Chuck Redux

Chuck Jones’ Letters to his daughter, Linda (Winter Break and Linda goes home for two weeks, so there aren’t any letters.)

 

While she’s home, let’s look back at some of the statistics of 1952…what was going on in the world while Linda was getting used to her new boarding school experience

 

Some Events in 1952

• Albert Einstein refuses Presidency of Israel
• Big Bang Theory of the creation of the Universe first propounded
• Elizabeth II becomes Queen upon the death of her father George VI.
• De Havilland 110 fighter aircraft breaks up over spectators at Farnborough Air Show killing 30
• Three Trains crash at Harrow in North London
• The Mau Mau Rebellion starts in Kenya
• South African Police Arrest Nelson Mandella
• India holds it's first general elections
• Thick smog on December 4th in London, England causes 4,000 fatalities
• Britain announces it has Atomic Bomb
• Live Atomic bomb Test from testing site in Yucca Flats, Nevada shown on Television
• California has it's second largest earthquake rocking 100,000 sq miles
• Charlie Chaplin refused entry back to the US after living in Hollywood for 20 years.
• Rocky Marciano becomes world heavyweight champion after knocking out Jersey Joe Walcott
• Vice Presidential Candidate Richard M. Nixon defends himself on Television over allegations of secret cash fund
• 3300 die of polio in U.S.; 57,000 children are paralyzed
• The Last London Trams Decommissioned
• Mother Teresa opens the home for dying and destitute in Calcutta
• The Summer Olympics are held in July in Helsinki, Finland
• Puerto Rico becomes a Self Governing Commonwealth Of the United States
• Steel Plants Placed Under Presidential Control after Steel Unions Threaten to Strike
• Military coup d'etat in Egypt headed by Nasser
• The Winter Olympic Games are held in Oslo, Norway
• The Today Show premieres on NBC
• The first commercial jet plane, the BOAC’s Comet is put into service.
• A tropical storm forms north of Cuba and moves northeast making landfall in Florida.  It is the earliest reported formation of a tropical storm on record in the Atlantic basin.
• The film The African Queen opens at the Capitol Theatre in New York City.
• Churchill’s government in the UK abolishes Identity Cards to “set people free.”
• Fulgencio Batista leads a successful coup in Cuba.
• Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio.
• Sun Records begins operation.
• In a radio address to the nation from the White House, President Harry S. Truman calls for the seizure of all steel mills in the United States in order to prevent a nationwide strike.
• Secretaries Day (now Administrative Professionals' Day) is first celebrated.
• Occupied Japan: The United States occupation of Japan ends.
• U.S. lieutenant colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict land a plane at the geographic North Pole.
• The concept for the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower retires from active service in the United States Army.
• Catalina affair, a Swedish Douglas DC-3 was shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 fighter.
• The keel is laid for the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus.
• Puerto Rico's Constitution is approved by the Congress of the United States.
• The 15th Olympic Games begin in Helsinki, Finland.
• Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
• Hussein proclaimed king of Jordan
• The Arab League goes into effect.
• Reparation negotiations between West Germany and Israel end in Luxembourg; West Germany to pay 3 billion Deutschmarks.
• Premiere of John Cage's 4'33" in Woodstock, New York.
• United Nations gives Eritrea to Ethiopia.
• The US bars Charlie Chaplin from reentering the country after a trip to England
• United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon.
• The United States successfully detonates the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike" , at Eniwetok island in the Bikini atoll located in the Pacific Ocean.
• U.S. presidential election: Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeats Democrat Adlai Stevenson.
• Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London, still the longest continuously running play in history).
• Korean War: US president-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfills a campaign promise by traveling to Korea to find out what can be done to end the conflict.
• The New York Daily News reports the first successful sexual reassignment operation.
• A "killer fog" descends on London ("Smog" for "smoke" and "fog" becomes a word).
• The Abbott and Costello Show starring comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, debuts.

