When Chuck Jones's 1949 short animated film starring Pepé le Pew, "For Scent-i-mental Reasons" won the Oscar for best short animated film at the Oscars held in March of 1950, he received many congratulatory telegrams (of course, he did not get the actual Oscar statuette, that honor was bestowed upon the producer, the irascible Eddie Selzer), but of all of the congratulations, the telegram below, from the inimitable Tex Avery is perhaps the most delightful. This artfact will be on display at the soon-to-open Chuck Jones Experience at Circus Circus in Las Vegas.
You might very well look at this image and ask yourself, "What do these characters have to do with our nation's founding?" Well wonder no more, here's the story as told to us by a very wise person...
In the middle 1970s Chuck Jones was producing and directing several half hour TV specials based on the George Selden "Cricket in Times Square" books and characters. The last of a trio of films starring Harry Cat, Chester Cricket and Tucker Mouse was "Yankee Doodle Cricket" and as was often the case with Chuck, he made a thorough investigation of the period (revolutionary, my good fellow!) and while working on model drawings, the look and feel of the film, he took that left turn at Albuquerque and created the drawing that was used as the line for this hand-painted limited edition cel that stars Pepe le Pew, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam as they witness Daffy Duck applying his "Daffy Duck" (did you think I was going to say his "John Hancock"?) to the Ducklaration of Independence.
Each "Ducklaration" in the edition has been hand-painted by expert cel painters, one color at a time (from darkest to lightest) on the reverse side of the acetate (cel) sheet, Chuck approved each by hand-signing each example. To add this special work of art to your collection, please contact your Chuck Jones Gallery art consultant and you will receive two free tickets to "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony" on Saturday, August 6, 2011 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, Irvine, California and two free tickets to the Chuck Jones Big Draw on Sunday, August 7, 2011 at SOCO (South Coast Collection) in Costa Mesa, California, a $150.00 value! San Diego: 888-294-9880; Santa Fe: 800-290-5999; Tustin: 800-959-7175.
"Old Glory" limited edition hand-painted cel created from an original drawing by Chuck Jones for his 1939 film of the same title that had Uncle Sam demonstrating to Porky Pig why learning the Pledge of Allegiance was important. Edition of 39 examples, 12.5" x 10.5" and hand-signed by Martha Sigal, one of the original Leon Schlesinger Productions ink & paint department denizens. Purchase this cel from your Chuck Jones Gallery by July 4, 2011 and receive 2 free tickets to the August 6th performance of "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony" at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, California as well as two free tickets to "The Chuck Jones Big Draw" a family event on Sunday, August 7, 2011 from 11 AM to 5 PM, held at SOCO (South Coast Collection) in Costa Mesa. Call San Diego: 888-294-9880 or email SanDiego@ChuckJones.com; Santa Fe 800-290-5999 or email SantaFe@ChuckJones.com and Tustin 800-959-7175 or email Tustin@ChuckJones.com for more details and to place your order.
As happens here, on our way to other things we stumbled across these two beautiful Daffy Duck model drawings by Chuck Jones (graphite on 12 field animation paper.) They so perfectly capture the character of Daffy (Chuck once remarked, "I dream of being Bugs Bunny, but I wake up Daffy Duck."), that it was imperative we stop and share them with you. And because they are so classic, we're following them with Chuck's 1953 masterpiece, "Duck Amuck". Enjoy!
During his tenure as vice-president in charge of children's programming at ABC television, Jones produced and directed three half-hour television specials based on stories from Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book". In 1973, the story of a young boy raised by wolves in the jungle, premiered to immediate acclaim. Narrated by Roddy McDowall, Mowgli learns about the love, justice and the jungle code of loyalty.
Early storyboard by Jones with a nascent Mowgli in the upper right corner.
Pre-production model sketch of Mowgli by Chuck Jones. You can begin to see how Jones is determining the character and personality of Mowgli through his use of the drawn line.
Production layout drawing by Chuck Jones. Providing hundreds of layout drawings for each of the films he directed, Jones here has clearly defined the character of Mowgli and establishes the model from which the animator's created the mood and movement of each scene.
What better way to start your Memorial Day weekend than enjoying 6 minutes and 1 second of Chuck Jones's inspired animation, but first let's take a look at 3 of his layout drawings for his 1952 Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon, "Going! Going! Gosh!"
