Tributes - 2002

Chuck Jones - That's All Folks!

by Mark Juddery

When beloved entertainers die, the tributes will often exaggerate their significance. Popular stars become "immortal legends", and a talented artist will become a "true genius" of his field.

Chuck Jones is an exception. While never exactly a household name, his genius was noted, during his lifetime, by many writers. Indeed, he might well have been the greatest movie animator of them all.

An outrageous claim? Perhaps it is. Jones, after all, did not even create his greatest characters. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd were studio products, created while Jones was a mere "cel washer" at the animation studio. However, Jones (along with Tex Avery and Isador "Friz" Freleng) was one of the big three animation directors of Warner Bros -- and of the three, it is Jones who gave us the most of their greatest moments: those cartoons that children have enjoyed for 50 years. Unlike many "classic" movies, even many cartoons, Jones's work suggests that great art can be timeless, never revealing its age.

During the eighties, in a poll of the greatest animated shorts, Jones's films took three of the top five places -- including the number one film, the insane Daffy Duck - Porky Pig space romp "Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century" (1953).

Another favourite was "Duck Amuck" (also 1953), in which Daffy finds himself helpless against a white screen, while a mischievous, unseen animator changes the backgrounds and the soundtrack, switches props, and humiliates him with silly costumes. Jones said it was an experiment in animation: testing whether Daffy's character was strong enough to sustain a cartoon without colourful design or elaborate visual gags. It worked extremely well.

Character was the thing. Bugs Bunny was a star before Jones first directed him, but they were an actor-director team on par with Scorsese and De Niro. The comparison is more fitting than you might think. Bugs was created as a wisecracking tough guy (complete with Brooklyn accent and gangster moniker). Jones saw him as a mixture of Groucho and Chico Marx: witty, unfazed, always (or usually) the winner against rednecks like Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam. He later became a counter-culture pin-up.

Aided by writer Michael Maltese, Jones devised most of Bugs's best films. In "Rabbit of Seville" (1950), Elmer chases the "wascally wabbit" on to an opera stage and they find themselves performing Rossini's "The Barber of Seville", with a few changes (in Bugs's favour). "What's Opera, Doc?" (1957) cast Bugs as Wagner's Brunnhilde, pursued by Elmer as Siegfried.

High culture, however, was never the idea. These cartoons showcased the surreal, harmless violence that Jones mastered, in which nobody died, and an explosion or gunshot would result only in a charred body (back to normal in the next scene). It is the sort of violence now commonly seen on television and spoofed by the brutal "Itchy and Scratchy" cartoons of "The Simpsons". You either laugh, or (like some people) condemn it.

But while many animators have imitated Jones's inventive violence, few have done it so effectively. Apart from Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, perhaps nobody in the movies did slapstick better than Jones. (It is no surprise that he entered the industry as a child actor for Chaplin's mentor, Mack Sennett.)

But Jones's 60-year body of work gave us more than just slapstick. He also gave us highly individual pieces like the surreal fable "One Froggy Evening" (1955), which was unusually profound for a children's film. (Jones did not aim his work specifically at either children or adults.)

In this masterwork, a demolition worker, at an old building site, finds a singing bullfrog, complete with a cane and top hat. The worker sees this miraculous frog as a money-earner. He blows his life savings on a theatre, but the frog will only croak. Confined to park benches, then a mental hospital, the man finally discards the frog in the cornerstone of a new skyscraper. A hundred years later, that same building is torn down, and another demolition worker finds the singing frog, ready to repeat history.

Jones made over 300 shorts, and possibly no individual animator was ever so consistent. Even Walt Disney, despite his well-promoted reputation, was not such a versatile talent. He was a poor animator, and Mickey Mouse was designed by a far more adept artist, Ub Iwerks. Jones also worked with an animation team, but he was not only a creative mind, but a fine animator.

"Jones can get laughs out of his characters' tiniest gestures: a wriggle of Bugs Bunny's eyebrows, a snap of Daffy Duck's bill," wrote critic Leonard Maltin. "Those nuances are among his trademarks, and though he worked for years in the Warner Bros 'house style', his cartoons were always distinctively his own."

That style, of course, had a certain genius.