Chuck Jones: The White Seal

 

"The White Seal"

In 1974, Chuck Jones brought to life the story of Kotick, the white seal, while a vice-president in charge of children’s programming at ABC.  This television special was based on the story of survival and perseverance of a group of seals living in the Bering Straits.  The original tale is by Rudyard Kipling and can be found in his collection* of stories, The Jungle Book.   Chuck Jones also recreated for television two other Kipling tales, Rikki Tikki Tavi in 1975 and Mowgli’s Brothers in 1976.  This image featured above was created from an original production cel and background used in the film and later featured on the cover of the book based on the television special The White Seal. 

*From Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones:  “We always had books in the house we lived in.  We not only had books, we had books (old or new) that were fresh to us.  The way it worked was this: a house in those days of the early twenties had books.  Incredible as it seems, that’s what people did: they read.  We didn’t have a phonograph until I was twelve, a radio until I was seventeen, or television until I was forty-six.

“So that left books.  When you rented a furnished house, it was equipped with furniture and books.  …Father would scout around for a furnished house.  “Furnished” in his lexicon meant furnished with books, hundreds being mandatory, thousands being preferable.  Colonel Terhune’s big house on the Speedway in Ocean Park had thousands of books, as did Timeseditor Harry Carr’s place on Mount Washington Drive, so the six or seven or eight of our family stayed in each house for over five years, until we had exhausted the supply,  a sort of omnivorous plague of indiscriminate readers.”

Chuck Jones’ letters to his daughter, Linda

 

Post #32

 

Wednesday, November 26

 

Dearest Linda;

 

Boy, have I been a lousy correspondent—so now I’m a despondent correspondent—on account of I’m sorry I haven’t written more often.  As I told you I’ve been banging madly away on this outside picture, so I have a legitimate excuse, but who wants excuses?  I feel particularly bad for letting you down when you were sick abed.  There’s nothing so foul and sick-making as a cold.  It is a humiliating disease and a wretched ailment all the way around.  You can’t dignify the little bastard by calling it serious and yet it is impossible to ignore it, for it can serve as a jackknife to something more formidable.  (I was thinking of “spring-board” in the previous sentence, just why it came out “jack-knife” I cannot say.)

 

I don’t imagine you will get this before you return from Florence, so please write us all about it.  You know, I think we must be the most indulgent parents alive: if it sounds like fun, we’re all for it, to Hell with anything else.  It was quite different in my day.  The fact that a teenager suggested a thing was usually sufficient to generate an automatic “NO!”  It was supposed that a youngster was always up to mischief, that it would only lead to trouble to give him what was known as “his head”.  Phooey!  People were very, very jerky in that age.  It is indeed amazing that we managed to attain adulthood with any degree at all of common sense.  The amazing thing, too, is that we are able to be different than they were.

 

I am never able to understand from your letters just what kind of a student you are.  Between reports you seem to sink to the most astonishing depths only to rise to fairly respectable levels when we receive your grades.  I know that this situation may alter, that your grades may agree with your letters or worse yet that your letters may glow with optimism and your grades shine with the faint light of decay.  All things being equal perhaps your present course is the best, but tell me, Linda, is there any hope for you?

 

Hm?

 

The Lutzes will be here at 9:00 o’clock tomorrow by Union Pacific R.R.  We shall whisk them to the house, wash their little paddy paws, back into the car, pick up Russell Baldwin (an old friend of our school days) then over the freeways to Jack and Joyce and a thirty-five pound turkey, courtesy of bl. Joneses.  Whole tribe will be present, including Bob and Bob and new bobbie, I mean baby.  Should be a hectic, but fun type day.  I will report on it to you.

 

Hell, no more paper.  I love you.

Chuck Jones’ letters to his daughter, Linda

 

Post #31

 

[Because there is discussion in this letter about the exorbitant price of tickets for a college football game and related items, here are some statistics to put the amounts in perspective:

Cost of Living 1952
Average wages per year $3,850.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas 20 cents
Average Cost of a new car $1,700.00
Average Cost of Rent $80.00 per month
LB of Hamburger Meat 53 cents
Average House Price 2,028]

November 19, 1952

 

 

Dear Linda;

 

Listen you foul little beast, how’s about a letter?  Hm?  Postcard?  Bit of a message scribbled in blood on an old petticoat and smuggled out in a loaf of pumpernickel?  Or don’t you export pumpernickel from old Quarter Circle V Bar?  No letter Monday, no letter Tuesday, what’s the deal? 

