Chuck Jones

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For other persons named Charles Jones, see Charles Jones (disambiguation).
Chuck Jones

Born Charles Martin Jones
September 21, 1912(1912-09-21)
Spokane, Washington
Died February 22, 2002 (aged 89)
Corona Del Mar, California
Spouse(s) Dorothy Webster (1935-1978)
Marian J. Dern (1981-2002)

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio. He directed many of the classic short animated cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew and the other Warners characters, including What's Opera, Doc? (1957), Duck Amuck (1952) (both later inducted into the National Film Registry) and Jones' famous "Hunting Trilogy" of Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (1951–1953), establishing himself as an important innovator and storyteller.

After his career at Warners ended in 1962, Jones started Sib Tower 12 Productions and began producing cartoons for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, including a new series of Tom & Jerry shorts and the television adaptation of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). He later started his own studio, Chuck Jones Productions, which created several one-shot specials, and periodically worked on Looney Tunes related works.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Jones was born in Spokane, Washington, and later moved with his parents and three siblings to the Los Angeles, California area. In his autobiography, Chuck Amuck, Jones credits his artistic bent to circumstances surrounding his father, who was an unsuccessful businessman in California in the 1920s. His father, Jones recounts, would start every new business venture by purchasing new stationery and new pencils with the company name on them. When the business failed, his father would quietly turn the huge stacks of useless stationery and pencils over to his children, requiring them to use up all the material as fast as possible (e.g., they must not draw on both sides). Armed with an endless supply of high-quality paper and pencils, the children drew constantly. Later, in one art school class, the professor gravely informed the students that they each had 100,000 bad drawings in them that they must first get past before they could possibly draw anything worthwhile. Chuck Jones recounted years later that this pronouncement came as a great relief to him, as he was well past the 200,000 mark, having used up all that stationery. Jones and several of his siblings went on to artistic careers. After graduating from Chouinard Art Institute, Jones held a number of low-ranking jobs in the animation industry, including washing cels at the Ub Iwerks studio and assistant animator at the Walter Lantz studio. While at Iwerks, he met a cel painter named Dorothy Webster, who would later become his wife.

[edit] Warner Bros.

Chuck Jones joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, the independent studio that produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros., in 1933 as an assistant animator. In 1935, he was promoted to animator, and assigned to work with new Schlesinger director Tex Avery. There was no room for the new Avery unit in Schlesinger's small studio, so Avery, Jones, and fellow animators Bob Clampett, Virgil Ross, and Sid Sutherland were moved into a small adjacent building they dubbed "Termite Terrace". When Clampett was promoted to director in 1937, Jones was assigned to his unit; the Clampett unit were briefly assigned to work with Jones' old employer, Ub Iwerks, when Iwerks subcontracted four cartoons to Schlesinger in 1937. Jones became a director (or "supervisor", the original title for an animation director in the studio) himself in 1938 when Frank Tashlin left the studio. Jones' first cartoon was The Night Watchman, which featured a cute kitten who would later evolve into Sniffles the mouse.

Many of Jones' cartoons of the 1930s and early 1940s were lavishly animated, but audiences and fellow Schlesinger staff members found them lacking in genuine humor. Often slow-moving and overbearing with "cuteness", Jones' early cartoons were an attempt to follow in the footsteps of Walt Disney's shorts (especially with such cartoons as Tom Thumb in Trouble and the Sniffles cartoons). Jones finally broke away from both his traditional cuteness, and traditional animation conventions as well, with the cartoon The Dover Boys in 1942. Jones credits this cartoon as the film where he "learned how to be funny." The Dover Boys is also one of the first uses of Stylized animation in American film, breaking away from the more realistic animation styles influenced by the Disney Studio. This was also the period where Jones created many of his lesser-known characters, including Charlie Dog, Hubie and Bertie, and The Three Bears. Despite their relative obscurity today, the shorts starring these characters represent some of Jones' earliest work that was strictly intended to be funny.

During the World War II years, Jones worked closely with Theodor Geisel (also known as Dr. Seuss) to create the Private Snafu series of Army educational cartoons. Private Snafu comically educated soldiers on topics like spies and laziness in a more risque way than general audiences would have been used to at the time. Jones would later collaborate with Seuss on a number of adaptations of Seuss' books to animated form, most importantly How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in 1966.

A still from What's Opera, Doc?.
A still from What's Opera, Doc?.

Jones hit his stride in the late 1940s, and continued to make his best-regarded works through the 1950s. Jones-created characters from this period includes Claude Cat, Marc Antony and Pussyfoot, Charlie Dog, Michigan J. Frog, and his three most popular creations, Pepe LePew, the Road Runner, and Wile E. Coyote. Jones based the Coyote on Mark Twain's Roughing It,[citation needed] in which Twain describes the coyote as "a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton" that is "a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry". The Road Runner cartoons, in addition to the cartoons that are considered his masterpieces (all written and conceived by Michael Maltese), Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening, and What's Opera, Doc? are today hailed by critics as some of the best cartoons ever made.

