van Dyke on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie. But game shows got in the way.

Here are a couple of stories from the time of the original Match Game. First, from the Associated Press of January 31, 1964.

Panel Shows Not So Easy, Says Rayburn
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
NEW YORK (AP) — Gene Rayburn, the witty incisive young man who guides NBC's day-time "Match Game," with the gentle firmness of an English nanny, insists that participating in a panel show is not as easy as it looks.
Players and host not only must concentrate on the game but also give the session "dimensions of vitality, lightness and humor, he says.
Rayburn often turns up as a panelist on other shows.
"To Tell the Truth," he says, is the most difficult.
"People seem to think the panel has some advance information about the contestants," he said. "We don't know a single thing until the information is read off. It's a fast game in which a lot of information helps. Peggy Cass, on the panel, absolutely amazes me."
Page Boy to Star
Rayburn grew up in Chicago, got into radio by becoming an NBC page boy and moved on to announcing. In 1942 he had a radio show on a New York station, then teamed with Jack Lescoulie (now of "Today") for a comedy show and built a reputation for light-handed wit and nonsense. For the past 12 years Gene has worked as a single—announcing, hosting, sitting on panels and occasionally doing a dramatic role.
The five "Match Game" programs are taped over a period of two days a week, but Rayburn's job occupies most of his time.
"I've been a host so long, that's no problem any more," he said. "My biggest headache is trying to figure out new ways of introducing the panelists, i write out five different sets of introductions for the show's celebrities each week."
After all his experience, what is Rayburn's favorite occupation.
"I love to act," he said, almost wistfully.

This is a feature piece from the Hartford Courant, July 14, 1963. Again, he hopes for an acting career that never happened.

Beauties and Brains All in a Day Far Busy Emcee Gene Rayburn
By H. VIGGO ANDERSEN
Sunday Editor
Some guys have all the luck! Imagine having to drop everything, rush down to Miami, live in the plushest of surroundings, and spend your days and evenings with some of the most beautiful girls in the world, all of whom are trying to impress you with their beauty, poise and intelligence.
That's what's happening to Gene Rayburn all this week in preparation for the finals of the annual Miss Universe Beauty Pageant which you can look in on Saturday night, July 20, from 10:00 to 11:30 on Channels 3 and 12. Gene will be the on-stage master of ceremonies, just as he was last year.
Gene called this writer the other day from New York to talk about the pageant and his share in it. When I told him be was a lucky stiff on a very soft touch, he snorted in indignation.
"Emceeing a beauty pageant of this stature is anything but a soft touch," he disagreed. "You've no idea how much behind the scenes preparation goes into one of these affairs. We work long, long hours. Sure you meet some interesting people and most of them are beautiful. But it can get to be a grind.
Enjoyable Experience
"After a period of getting acquainted with the girls—and it goes without saying, this is highly enjoyable—we get to the business of setting up routines, finding out what we want to do and then learning to do it. This isn't as easy as you might think. | "Then we go into four nights of elimination, on stage, each a formal black tie affair for me before an audience. Now we are really underway, as the girls are judged in swim suits and evening gowns, and for poise and personality." His sympathetic sigh came over the telephone wire. "Here's where the heartbreak conies in when, one after another, girls are eliminated until only 15 have been chosen for the white-tie-and-tails event Saturday night, July 20, when the finals are broadcast over the CBS-TV network for 90 minutes, with Lord knows how many viewers looking in from all parts of the country."
Disagreed With Judges