Wile E. Coyote (Carnivorous Vulgaris) attempts to catch the Road Runner (Accelerati Incredibus) nine different ways in this cartoon.
Even his backside is expressive which puts to rest the canard that the 'eyes have it.'
There is nothing sadder than poor Wile E. hoisted on his own petard.
P.S. There's just a little bit of Italian at the beginning of the film...
There really aren't enough superlatives to adequately describe the beauty of this short film. From its perfect screenplay to its totes awesome animation and all of the ingredients in-between (layouts, voice over, sound effects, color, pacing) Chuck Jones's 1966 Oscar-winning "The Dot and the Line" will always be a perfect work of art.
Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art has said, “Great art is essentially work that has proven inexhaustible in terms of value it gives to those who pay attention to it. It says ‘I am in the present tense despite the fact that I was made five or fifty years ago.’”
We had stumbled upon this advertisement that MGM had placed in Variety when "The Dot and the Line" was nominated for an Oscar on our way to something else, but it stopped us long enough to share it with you and to share the animated film as well. Enjoy!
Daffy Duck doesn’t just do rich; he does ‘comfortably well-off!’ “I’m in the Money” depicts this despot of ducks drowning in ducats and buckets of lucre. Talk about bling.
Daffy Duck doesn’t want to share and says so. Reminiscing about his childhood once, Chuck Jones spoke about how we learn to be socially acceptable by telling the story of a birthday party given for his 6th or 7th year. A beautiful cake had been lovingly prepared by his mother and when he, presented with the cake and a knife with which to cut slices for the other celebrants, stated “I won’t be needing the knife as I don’t plan on sharing the cake with anyone,” and was then quickly whisked away from the table and spent the rest of his birthday alone in his room contemplating the difference between what we really want and what is considered acceptable behavior in polite society.
“It is never a struggle for [Daffy] to determine his priorities. Daffy does what we would like to do if we had the guts.
"Good comedy arises from the ability to bring to the surface, without shame, parts of yourself you would rather keep hidden. A character such as Daffy can act out things that you are not particularly interested in having anyone associate with you, but that you are perfectly willing to associate with someone you draw.
"He is so honest that it hurts. Underlying his avariciousness, sneakiness, and selfishness is an admirable will to survive.” Chuck Jones, Chuck Reducks
“I’m in the Money” is a limited edition fine art reproduction on canvas and has been lovingly created from an original oil painting by Chuck Jones (pictured on page 146 of Chuck Reducks, Drawing from the Fun Side of Life and on page 81 of Stroke of Genius: A Collection of Paintings and Musings on Life, Love and Art by Chuck Jones.)
"The Abominable Snow Rabbit" shoveled its way into theaters on May 20, 1961. Directed by Chuck Jones (and co-directed by Maurice Noble) the cartoon finds our intrepid heroes (Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck) on their way to Palm Springs, which is all fine and well, except they took that wrong turn at _________ (according to Daffy they should've turned west at East St. Louis,) whatever, (have you ever noticed that Bugs's sense of direction is, well, a bit off, especially when he's tunneling underground? This is hardly the first time such a 'wrong turn at __________' has thrown our man in Havana -- excuse me -- our rabbit in the Himalayas off course.)
But I digress. The drawing above is a rough layout drawing by Chuck Jones of Daffy Duck when first introduced to the Abominable Snowman. It is graphite on 12 field animation paper and if you watch this clip carefully you will see how closely Chuck's animators (for this film: Ken Harris, Richard Thompson, Bob Bransford, and Tom Ray) hew to his layouts.
Original model drawing by Chuck Jones, graphite on paper, (see below complete model sheet, upper left corner) of the Road Runner for the first Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoon, "Fast & Furry-ous" directed by Jones. It beep-beeped into theaters on September 16, 1949.
Rebecca Solnit writes in her essay, "From the Faraway to Some Nearby ACME" which appeared in Art Issues, December 1999: "The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote is the apotheosis of the cartoon, paring down its myriad possible ingredients to a simple recipe: space, delicious mostly for its blankness and invitation to move, desire eternally unfulfilled, hope that springs eternal anyway, unshakeably one-dimensional personalities, infinitely abusable bodies, and a whole lot of action."