The staff of the Jones' Unit A were as important to the success of these cartoons as Jones himself. Key members included writer Michael Maltese, layout artist/background designer/co-director Maurice Noble, animator and co-director Abe Levitow, and animators Ken Harris and Ben Washam.

In 1950 Chuck and Mike Maltese began working on Rabbit Fire. This short changed Daffy Duck's personality forever. They decided to make him a totally different character; instead of the crazy duck he had been, they turned Daffy into a vain, greedy, jealous character wanting to steal the spotlight from Bugs Bunny. Of his versions of Bugs and Daffy, Chuck Jones has said, "Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are."

Jones remained at Warner Bros. throughout the 1950s, except for a brief period in 1953 when Warner closed the animation studio. During this interim, Jones found employment at Walt Disney Pictures, where he teamed with Ward Kimball for a four month period of uncredited work on Sleeping Beauty (1959). Upon the reopening of the Warner animation department, Jones was rehired & reunited with most of his unit.

In the early-1960s, Jones and his wife Dorothy wrote the screenplay for the animated feature Gay Purr-ee. The finished film would feature the voices of Judy Garland, Robert Goulet and Red Buttons as cats in Paris, France. The feature was produced by UPA, and directed by his former Warner collaborator, Abe Levitow. Jones moonlit to work on the film, since he had an exclusive contract with Warner Bros. UPA completed the film and made it available for distribution in 1962; it was picked up by Warner Bros. When Warner discovered that Jones had violated his exclusive contract with them, they fired him.[1] Not long after, Jack Warner closed the studio's animation shop (Chuck frequently claimed, including in the aforementioned autobiography, that this happened because Jack finally learned they weren't making Mickey Mouse cartoons).

[edit] Jones on his own

With business partner Les Goldman, Jones started an independent animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions, bringing on most of his unit from Warner Bros., including Maurice Noble and Michael Maltese. In 1963, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contracted with Sib Tower 12 to have Jones and his staff produce new Tom and Jerry cartoons, which most audiences found superior to the original Hanna & Barbera series. In 1964, Sib Tower 12 was absorbed by MGM and was renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts. Jones' animated short film The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics won the 1965 Oscar for Best Animated Short. Chuck also directed the classic animated short "The Bear That Wasn't".

As the Tom and Jerry series wound down (it would be discontinued in 1967), Jones moved on to television. In 1966, he produced and directed the TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, featuring the voice and facial features of Boris Karloff. Jones continued to work on TV specials such as Horton Hears A Who! (1970), but his main focus during this time was the feature film The Phantom Tollbooth, which did lukewarm business when MGM released it in 1970. Jones co-directed 1969's The Pogo Special Birthday Special, based on the Walt Kelly comic strip, and voiced the characters of Porky Pine and Bun Rab.

MGM closed the animation division in 1970, and Jones once again started his own studio, Chuck Jones Productions. He produced a children's TV series for the American Broadcasting Company called The Curiosity Shop in 1971. His most notable work during this period was three animated TV adaptations of short stories from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Brothers, The White Seal and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Jones resumed working with Warner Bros. in 1976 with the animated TV adaptation of The Carnival of the Animals with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Jones also produced the 1979 movie The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie which was a compilation of Jones' best theatrical shorts; Jones produced new Road Runner shorts for The Electric Company series and Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales (1979), and even newer shorts were made for Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over (1980).

From 1977-1978 Jones wrote & drew the syndicated comic strip "Crawford" (also known as "Crawford & Morgan") for the Chicago Tribune-NY News Syndicate.

[edit] Later years

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Jones was painting cartoon and parody art, sold through animation galleries by his daughter's company, Linda Jones Enterprises. He was also creating new cartoons for the Internet based on his new character, "Thomas Timberwolf". He made a cameo appearance in the 1984 film Gremlins and directed the Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck animated sequences that bookend Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). Jones also directed animated sequences various features such as a lengthy sequence in the 1992 film, Stay Tuned and a shorter one seen at the start of the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire. Jones was not a fan of much contemporary animation, terming most of it, especially television cartoons such as those of Hanna-Barbera, "illustrated radio."

In 1988 Jones contributed to the creation of London's Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) by spending several days working high on scaffolding creating a chase sequence directly onto the high walls of the museum.

Jones' intellectualism, writing ability, and capacity for self-analysis made him an historical authority as well as a major contributor to the development of animation throughout the 20th century. He received an honorary degree from Oglethorpe University in 1993.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Chuck Jones has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7011 Hollywood Blvd.