 

Your voice Satirday sounded healthy, but a little frustrated.  Hope it gets de-frustrated soon.  Any break?  How do you like the word ‘Satirday’?  How about ‘Satireday’, the day we satirize things?  Brilliant wit, eh?  Yes, indeed.

 

The big game for Los Angles this weekend to end all big games.  UCLA and USC meeting for the first time with both teams undefeated, untied, winner to go to the Rose Bowl with a fair chance to be judged national champs.  Thank goodness they’re going to televise it, otherwise there would be rioting at the gates of the Coliseum.  Even at five bucks per seat, plus two or three bucks for parking (can you imagine that?) thirty-five cents for hot dogs and twenty cents for cokes, seventy-five cents for programs and God knows what else.  Scalpers, of course, are running rife.  I imagine by game time a brace of tickets between the goal posts, that is on the flat side, will sell for sixty to a hundred dollars.  If that sounds impossible, well, last weekend at the Michigan/Notre Dame game two seats brought seventy-five dollars.  Just what prompts people to want to see a game that badly I do not know, but they do.  I can’t remember a game ever meaning that much to me, even though I used to get almost sick with excitement when a really big game came along.

 

Heigh-ho or rather ho-hum.  I’m a little sleepy.  Been slamming through another Coyote and Roadrunner, as I may have mentioned.  These are sort of money-in-the-bank type pictures.  We don’t have to worry about establishing a premise or continuity or character development much or trick backgrounds.  Everything’s pretty open.  Just sit down and start drawing and when all the gags are roughed out, arrange them according to pace, so’s the picture will build in tempo, find myself a strong gag to end on and I’m in business.  Timing is a snap because no dialogue and there’s no worry about making it too long, because I can time the gags as I go along and use just as many as I need.  All in all, life could be very simple and maybe a little bit dull if all I had to do was direct coyote and r.r.s.

 

Not that I want to be a slobby old father, but ‘twould be nice to hear from you, if you haven’t written already.  If so, write again.

 

Love LOVE LOVE loooooooooooooooooove…….XXXX

 

s/Daddy

Chuck Jones’ letters to his daughter, Linda

 

Post #30

 

November 13, 1952

 

 

Dear Linda;

 

Your letter on the round up I found vivid and exciting, quite a deal all the way around.  How is your Technicolored hand?  If you think those calves were a problem think how they would have been if they had known what was in store for them.  I’ve often thought that one of the saving graces about being a so-called dumb animal is that you can’t anticipate your problems and you don’t worry about them afterwards.  Being castrated, to paraphrase P.G. Wodehouse, can never be an unmixedly pleasant experience, but it is undoubtedly easier if you don’t know it is going to happen, or care particularly afterwards.  The treatment you guys gave these beasts was rough enough, god knows, but seeing them after on the range one would never suppose that they had enjoyed (?) an experience that to a human being might be slightly frustrating.

 

Remember the square dance at the opening of the service station?  Not so.  ‘Twasn’t a service station at all, but the opening of a new city hall and civic center at the small township of Bell, a town about opposite Westchester, but about eight miles inland.  It was quite an experience.  We were slated to dance on a parking lot (one square of us [from Rip ‘n’ Snort] and one of the Levis and Laces, Ralph [Maxheimer] to call), which had been covered with some kind of goop to make it danceable.  The teeming multitudes were to watch us dance, be impressed, take up square dancing themselves and so live happily ever afterward. 

 

There were several slight hitches.  The impresario who had arranged the deal had gotten gutter-drunk early in the day and swarmed home in a stage of black forgetfulness.  Those officials who remained were not at home, but they were certainly gorgeously looped. 

 

If we had gone up and told them we were the trained dog act, they would have accepted us with bland faith, but they wouldn’t have known what to do about it.  They didn’t know what to do with a bunch of trained square dancers either, so they stared at us in glassy contemplation then turned without another word, climbed upon a ribbon-bedecked grandstand on the other side of the City Hall and started talking to a small group of Solid Citizens arrayed before them.  Most of these were in a happy state of rigidity too so things proceeded in an orderly and steamily vacuous way: drunks applauding drunks, a sweet civic picture for the multitude of frisky moppets who seemed to be everywhere under foot. 