Rayburn is by no means always in agreement with the judges of the pageant. Last year his choice for Miss Universe was Miss Republic of China.
"She had everything," he enthused, "a beautiful face, lovely figure, lots of poise, and she was one of the most gracious people I've ever met. I hated to see her lose out to Norma Nolan of Argentina. Not that Norma hasn't plenty on the ball too," he hastened to add. "She's gorgeous."
Let's hope Miss Nolan doesn't read this between now and next Saturday night. She'll be on stage with Gene and John Daly, to hand over the sceptre and crown of her office to the new Miss Universe.
But to depart from the beauty mart. After all, Rayburn's participation in this annual Miami marathon is one of the least of his claims to fame. The voice that was coming to me over the phone has been familiar to millions of radio listeners and TViewers for years. He came to New York via Chicago and Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, with the ambition to get into broadcasting and before you could say NBC he was with it—as a page! But the ambitious Gene wasn't satisfied with this. He enrolled in the network's announcing school, studied hard, and then was sent to Station WGNY, Newburgh. N.Y., where he remained for a year.
Subsequently be saw duty in Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc., until another form of duty called and he enlisted in the Air Force. After his discharge. Gene went to Station WNEW, New York, where he teamed up briefly with Jack Lescoulie, and subsequently with Dee Finch. Their program, "Rayburn and Finch," was to become one of New York City's all time popular radio shows. It lasted five years.
Switches to TV
Inevitably, of course, came the switch to television and Gene made it with the greatest of ease, his first big impact coming when be became the announcer on the Steve Allen Show. When Steve landed the "Tonight" berth, Gene went right along with him. He was in the big time now and he has stayed there ever since. Currently he is host of "Match Game" on NBC-TV, one of the highest rated daytime television programs in the country.| Concerning any and all quiz shows—and he has taken part in a good share of them—Gene feels that the amount or quantity of the prizes is not the important thing. "Putting on a good show is what really matters," he says. "For example, on 'To Tell the Truth,' the prize money, usually split three ways, was $50, no great shakes, you'll admit. Yet that show had a tremendous following."
But while his emceeing chores have brought him wealth and fame Gene likes to think of himself as an actor, and the highlight of his career, he told me, was when he replaced Dick Van Dyke in "Bye Bye Birdie" in New York. Be stayed with that smash Broadway musical for 26 weeks. "And the funny part of it is that I'm neither a singer nor a dancer, but somehow I managed to do both. How I got by I'll never know. But I'd like more of same."
With this difference, however. Next time he doesn't want to replace anyone, but create a role. He has read a play that has been offered to him but confessed he is not enthusiastic about it. "And you've got to be or it's not good," he said.
In the meantime he has plenty to keep him busy, what with the Miss Universe Pageant, "Match Game" and his 3-hour radio stint every Saturday on "Monitor." A busy, happy, successful man, Gene Rayburn is married to the former Helen Ticknor and is the father of a daughter, Lynn. They reside in New York City. As I said in the beginning, some guys have all the luck!

Considering Rayburn never accomplished a song-and-dance or dramatic career, maybe he didn’t have all the luck. But he had a fine career.

Sachmo on the Run

The head of Louis Armstrong, superimposed from live action, turns into a cartoon head, which turns into a cartoon African native chasing Koko in I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You (1932).



Bimbo bashes the native, turning him into four garbage cans that he jumps on. The chase carries on in the next scene.



Willard Bowsky and Ralph Somerville get animation credits in this Betty Boop cartoon from the Fleischer studio.

Red Hot Wolf

The curtains part and camera pulls in on the stage. It’s Red Hot Riding Hood, rolling her eyes seductively. The wolf reacts. He turns 180 degrees, then swings back around and toings into the air.



The 1943 cartoon has no credit except one for director Tex Avery, though we know the animators were Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Preston Blair.

From the Independent Film Journal of July 22, 1944 comes this indication how much the allied forces liked Red and Wolfie:

Red Hot Riding Hood” has gone to war!
At the request of Lieutenant James W. Dunlap and his crew of a B-24 bomber of the 111th Air Base Unit at Langley Field, Virginia, MGM has given permission for the title of its record-smashing cartoon to become the name of the plane. Studio has also forwarded colored likenesses of "Red” and the Wolf for mounting on the fuselage.
The Wolf is also a star in his own right, since a drawing of him now graces the sides of all the "ash cans” of T.N.T. hurled through the air by the crew of Coast Gaurd cutter #8333, who requested the Wolf as their insignia.

