#Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies

[clemsfilmdiary]

Porky’s Road Race (1937, Frank Tashlin)

Looney Tune #83

5/30/23

[coditoons]

I only had 12 spots,

so these are the 12 I picked. If you aren't happy, you're always welcome to make your own poll 🤷

[jim-fetter-illustrations]

A dynamic-duo, just like Batman & Robin!

Marc Anthony and Pussyfoot are animated characters in Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The cartoons focus on the dog and kitten duo, one helping the other to survive the world they live in.

This is the way I see myself with the cats I have had throughout my life,......... the cat helps me cope with the world i live in, and I support the cat through taking care of it's needs.

A kind of dynamic-duo if you will, Lol

[prokopetz]

This is an absolutely crazy ask to send cause it's not in your wheelhouse at all EXCEPT that I've seen you post about public domain a lot before, but: I was thinking about how in the Looney tunes shows they congregate old cartoons they always use the same ones (bugs bunny and Tweety show, bugs and daffy show), and I have to imagine it's because of obscure and confusing rights on who can actually say they own many of the older shorts, especially the ones that don't star bugs, daffy, or any of the other "main cast". I was wondering if you knew how to find a list attempting to attribute many of these older loony tunes cartoons that are equivalent to abandonware at this point?

The first thing that's important to understand is that, legally, "abandonware" isn't a real thing. It's an artefact of the fact that it's legitimately unclear who actually owns many older video games whose publishers are now defunct, and nobody with money cares enough to press the issue. In practice, this will never be the case with Looney Tunes material – Warner Bros. is always going to claim to be the legitimate rights-holder, no matter how murky the situation is on paper, and you definitely don't have the wherewithal to argue the point.

Now, with respect to the Looney Tunes in particular, there's a potential edge case in that copyright used to require periodic renewal, instead of automatically persisting for the maximum statutory duration, so any Looney Tunes shorts published prior to 1964, the year the renewal requirement was abolished, could potentially be in the public domain due to somebody failing to file the renewal paperwork. However, again, Warner Bros. will always claim they did in fact file for renewal, and do you have a deep enough legal budget to prove they're lying?

The upshot is that the only Looney Tunes material you can safely treat as truly in the public domain are a. those published before 1964 for which someone with money to burn has already gone to the legal trouble of proving that no copyright renewal exists; and b. those published before 1930, as – barring vanishingly few exceptions – there is no jurisdiction in which the copyright duration on works for hire exceeds 95 years from the date of publication.*

Wikipedia has a convenient list indexed by year. As outlined here, all Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts published in 1929–1931 are in the public domain – those from 1929 because they're outside the 95-year cutoff, and those from 1930–1931 because it's been proven that no copyright renewals exist for any of them. A limited number of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies short films from 1932 and later are also in the public domain due to provable failure to renew their copyrights; the above-linked page will note when this is the case.

* Standalone sound recordings in the United States are one of those exceptions, which I'm not even going to get into right now, because it's a deeply stupid situation. That's not relevant here, though.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Wile E. Coyote - Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z (1956)

[skullislandproductions]

Happy Birthday to the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, who began their great chase 75 years ago, when “Fast and Furry-ous” was released into theaters September 17th, 1949. This short was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Mike Maltese, who would go on to create many more adventures for the pair.

[jeffpennington]

Ever since watching The Day The Earth Blew Up I’ve been in a huge Looney Tunes mood and have been doodling them a ton but this one turned out fun enough to post

Porky, Bugs, and Daffy all posing together like The Three Caballeros on a stage in spotlight. They could easily be three happy chappies in snappy sarapes I think.

[toonycryptid]

Merrie Melodies.

[ramshacklerumble]

i get no kick from champagne / mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all / so tell me why should it be true / that i get a KICK out of you?

(and now back to our regular scheduled programming)

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[miittchan]

shoves these two into a completely different climate

[jest3r99]

[dailylooneys]

Happy 90th B-B-Birthday, Porky Pig!

Yeap! Happy 90th Birthday to Warner Bros. first ever true cartoon star and the oldest continuing character in the Looney Tunes character.

After many (somewhat) failed attempts at creating a starring character for the very young Termite Terrace, many of them being Mickey Mouse-equse characters, such as Bosko, Foxy (most infamously and obviously) and Buddy....

.....there came a point in the mid-30s' where the directors, particularly Friz Freleng and Tex Avery, wanted to try and do something different, and that was to create a character who had a unique voice and embodied the soon-to-become irreverent style of humor of the WB cartoons.

First appeared in 1935's I Haven't Got a Hat, directed by Friz Freleng, part of the color one-shot series of Merrie Melodies shorts, was an attempt for Termite Terrace to see which character who appeared in the short could be there next star. Porky appeared in a somewhat supporting role in the film, voiced by Joe Dougherty, who had an actual stutter. The character's iconic stutter was inspired by a real-life pig guttering noise, according to Mel Blanc.