 

We walked pensively back to our parking lot where six or eight hangover cases were scattered around on benches provided for just such emergencies.  A band now appeared.  Square dance band?  Nope.  Twelve pieces in dress suits who climbed into another bandstand and began tootling away in stringy harmony like a poor man’s Guy Lombardo.  They had never heard of us and once we had heard of them, we had no desire to repeat the experience. 

 

Another interesting factor was the sound system provided for the girl vocalist, mm-hm, they even had one of those.  This sound system had the interesting faculty of either being off altogether or on altogether.  No delicate shading or foolishness like that.  Part of the time this poor little dame in her flamboyant vestments was trebling away in a thin little voice that barely reached out of the bandstand and the next second she was drowned in a torrent of sound so overwhelming in its violence that she could not hear the orchestra, for this sound system not only blasted eight million decibels, but lowered the key to a thunderous base that set the electric wires vibrating clear to El Segundo.  I am told that this awe-inspiring auditory spectacle had no visible effect on the drunken City Fathers who continued with untroubled eloquence their paternal maunderings. 

 

It must have been a touching spectacle to have watched these public servants mouthing their platitudes into this great vortex of sound and to see the audience respond with soundless clapping as the thunder and storming broke around their liqueous shoulders all unbeknownst.  Such is the peace of true biliousness. 

 

Eventually Ralph got impatient and pushed his way to the turn-table, made some rapid adjustments with a nail-file, ushered the bewildered orchestra into the Men’s Room, locked the door and carried on the exhibition for one of the smallest audiences in one of the biggest arenas in square dance history.  After which, we released the orchestra, most of whom had fallen asleep on toilet seats, whispered our good-byes to the one sober policeman and the firemen, who were all sober, but introspective, and pushed our way to the street through platoons of children and windrows of drunks. 

 

An electrifying evening, all in all.

 

Last night we appeared on a square dance program over KECA television, sort of a barn dance deal.  Very corny show, but the dancing was fun and the experience was, too.  I am told by those who saw it that we looked quite good, considering what we start with, physiologically speaking.

 

If Dottie hasn’t sent you permission to go to Shirley’s, I shall, of course, do so, by special courier if necessary.  I think it will be great fun.

 

Goom bye..my best and highest regards to all.

 

Holy Christ, my poor old typing is degenerating into shambles of the first order.

 

I love you…

 

Daddy

Chuck Jones’ letters to his daughter, Linda

 

Post #29

 

Friday, Nov. 8, 1952

 

Dear Linda;

 

Good old Friday afternoon!  This has been a hectic week, what with the election and post-election hullabaloo (two l’s in hullabaloo?  or is it hulaballo? No, that’s obviously wrong.  Just a minute and I’ll look it up….Ah, yes, hullabaloo, a loud and confused noise, uproar, tumult.).  Well anyway, what with the election out of the way things are beginning to simmer down a little, almost as if people were not at each other’s throats three short days ago.  The losers are accepting the new order of things with surprising grace and beginning to appreciate the fact that they can enjoy the fun of criticism.  The winners are beginning to lose the smugness from their faces now that they realize they, or rather their party, must now deliver, and that when it fails to they become the ready targets for their Democratic friends.  Indeed, the position of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is not without its advantages.

 

Here’s a nice word—nestled in close to hullabaloo: hugger-mugger.  It means 1. Secret, sly. 2. slovenly.

 

Here’s another: Hudibras: burlesque, heroic.  Isn’t that an odd one?  Sinclair Lewis once said that if he must choose one book to carry with him on the proverbial desert island it could only be a Webster’s Unabridged dictionary and you can easily see why.  Besides all the fascinating facts and bits of odd information, things like this happen: here is on this same page the name Huassar, an Inca of Peru (1495-1532) who was put to death by his brother Atahualpa.  Looking up Atahualpa we find this:  ‘Last Inca of Peru, put to death by Pizarro, 1533.’  He wasn’t the last Inca very long, not longer than a year after he assassinated his brother, Pizarro came swarming in and put him to death.  We could go on easily and quickly piece out the whole picture of the time.  We can get information about Peru, about Incas, about Pizarro and each of these words will give us other key words and so we can continue on until we have formed a story and an era like piecing together some fascinating puzzle.  What fun it is to be alive!

