Good Girls and Wicked Witches. Amy M. Davis
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which proved to be the major forces moving these two groups of cartoons toward the cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s which are now regarded as more typical of the Warner Brothers’ style of cartoons.
Where Avery differed from other animators of his day was that he never seemed even remotely interested in copying the Disney studio’s illusion of realism in its animation. For Avery, the quality of the gag was far more important than the technical quality of the animation.102 This attitude differed markedly from that of Chuck Jones, who became a director at Warner Brothers’ animation department in 1938 and very quickly began to guide the Merrie Melodies through their next major stage of transformation, into a more sophisticated graphic style.
Chuck Jones was one of the few animators working for Leon Schlesinger who had received any formal art education, having studied for a time as a scholarship student at the Chouinard Art Institute (with which the Disney studio was closely affiliated; it would eventually grow to become the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts). His fine art training, along with his admiration for the Disney style of animation, are readily apparent in his early Merrie Melodies, which posses a much more studied, realistic quality to their animation than do Tex Avery’s rough, undetailed drawings. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, however, neither Avery’s nor Jones’ cartoons showed much of the character development – even in their re-occurring characters – which was such a Disney hallmark. As Barrier points out, Jones’ characters, such as Conrad the Cat (who often invited comparisons to Disney’s character Goofy), had “only mannerisms…, and not personality”.103 Still, it was under Jones’ direction (and Freleng’s, after he returned to Warner Brothers from MGM in 1939) that more of the memorable characters who are now associated with Warner Brothers cartoons began not only to emerge, but take shape into what eventually became their own personalities. Elmer Fudd, for example, who started out as a nameless character in several Avery cartoons, under Jones’s direction evolved into a character with a name, identifiable mannerisms such as, in Elmer’s case, his speech impediment of turning the “L” and “R” sounds into “W’s”, as in one of his catch phrases, “that waskawy wabbit!” (“that rascally rabbit!”). Another character who first appeared in an earlier cartoon under another director but who took shape under Jones’s and Avery’s direction was the above-mentioned “waskawy wabbit”, Bugs Bunny. Starting as an insane, trouble-making rabbit, becoming a country bumpkin, and finally evolving into a cool, collected city-slicker whose adversaries were no match for him, Bugs Bunny was a major innovation amongst animated characters in that, rather than the zany, over-the-top antics which were characteristic of most cartoon characters, he tended to be more understated, and was one of the few early characters who seemed not just to react to situations, but to think them through. The personality which emerged in Bugs Bunny was strong enough, in fact, that after Avery’s departure from Warner Brothers in 1941, Bugs continued largely unchanged in Warner Brothers cartoons, and it was Bugs Bunny’s success as a character which helped to insure that the Warner Brothers’ animation department would remain in successful competition with the Disney studio. In Film Daily’s lists of which Warner Brothers films were being released each year, in fact, the number of “Bugs Bunny Specials” is listed separately from the number of “Technicolor Cartoons”. Perhaps, however, their key to competing successfully against Disney was that, rather than try to beat Disney at his own game, the animators under Schlesinger instead sought to find – and fill – their own niche in the cartoon industry, creating cartoons and characters who, whilst strong and memorable, were also as easily identifiable as being from Warner Brothers in terms of style and personality as characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were as examples of the Disney style.
Conclusion
This chapter has endeavoured to provide a general overview of animation history and technique, in order to make later discussions, which focus on Walt Disney, his studio, and its creations, more comprehensible. It is by no means a definitive account of the Fleischers’ studio at Paramount nor Leon Schlesinger’s studio at Warner Brothers. Nor is it meant to imply, stopping as it does in the 1940s, that the history of animation outside of things Disney ended at that time. Indeed, the field of animation – as well as its output – continues to be at least as vibrant as it was in the first half of the twentieth century. While the difference between these two periods is that animation, apart from full-length animated features, has moved away from the cinema and found a home in the arena of television, what continues unabated is the development of new characters, new techniques, new series of cartoons, and new concepts in the field. By the 1960s, Hanna-Barbara had brought about the concept of the cartoon show as television sit-com, a form which continues to this day in such network television series as The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and South Park. For decades, the cartoons of Warner Brothers featuring Bugs, Daffy, Elmer Fudd, Sylverster and Tweety, Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, and others continued to appear on the Saturday or Sunday morning US network television line-ups aimed at children. Though Warner Brothers cartoons are no longer featured on many network/terrestrial television stations, cartoons continue to reign supreme in the Saturday morning line-up. Since the 1990s, most cable television systems in the United States carry the channel Cartoon Network (not to mention Boomerang and Toonami), which shows not only the products of new cartoon studios (including such hit series as The Powerpuff Girls), but also attests to the continuing popularity of the cartoons of the early days of animation, highlighting in particular the cartoons of Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, Universal, King Features, and others. The only cartoons not shown on these animation-centred networks, in fact, are Disney cartoons. They, however, have their own channels, amongst them The Disney Channel and Toon Disney. If there is one thing that has not changed, it has been Disney’s habit of setting itself apart from its competition.
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