Well, I had trouble with, Porky, because he stuttered, and a lot of people said, "you can't do that". That's why I did it, because everybody was using falsetto voices, everything sounded the same. And I said, what can I do to make this character different? So I called up Warners' casting and said, do you got anybody who stutters? And they had this [Joe] Dougherty guy, who stuttered, and the guy could not just get through a line. And we were doing all of our sound on film then, there wasn’t any tape. If Jack Warner knew how much film I was using, I was through with animation. So I had to get somebody to mimic, and that was Mel. And of course, Mel can do anything. - Friz Freleng (”Friz on Film” documentary)

According to animation historian Jerry Beck, there was some thought that Beans would be the studio's next big cartoon star, as he would appear in a handful of shorts in the black-and-white Looney Tunes, while Ham and Ex were the only other characters of I Haven't Got a Hat to also make one more appearance, starring alongside Beans in The Fire Alarm (1936).

Goes without saying, nobody found Beans or Ham and Ex at all interesting, leading to Porky overshadowing them, and the rest is history.

From then on, Porky became the star of the Looney Tunes series, which were still in black-and-white up until '43. Like many classic cartoons character from the Golden Age of Animation, Porky's role varied from kid to adult character, to dealing with many everyday mundane things or having a specific position, including, but not limited to, farmer, hunter, waiter and zoologist, usually accompanied with other characters such as Porky's dad, Daffy Duck, Gabby Goat, or other one-offs.

The director who perhaps was responsible for giving Porky an even more distinguishing personality and design that we associated with today is Bob Clampett, as he was relegated to directing the main Looney Tune shorts up until the early '40s, which was possibly when Porky shorts were at their best.

(an image of the now-famous "blooper" (Breakdown of 1939) of Porky swearing, directed by Clampett, was made as part of a compilation of bloopers from live-action films, was screened during WB Christmas party reels, but was never released to theaters. This was made a year earlier before Gone with the Wind gained controversy for the use of the word "damn", as swearing was beyond prohibited in films up until the 1960s, when the Hays Code was starting die out.)

However, with the introduction of other, more colorful and quirky, mischievous characters such as Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, the directors would have admitted to having gradually grown tired of Porky as a character, even as early as 1939, he would play a very minimal role in much of the shorts, such as Porky's Hotel, Porky's Poor Fish, Meet Joe Dougherty and The Chewin' Bruin to name a few. Frank Tashlin infamously stated that he straight up hated Porky, referring to him as "a terrible character", due to the fact that a majority of the shorts he directed always starred Porky, finding him to be very inflexible, compared to his favorite character, Daffy. As a result of Porky's lack of popularity with the directors, Porky would end up becoming more of a side character, often alongside Daffy, Sylvester, Charlie Dog and so on, worked to Porky's benefit as not only did he continue to have sustained popularity with movie theater audiences, but the humor often derived from Porky being the most fairly grounded character being caught in the center of the character's wacky, off-the-wall personalities, or that when he's pushed to his limits, Porky will too snap!

"Nobody liked to work with Porky, because he was too square of a character." - Friz Freleng

Thankfully, this resulted in Porky never losing his popularity as he continues to be as world-famous and recognizable as Bugs, Daffy, Road Runner, Foghorn Leghorn, ect. After over 30 years, Porky would make his last appearance in the original theatrical series' in 1965's Corn on the Cop starring Porky and Daffy as Keystone Kops-looking cops trying to capture a crook whose dressed as Granny.

This cartoon has many significance: it being the only latter-day WB short he ever appeared in. The only Porky short directed by Irv Spector. And the only time Porky appeared alongside Granny, having almost the longest-lasting appearance of any of the characters in the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, defeating only by Daffy Duck, who's last original appearance was in 1968 (31 years), near the ending of the original theatrical cartoon series and the closure of Warner Bros. animation department.

After the end of his movie career, Porky would continue to appear in many other Looney Tunes-related material, one of them being The Porky Pig Show (1964 - 1967) which is a compilation of various of the original shorts, an appearance on Tiny Toon Adventures as Hampton J. Pig's idol and mentor, and many more, especially more recently, one of the main stars of The Day The Earth Blew Up (2025) where we see him in his original Bob Clampett design.

So, despite not being considered the immediate favorite of either the creators (both the original and new) and/or casual viewers', we should not forget the importance of Porky Pig and the impact he left on the original Looney Tunes, and the franchise as a whole. I mean, we got a whole DVD set entirely dedicated to the pig himself:

[summerreign4077]

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Canary Row (1949)

[skullislandproductions]

Check out this article that Tony Cervone and I were interviewed for about the crazy path that “Duck Dodgers” took to become a show on Cartoon Network. We were interviewed about this project at length, but given the space allowed, many of the stories and people we mentioned were not able to be included in this article, but still a fun read that provides insight into the creation of the show. Lots of stories yet to be told. Link to "Duck Dodgers" Cracked.com Article.

[tutuca0-0]

Awwww pequeños extraterrestres gays ʕ⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴥ⁠ꈍ⁠ʔ