Looney Tunes

From What's Opera Doc

When I was a kid in the 60s (yes, I'm that old), Saturday morning cartoons were a ritual. And my favorite cartoon show was The Bugs Bunny Show (it had several name changes over the years). You know, The Bugs Bunny Show that started with this. 

According to the autobiography of Chuck Jones (Chuck Amuck), the minimum length of a "short" for theaters was six minutes. So the Loony Tunes shorts were exactly six minutes to the frame. Because each frame cost money. When they were shown in the Bugs Bunny Show, they cut off the title cards and the credits so they were shorter then six minutes. (However, according to Wikipedia, What's Opera Doc is 6:53).

Looney Tunes cartoons were initially produced by Leon Schlesinger, who, according to Jones, had no sense of humor. Later, Schlesinger sold out to Warner Bros. studios.

Not all the Looney Tunes are great. Most are funny but some are only amusing. Some of my favorites are (in no particular order): What's Opera Doc, The Rabbit of Seville, Duck Amuck, Duck Dodgers is the 24th 1/2 Century (which has teleportation a decade before Star Trek did), Bully for Bugs, and pretty much any Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon. There's others I'm probably not remembering. Some of the "rabbit season/duck season" cartoons were hilarious but I don't remember their names.

I am a huge fan of hand-drawn animation, an art form that is going away thanks to computer animation. Chuck Jones called it the only truly American art form.

I don't think there's anywhere to see those cartoons online. I have four DVD sets of four DVDs each with a lot of cartoons on them. Unfortunately, they mixed in the mediocre ones with the brilliant ones. I still watch them occasionally.

I still like animation. I watched the animated movie Mars Express not too long ago. It looked hand-animated. I watched The Simpsons for twenty years. When I'm bored, I'll watch reruns of Family Guy. I have to warn you away from The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Loony Tunes Movie. It was okay, but unless you really like Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, it's not really worth your time.

Do you like hand-drawn animation? Let me know in the comments below.

UPDATE: apparently all of the Loony Tunes cartoons are on Tubi TV for free (with ads). The cartoons start in 1931! Lots of racism and sexism and anti-semitism.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.