Jones, whose work had been nominated 8 times over his career for an Oscar (winning thrice, For Scent-imental Reasons, So Much for So Little (for Documentary--Short, not Short Subject--Animated) and The Dot and the Line), received an Honorary Academy Award in 1996 by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for "the creation of classic cartoons and cartoon characters whose animated lives have brought joy to our real ones for more than half a century."

Jones' final Looney Tunes cartoon is actually From Hare to Eternity in 1996/1997, which stared Bugs and Sam, with Greg Burson voicing as Bugs. The cartoon was dedicated to Friz Freleng, who had passed on in 1995. Jones did produce a few more Looney Tunes-based and non-related cartoons, a noticeable one being Chariots of Fur, his final Road Runner cartoon in 1994.

Jones died of heart failure in 2002.

However, Jones had one final involvement, even after his death, and that was with the Looney Tunes cartoon Daffy Duck for President, which was based on a book that Jones had written; the character designs even copied Jones' style. The cartoon was originally scheduled to be released in 2000, but delays forced the cartoon to be held back until 2004 (both years, of course, saw Presidential elections).

[edit] Influence and critical perception

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Chuck Jones was one of the greatest animation directors of all time, a master of characterization and timing. His best works are noted for depicting a refinement of character to the point that a single eyebrow wiggle could be a major gag as opposed to the wild, frenetic style usually associated with cartoons, and those of Warner Bros. in particular. Like Walt Disney, Jones wanted animation to gain respect from the film and art communities, and often undertook special animation projects reflecting such, including What's Opera Doc, The Dot and the Line, and the 1944 political film Hell-Bent for Election, a campaign film for Franklin D. Roosevelt that he directed for UPA.

In his later years, Jones became the most vocal alumnus of the Termite Terrace studio, frequently giving lectures, seminars, and working to educate newcomers in the animation field. Many of his principles, therefore, found their way back into the mainstream animation consciousness, and can be seen in films such as Cats Don't Dance, The Rip Borsley Show, The Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch.

Jones had a penchant for cuteness in his earliest days as is visible in his cartoons featuring Sniffles the Mouse. Other Warners directors, particularly Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, considered "cute" to be a four letter word. By request of producer Leon Schlesinger, Jones changed his style, and began making zanier pictures such as Wackiki Wabbit and Hare Conditioned. After Avery, Clampett, and Schlesinger left the studio, Jones gradually reincorporated elements of the slow pace, sentimentality and cuteness of his previous work with characters like Marc Antony and Pussyfoot and the young Ralph Phillips. His versions of the characters he worked with often showcased a more infantile look than other interpretations, with larger eyes and eyelashes. This is especially apparent in his Tom and Jerry films.

Jones, like the rest of his Termite Terrace associates after the departure of Schlesinger, has been criticized for using repetitive plots, most obvious in the Pepé Le Pew and Road Runner cartoons. It must be noted, however, that many of these films were originally issued to theatres years apart, and the repetitious factor was often done at the request of the producers, management, or theatre owners. Also, series like the Road Runner were set up as exercises in exploring the same situation in different ways. Jones had a set list of rules as to what could and could not occur in a Road Runner cartoon, and stated that it was not what happened that was important in the films, but how it happened.

Chuck Jones' reinvention of certain characters is also a controversial subject. He reimagined the wacky, Clampett-esque hero Daffy Duck as a greedy, sneaky antagonist with a slow-burning temper; and he relegated hapless star Porky Pig to being a sidekick or audience-aware observer of the action. Jones also created a series of films in which he used Friz Freleng's Sylvester in the context of a real cat. Like all the Warners directors, his Bugs Bunny characterization is unique to his films: Jones' Bugs never attacks unless attacked, unlike Avery's and Clampett's bombastic rabbits. Most animation fans & scholars believe Jones' version of the Warner Bros. characters are the definitive ones. When one compiles a list of their favorite Warner Bros. cartoons, the majority of almost every list is directed by Jones.

[edit] Notable animated films directed by Chuck Jones

[edit] Quotes

“ I am still astonished that somebody would offer me a job and pay me to do what I wanted to do. ”
“ Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better. ”
“ Every time you draw a caricature you lose a friend. ”
“ I could dream about being Bugs Bunny but when I woke up, I was still Daffy Duck. ”

[edit] See also

Termite Terrace

Warner Bros. Animation

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)
  1. ^ An Interview with Chuck Jones

[edit] Sources

  • Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516729-5.
  • Jones, Chuck (1989). Chuck Amuck : The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-12348-9.
  • Jones, Chuck (1996). Chuck Reducks : Drawing from the Fun Side of Life. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-51893-X.

[edit] External links


Persondata
NAME Jones, Chuck
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jones, Charles Martin
SHORT DESCRIPTION Animator
DATE OF BIRTH 1912-9-21
PLACE OF BIRTH Spokane, Washington
DATE OF DEATH 2002-2-22
PLACE OF DEATH Corona Del Mar, California