Looney Toons

The Michener Museum hosts ‘That’s All Folks! The Art of Warner Brothers Cartoons.’

By: Susan Van Dongen

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The familiar Looney Tunes characters are part of That’s All Folks! The Art of Warner Brothers Cartoons, in Doylestown, Pa., April 23 to July 3.


   As a movie star, he’s been winning popularity polls since the days of Rita Hayworth. Beloved around the world, this all-American is known for his wit, resourcefulness and unmistakable voice.
   Humphrey Bogart, perhaps? Cary Grant? John Wayne?
   No, it’s Bugs Bunny, the first "comic hero" in American cinema, according to animation historian Stephen Schneider.
   "In fact, he created the comic hero," Mr. Schneider says. "Before Bugs, we always had comic ‘schleps,’ but he was a superman. He used his amazing resourcefulness to turn the scales on anyone. And Bugs was an emblem of the American spirit. There he is minding his own business, just wanting to be left alone and he always has to deal with someone giving him grief."
   And so the "wascally wabbit" has pulled all kinds of tricks out of his hat — dressing in drag included — to sidestep Elmer Fudd and others stepping on his turf while generations have cheered him on. But high-energy story lines are just one element of these animated mini-masterpieces from Warner Brothers studios. There was also the music by Carl W. Stalling, the animation and direction by Tex Avery, Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones, and the virtuosic voices of Mel Blanc.

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   "All of these giants just came together at the Warner Brothers studio," Mr. Schneider says. "None of this was planned."
   He’s the curator for That’s All Folks! The Art of Warner Brothers Cartoons at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa., April 23 to July 3. A comprehensive overview of a legendary Hollywood animation studio, the exhibition is an expansion of a previous show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The Michener’s lower gallery will be filled with more than 160 drawings, paintings, animation cels and related objects used in the making of Warner’s classic cartoons from the 1930s through the ’60s. There also will be a number of special events in connection with the exhibit, including documentary screenings, a book signing featuring contemporary animation artist Scott Hanna and big-screen showings of classic Looney Tunes.

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   Mr. Schneider says this is the best way to see the cartoons, which were originally made to be shown at the movies. The exhibit is a labor of love for Mr. Schneider. As a former media critic and columnist for The New York Times, part of his life’s work was to praise the cartoons from a scholar’s point of view. Sure, Bugs and friends are universally loved as pop culture, but for decades they had been ignored by critics and "serious" publications, despite the artistic merits of the short films.
   "There were only two articles of any serious criticism written during the 30-plus years Warner Brother was creating these cartoon masterpieces," Mr. Schneider says. "One piece was by James Agee, who saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon and thought it was the greatest piece of satire in years. Then there was Manny Farber who looked at them with a detached eye and wrote, ‘the good news is that the good ones are masterpieces, and the bad ones aren’t a total loss.’ But that’s it: 1,000 films, 35 years and that is it for critical response."
   Mr. Schneider says this disregard for classic cartoons started to change in the 1970s when film and media students became interested, and when Bugs and company were shown on television countless times daily.
   "They had been designed to be seen once and forgotten but all of a sudden you could see the cartoons every day and people were saying ‘wait a minute, these are great,’" he says. "It was the first time some of these veteran illustrators were giving interviews in the press. Then, in the mid-1980s, things got pushed up a notch with the help of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ That was a watershed moment that brought in a real rediscovery and interest in animation."
   That’s All Folks! is culled from Mr. Schneider’s personal collection of animation drawings and sketches, cels and other materials, all part of the collaborative, months-long effort to create one seven-minute cartoon.
   "Much of this material wasn’t saved, so this will be the only opportunity to see it," he says.
   More so than any other animated shorts, Warner Bros. cartoons permeated American life. It began with the introduction of Porky Pig in 1935, just one of several characters with communication challenges (Sylvester the cat and Elmer Fudd also struggle with speech). Dig a little deeper and Mr. Schneider says you’ll recognize that most of the cartoon characters have genuine neuroses.
   "A lot of the comedy is a comedy of failure, of the characters’ defects," he says. "So we have an obsessive disorder with the coyote, for example. That’s why he’s always sending away for ACME devices to catch the Roadrunner."
   There’s a Napoleon complex with the little chicken hawk, who’s trying to get the better of the full-sized rooster, Foghorn Leghorn. And Daffy Duck’s megalomania — "the treasure’s mine, mine, all mine!" — points to a lack of self confidence, Mr. Schneider says.
   Politically incorrect, yes, but a breath of reality compared to the sentimental, storybookish animated films by Disney that were dominating the genre at the time.
   "What’s interesting is that before Disney, animation was urban and surreal, even hallucinatory," Mr. Schneider says. "But then Disney came along and his take on animation was that it was children’s entertainment, so the humor was very gentle, the characters had rounded forms and the stories had measured tempos. That set the tone until Warner Brothers began to hit its stride, especially with Tex Avery. Once he found his groove the humor grew more irreverent, there was more slap stick and the story tempos changed — they became very fast-paced."
   The turnaround time for an animated short feature was limited and it was a painstaking process, all done by hand. The creative team at Warner Brothers didn’t have time to compete with Disney, so they took another road to popularity and made the cartoons anti-authoritarian. And, while Disney was creating cartoons in fantasy lands, Warner Brothers made references to politics, show business and the larger issues of the day, much like comic strips do now.
   One 1942 work titled "Swooner Crooner" seems like it’s making fun of Frank Sinatra and his bobby sox-clad fans, but it’s actually a topical tribute to the mass production that supported the troops in World War II. Farmer Elmer Fudd brings in a skinny rooster named "Frankie," who croons for the hens, causing them to get excited and lay prodigious amounts of eggs. Another pipe-smoking rooster named "Bing" tries to sabotage this — he used to make the hens swoon, you see — but can’t fight the hormonal surge the other bird provokes. At the end, they agree that the eggs are good for the war effort.
   The cartoonists and directors also were mirroring what was happening on the Warner Brothers lot in feature films from the times, the days of Cagney and Bogart.
   "This was the heyday of gangster films filled with tough guys and urban settings, and dialogue that had a sardonic, sarcastic streak," Mr. Schneider says. "This ethos passed into the cartoons and suddenly you had this wiseacre character, Bugs Bunny. Something in him really spoke to American sensibilities."
That’s All Folks! The Art of Warner Brothers Cartoons is on view at the James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, Pa., April 23-July 3. Museum hours: Tues., Thurs.-Fri. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Wed. 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun. noon-5 p.m. Admission: $6.50, $6 seniors, $4 students, free to members and children under age 6. There is a $4 fee for this exhibit in addition to admission. Additional events include Chuck Jones: Extremes and in Betweens, A Life in Animation, April 24, 3-5 p.m.; Scott Hanna, lecture and booksigning, May 4, 7-8:30 p.m.; The Legacy of Warner Brothers Cartoons, panel presentation, June 26, 2:30-4:30 p.m.; Classic Looney Tunes Cartoons screenings, April 24, 12:30-2 p.m. and June 26, 12:30-2 p.m. For information, call (215) 340-9800. On the Web: www.michenerartmuseum.org