Guests and Gaslights

Imagine a TV show being told “You can’t parody that! We’re suing.”

It’s ridiculous. Especially when it came to one episode of the Jack Benny TV show.

Benny was a pioneer when it came to burlesques of movies. He did it regularly on radio in the ‘30s, less so as time went on. In the ‘40s, his radio show did a send-up of the film “Gaslight.” He tried to do it again with old friend Babs Stanwyck on TV in January 1952. Suddenly the author of the Gaslight story and MGM’s parent company were suing Benny, CBS and American Tobacco to stop it from airing, claiming copyright infringement. Benny’s argument was people are free to make fun of things. In fact, he’d been doing it for years.

Things were always uneasy between film producers and other media. Whenever Benny (or others) did parodies of films, the name of the movie company was always mentioned. Stars “appeared through the courtesy” of whatever studio they were working for. That’s when they appeared at all. Film studios owned them and told them if they would be permitted to appear on what they saw as competition instead of a free promotional tool.

Remarkably, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Benny in early 1958.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Here’s the New York Daily News from October 8th. There actually wasn’t a lot to say about “Gaslight,” so the Daily News’ reporter added something about landing a big-name Hollywood star, one who had appeared on his radio show.

Benny’s ‘Gaslight’ Parody May Yet Hit TV Screens
By MATT MESSINA
It’s been a long time coming, but Jack Benny’s TV parody of the 1944 MGM movie, “Gaslight,” may yet flicker into life on one of his upcoming laugh sessions. He is now negotiating with the company for a go-ahead signal, Benny told us.
The CBS star originally planned to screen the video burlesque in 1953 [sic]. MGM went to court and the hassle finally wound up in the Supreme Court earlier this year, where the comedian lost out to a four-four tie no decision (one Justice was absent). So a lower court ruling banning the skit remained in effect.
Oh, putting it on the air or not isn't going to change my life,” Benny said, "but the skit is prepared and it's funny — very funny."
In fact, Benny's Sept. 21 season opener included an amusing takeoff on Westerns, in which guest star Gary Cooper was featured.
How He Got Cooper
How did he snare Cooper, who has been as elusive as a good rating for most TV impresarios?
"That goes back a couple of years," Benny related. "Gary, an old friend of mine, wanted to appear in a live TV show and he said he would do it with me. I thought of a good idea, but when my writers and I started to work on it, we saw it wasn’t right for Gary. So I called him and said: ‘I'm not going to let you do this show—it's not right for you.’
"I've never asked a star to come on unless I have a good idea for him. Not only does he suffer, I suffer. Anyway, getting back to Gary, before the season started, I thought of something that was good for him, and he came on. Now, I can get him any time I want to." And Cooper may be back with Benny before the summer rolls around—"If I get a great idea for him."
Cooper, according to Benny, was very happy over the results. “A couple of days after his appearance, I saw Gary and he told me: ‘Jack, I've been in pictures all my life, but I never got the reaction I did with your show.’ I said: ‘Why not? More people saw you in one night on TV than see your big hit pictures ever.’” And that, kiddies, is why they call it a mass medium.

Hollywood’s attempts to play power moves against television were failing. Benny got to air his old film of “Gaslight.” But it may have been a case of the film industry, after corporate upheavals in some cases, realised a fight was stupid and there was money to be made in television. Warner Bros. and Columbia (through Screen Gems), in particular, produced all kinds of shows starting in the late ‘50s.

Read more about the “Gaslight” show here.

The Musical Musings of Michael Maltese

It is only appropriate that cartoon series which began their existence to plug Warner Bros.-owned songs should employ writers who showed abilities as lyricists.

Such was Mike Maltese, scribe of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes.

