Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969. The sister series to Warner's Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies were originally one-shot musical cartoon shorts before gradually featuring recurring characters. By 1944, no distinctions existed between the two series.
Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944, and the newly renamed Warner Bros. Cartoons continued production until 1963. Merrie Melodies were outsourced to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises from 1964 to 1967, and Warner Bros. Animation (now owned by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts) re-assumed production for the series' final two years.
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Producer Leon Schlesinger had already produced one cartoon in the Looney Tunes series, and its success prompted him to try to sell a sister series to Warner Bros. His selling point was that the new cartoons would feature music from the soundtracks of Warner Bros. films and would thus serve as advertisements for Warner Bros. recordings. The studio agreed, and Schlesinger dubbed the series Merrie Melodies.
Walt Disney Productions had already scored with their Silly Symphonies. Since cartoon production usually began with a soundtrack, animating a piece of music made it easier to devise plot elements and even characters.
The origins of the Merrie Melodies series begin with the failure of a live action series of musical shorts called Spooney Melodies which featured popular songs of the day. These shorts were basically an early type of music video that included segments with a popular artist singing along with appropriate background sequences. The Warner Bros. wanted to promote this music because they had recently acquired (in 1930) the ownership of Brunswick Records along with four music publishers for US $28 million. Because of the success of their Looney Tunes series, Warner Bros. decided to develop a new series of animated musical shorts which were to be called Merrie Melodies. The series was developed and taken on by Rudy Ising and Hugh Harman. It was meant to be a series of musical cartoons that would feature hit songs of the day, especially those which were then owned by Warner Bros. and those featured in their musical films. In 1931, many of the shorts featured the orchestra of Abe Lyman, one of the most famous band leaders of his day.
The first cartoon of the new Merrie Melodies series was entitled Lady, Play Your Mandolin!, released in 1931. Ising attempted to introduce several characters in his Merrie Melodies films, such as Piggy, Foxy, and Goopy Geer. Eventually however, the series continued without any recurring characters. When viewed today, many find the plotless early Merrie Melodies to be somewhat strange because they are not like modern cartoons. They should be viewed as basically early music videos (with comedy thrown in) that were intended to sell sheet music and phonograph records. The shorts proved to be enormously popular with the public. In 1932, a Merrie Melody, entitled: It's Got Me Again!, was nominated for the first Academy Award to be given for animation.
When Harman and Ising left the Warner Bros. in 1933, they took with them all the rights of the characters and cartoons which they had created. Leon Schlesinger had to negotiate with them in order to keep the rights to the name Merrie Melodies as well as for the right to use the slogan So Long Folks at the end of the cartoons. In 1934, Schlesinger produced his first color Merrie Melodies shorts, Honeymoon Hotel and Beauty and the Beast, which were produced in Cinecolor (Disney had exclusive rights to the richer Technicolor process). Their success convinced Schlesinger to produce all future Merrie Melodies shorts in color as well. Looney Tunes continued in black and white until 1943.
In 1936, the cartoons began to end with the slogan "That's all Folks!" which had previously only been used on the Looney Tunes series. The old slogan "So Long, Folks!" was completely abandoned at this time. The same year, Merrie Melodies began using the bulls-eye opening and closing title sequences (in 1942, Looney Tunes would use the same titles, usually in thicker rings).
Contractually, Merrie Melodies cartoons were obligated to include at least one full chorus from a Warner Bros. song. Warner Bros. requested that these songs be performed by name bands whenever possible, but this lasted only through the first few shorts. The policy annoyed the animators of Merrie Melodies, since the songs often interrupted the cartoons' momentum and pacing.
In the late 1930s, the animators were released from this obligation, and the Merrie Melodies shorts came to resemble more closely the black-and-white Looney Tunes series. In addition, several new characters were created to (initially) appear exclusively in the Merrie Melodies series, such as Egghead (who became Elmer Fudd), Inki, Sniffles, and even Warner Bros.' most popular cartoon star, Bugs Bunny.
In 1942, Schlesinger began producing Looney Tunes in color as well, and the two series became virtually indistinguishable except by their theme music and opening titles - in addition, characters once exclusive to one series began regularly appearing in the other as well. By this time the theme music for Looney Tunes was "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin and the theme music for Merrie Melodies was an adaptation of "Merrily We Roll Along" by Charles Tobias, Murray Mencher & Eddie Cantor. This continued until 1964, when the WB cartoon logos were modernized, and "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" became the theme for the Merrie Melodies as well.
When the studio went to full color, even the animators themselves didn't make any creative distinction between the two series, as evidenced in an interview quote from director Friz Freleng:
"I never knew if a film I was making would be Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies, and what the hell difference would it make, anyway?" [1]
The last Merrie Melodies cartoon was also the last released by Warner Bros. Cartoons as part of the original series begun in the 1930s. It was Injun Trouble released in 1969.
Beginning in late 1943, WB, in a cost-conserving effort, began to reissue its backlog of color cartoons under a new program which they called Merrie Melodies "Blue Ribbon" classics. For the reissue, the original front-and-end title sequences were altered. The revised main title card began with the "zooming" WB logo, followed by the title logo set against a background featuring a "blue ribbon" (hence the re-release program's title) and a Grand Shorts Award trophy, followed by the name of the cartoon. This revised title sequence eliminated the opening technical credits. The end title card was also revised (except on the very first reissues, such as A Wild Hare and I Love to Singa when Schlesinger was still producing the cartoons), replacing the original versions. The revised title sequences were edited right into the original negative, thus the original title sequences were cut away and possibly scrapped. Some of these same revised "blue ribbon" reissues can still be seen on television today. For example, the "Blue Ribbon" version of the Bugs Bunny short A Wild Hare was retitled The Wild Hare for reissue, along with some slight subtle edits (the original unaltered version has been released on both LaserDisc and DVD). Later on, former Looney Tunes cartoons that were reissued as Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies usually started with the "Merrily We Roll Along" opening music, but ended with "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" theme, revealing the fact that the cartoon was originally a Looney Tune. This persisted through the 1955-56 season. Most of the cartoons that were reissued without the original title card and credits would end up in the pre-1948 package of cartoons sold to Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.), thus only 5 cartoons in the post-1948 package would be reissued in this manner: these were Daffy Dilly, The Foghorn Leghorn, Kit for Cat, Scaredy Cat, and You Were Never Duckier. Beginning in the 1956-57 season, "Blue Ribbon" reissues (of other cartoons in the post-1948 package) retained the original opening titles and technical credits, with some of the cartoons indicating their original Looney Tunes issue by the opening and closing theme "The Merry Go-Round Broke Down."
For the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD releases, WB went through great lengths to track down whatever elements of the original title credits still exist in an effort to re-create as best they could the original versions of the altered "Blue Ribbon" shorts. Some pristine prints of the original issues were obtained from the UCLA Film and Television Archive. As a result, such cartoons as I Love to Singa and Book Revue (the Blue Ribbon version of which was mistitled Book Review) can once again be seen as they were originally intended. Although some original titles couldn't be found, some Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies have the Blue Ribbon Reissue title cards, but the original ending titles have been restored for some of the shorts. For example, Mouse Wreckers begins with the Blue Ribbon Reissue titles while it ends with the 1948 Looney Tunes green rings. There are some "Blue Ribbon" reissue versions of cartoons that are represented on the Golden Collection DVDs as they are the only versions that were made available for exhibition. In any event, to this day there is controversy among animation fans and historians on the alteration of the "blue ribbon" releases.
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