 

We are going to Luby’s house tomorrow night to eat some wild duck, shot by Gene [Poddany] on his last hunting trip.  I dread it in a way.  Wild game sort of leaves me cold.  But what the Hell, it gives them pleasure and I don’t suppose it will kill me.  I hope not.  As Mark Twain once said when he narrowly avoided death, “I wasn’t killed that time and I never found cause to regret it.”

 

Tonight we are going out to Maywood to dance at the opening of a gigantic service station, for god’s sake.  Just why we should do this I do not know.  Square dancers may be nuts but this seems over the limit.

 

Your loving sire…..

 

Chuck Jones Exhibition Benefits Center for Creativity

Craig Kausen, Chuck Jones' grandson, will be the special guest of the Morgan Hill Downtown organization at a reception tonight at 17380 Monterey Rd. in Morgan Hill (just a short drive from San Jose.)  If you're in the neighborhood, please drop in and introduce yourself! 

Tomorrow night, Craig will present an evening of Chuck Jones cartoons 'under the stars' in downtown Morgan Hill.  Visit this website to learn more: Morgan Hill Downtown. 

Chuck Jones: On character (and babies)

"If you want a midget to look like a baby, don't put a cigar in his mouth."
 --Chuck Jones, writing in Chuck Reducks

Chuck Jones’ letters to his daughter, Linda

Post # 28

Thursday, November 6, 1952

Dearest Linda;

Well--, at last!  I’ve finally found a hole big enough in a day to write to you, I have been pouring it on indeed and was loth .. er .. loath to break into the mood.  (‘Loth’ is another and quite acceptable way of spelling ‘loath’.)

The elections are now things of the past and we who lost are licking our wounds with gentle introspection.  As some politician once said after just such a defeat, “I contend we took one Hell of a beating.”  We cannot ameliorate our feelings by excuses, the long and short of it is that we received a frightful clobbering.  Why, I do not know.

The Republicans are now firmly in command, perhaps in a way this a good thing, for now they must prove the words they have been spraying so freely around.  If they do, then we must acknowledge that they are men of good faith and that they are a good change for the country.  If they do not, then they must in two years face an election that can change the entire face of the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate.  Two years beyond that they must again face a presidential election.  If, in the time allotted them, they cannot prove that they have the interest of the people held higher than any special interest, then indeed they will sink back into a political morass worse than the one from which they have just emerged.  I do not think that the people of the United States will be gulled twice.  I believe that Dwight Eisenhower is a fine, intelligent and kindly man.  It remains to be seen whether he can control his own party and we must appraise him partly by the men he includes in his cabinet for this will be the first indication of what his policies are to be.  I hope with the keenest intensity that he is a fine and spotless president and that his stewardship will be counted as one of our best.  We’ll wait and see.

Have you thought any more about giving some drawing, nicely matted of course, for some gifts?  Or would you rather not?  Don’t matter to me.  (“don’t” in last sentence was intentional, don’t know why.)

Just returned from a quick trip down town to pick up a few little things for carving, sand paper, files, etc.  What a terrible, terrible depressing place downtown is.  Sadness, sickness, misery, hopelessness.  A painful experience.  Of course, that is a small section and a very poor one (Second and Broadway), but how dreadful that humans must endure such.

One fact emerges crystal clear, though, and that is that you are a super daughter: a slim straight assurance that some of my dreams never die.  In short, I love you.

 

Craig Kausen & George Daugherty: Bugs Bunny on Broadway Interviews

George Daugherty in rehearsal with the RTE Symphony Orchestra the day of the premier of his "Bugs Bunny on Broadway" in Dublin, Ireland at the National Concert Hall on Earlsfort Terrace.

Darragh Doyle interviewed Craig Kausen (Chuck Jones' grandson) and George Daugherty, creator, producer and conductor of "Bugs Bunny on Broadway."  You can read his blog post by clicking here and see more photos of the rehearsal.