Someone like Greg Ehrbar or Daniel Goldmark will know exactly how this works, if they would care to comment. Maltese’s lyrics (ie. lines sung by characters in the cartoons he wrote) would be published by a Warners’-owned company, which collects royalties for whenever the song is used. Whether the Maltese estate receives any money now, I don’t know, but I suspect it’s treated as a work-for-hire, meaning he was paid a flat fee at the time of composition and that’s it.

Michael A. Maltese is listed in the ASCAP database as having composed the following; some of the titles are duplicates or a little vague:

A Hound For Trouble
At’sa Matter For You
Bugs Bunny Cues
Bugs Bunny Show Cues
Bugs Bunny Thanksgiving Diet
Bugs Bunny Valentine Cues
Bugs Bunny’s Third Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales
Bugs Bunny’s 3rd Movie 1001 Rabbit Tales
Calypso Bunny
Daffy Cues
Daffy Duck’s Thanks For Giving Cues
Daffy Duck’s Rhapsody (with Warren Foster and Billy May)
Dog Gone South
Eight Ball Bunny Cues
Flower of Gower Gulch
Great American Chase Cues
How Bugs Bunny Won the West
I’m Glad That I’m Bugs Bunny (with Warren Foster and Billy May)
Kids WB Big Cartoonie Show Cues
Lazy Will
Little Beau Pepe Cues
Merrie Melodies Cues
(Michigan Rag, Return My Love)
Merrie Melodies Cues
(Gal From the Wild Prairie with Milt Franklyn)
Merrie Melodies Cues
(At’sa Matter For You, Southern Comfort)
Michigan Rag
One Froggie Evening Cues
Past Perfumance Cues
Porky Pig Cues
Rabbit Hood Cues
Ragtime Jazz (WB Network Promo) (with Hummie Mann)
Regimente
Return My Love
Ride of the Valkyries (with Patrick Cameron Nicholas)
Tannhauser (with Patrick Cameron Nicholas and John Eric Schmidt)
We Had No Place to Go

Two of these, “I’m Glad That I’m Bugs Bunny” and “Daffy Duck’s Rhapsody” are from Capitol records, not Warners cartoons.

Something like “Rabbit Hood Cues” might be confusing but, remember, any time a song is sung that Maltese wrote, he is credited with the lyrics, unless they’re the actual lyrics from a real song. In “Rabbit Hood Cues” case, the sheriff sings a goofy version of “London Bridge is Falling Down.” Maltese gets credit. The same as if he messes with original lyrics, such as when Bugs Bunny sang “Oh carrots are divine, you get a dozen for a dime, it’s magic!” (Rabbit Every Monday, 1951), though, to be honest, I don’t see this in the list. And it’s one of my favourites. (“They fry, a song begins, they roast and I hear violins, it’s magic!” Take that, Doris Day!).

Maltese had a wonderful ear for silly dialogue which he displayed in his cartoons at Warners and Hanna-Barbera.

A Hound For Trouble (released 1951) starred Charlie Dog who, toward the end, put on stereotypical Italian garb and sang the immortal “At’sa Matter For You.” Maltese even supplies a couple of voices in the cartoon.

At’sa matta, at’sa matta, hey!
At’sa matta for you?
You eat-a ma raviola
And ma pastafazoola, too.
I’m-a give-a cacciatori
And a pizza that’s good to chew.
At’sa matta, you no like me? Hey!
At’sa matta for you?

“Calypso Bunny” comes from 8 Ball Bunny (released 1950). It gets interrupted by Dave Barry as Humphrey Bogart from The Treasure of Sierra Madre. You know the cartoon. It’s where Bugs takes a penguin home to Antarctica, but the penguin is really from New Jersey. They stop on a Caribbean Island.

Bugs Bunny came to Martinique.
When he arrived he was pretty weak.
His knees looked like they would buckle in
His tribulations caused by a penguin.

Now he’s built a boat on which they both can leave.
They hope that fickle fate have nothing up her sleeve.
If he should accomplish this daring thing.
A miracle to Martinque Bugs did bring.


Past Perfumance (released 1955) featured Pepe Le Pew on a film set in Paris. He gets out four lines of “We Had No Place to Go” before the scene changes.

We had no place to go
So I took her to a show.
I don’t know what was on the screen
‘Cause I loved her on the mezzanine.

“Regimente” is heard in Little Beau Pepe (released 1952). Unfortunate, it’s a chorus of Mel Blancs in phoney French and the some of the lyrics are indecipherable to my tired old ears.

Le regimente aux ...ente
Of Foreign Legionaire.
L’avec ....aree, for Gai Paris
Oui, oui, le tout le guerre.

We get another little tune from the skunk on a mandolin that sounds like a guitar, music from “Vision of Salome” by Jens B. Lampe with lyrics by Maltese:

Sweet ‘eart, Pepe Le Pew loves you.
Sweet ‘eart, fortunate, lucky you.
Sweet ‘eart, wake up and you will find,
Pepe, he’s got you on his mind.

“Dog Gone South” (from the cartoon of the same name, released 1950) has the Southern colonel strumming his banjo and singing away. Charlie Dog talks over the line about the mint juleps and interrupts the song so we don’t get the full appreciation of Maltese’s songsmithing.

Oh, boll my weevil and corn my pone
You’ll never be lonely because you’re never alone.
When you’re way down South
I said “Way down South.”
....mint juleps
In the warm summer sun where the gals have tulips.
(song interrupted)

I won’t bother with the lyrics from What’s Opera, Doc and One Froggy Evening because I’m sure they’re elsewhere on the internet. But let’s give you “The Flower of Gower Gulch,” heard over the opening credits of Drip Along Daffy (released 1951). Maltese loved Western clichés; he made a whole series starring Quick Draw McGraw out of them at Hanna-Barbera.

She’s the flower of Gower Gulch.
A cowpuncher’s sweetheart true.
And her looks don’t amount to much
Because one of her eyes is blue.
She’s got skin just like prairie dog leather.
She cooks nothing but chuckwagon stew.
And her name is Minerva Ouch.
She’s the flower of Gower Gulch.

Gower Gulch was the corner of Gower and Sunset, originally the home to the Nestor Company in 1911, the first studio built in Hollywood for movie production. Cowboy extras would hang out there waiting for work, hence the name.

Maltese left Warners for Hanna-Barbera in November 1958. Characters in his cartoons there sang, too, such as the rock and roll rocking chair song in El Kabong, Jr. In El Kabong Was Wrong, Maltese penned these punny lyrics:

I’ll never forget the day I fell for Cactus Nell.
Sitting on a thumb tack made me tall in the saddle.
Oh, I won’t be at the roundup, Nelly, because I’m such a square.

There’s no ASCAP or BMI composer credit for Maltese for these cartoons, though. Hanna and Barbera grabbed a lot of song credits. I don’t think Barbera composed anything but he co-owned the company so he’s part of the studio’s music publishers and got a cut.

You could do no better almost any day than watch a bunch of cartoons he wrote and maybe sing along with them. It’s magic!

Bully For Bullets

Chuck Jones is the master of subtle expression at Warner Bros.

There are all kinds of examples, but here are some in Bully For Bugs. The bull gets Bugs’ rifle attached to his tail and when he pounds it on the ground, bullets come out of his horns. He thinks. He looks. He realises.



He chases Bugs and shoots at him until he runs out of bullets. No problem. He chows down on Acme Elephant Bullets (Explosive Heads). He gets ready to shoot again. But Jones and writer Mike Maltese have other ideas. Jones waits just long enough before he caps things with the horns drooping to a slide whistle.



The animators are Ken Harris, Ben Washam and Lloyd Vaughn. The short was released on August 8, 1953. The initial story work was done and the first jam session run-through was on September 5, 1951.