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The animators throughout Bugs' history have treated the terms rabbit and hare as synonymous. Taxonomically they are not synonymous, being somewhat similar but observably different types of lagomorphs. Hares have much longer ears than rabbits, so Bugs might seem to be of the hare family, and many more of the cartoon titles include the word "hare" rather than "rabbit". Within the cartoons, although the term "hare" comes up sometimes (for example, Bugs drinking "hare tonic" to "stop falling hare"), Bugs as well as his antagonists most often refer to the character as a "rabbit". The word "bunny" is of no help in answering this question, as it is a synonym for both young hares and young rabbits.
Bugs Bunny is a fictional rabbit who appears in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, which became Warner Bros. Cartoons in 1944. He remains one of the most popular and recognizable cartoon characters in the world. In 2002, he was named by TV Guide as the greatest cartoon character of all time. Currently, he is the corporate mascot for Warner Brothers, especially its animated productions.
According to Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare, he was "born" in 1940 in Brooklyn, New York, the product of the imaginations of Tex Avery (who directed A Wild Hare, Bugs Bunny's debut) and Robert McKimson (who created the definitive Bugs Bunny character design), among many others. According to Mel Blanc, the character's original voice actor, Bugs Bunny has a Flatbush accent, an equal blend of the Bronx and Brooklyn dialects. His catchphrase is a casual "What's up, Doc?", usually said while chewing a carrot. His other popular phrases include "Of course you realize...this means war" and "Ain't I a stinker?"
Bugs Bunny's first official appearance was in A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery and released on July 27, 1940. It was in this cartoon that he first emerged from his rabbit hole to ask Elmer Fudd, now a hunter, "What's up, Doc?" It was also the first meeting of the two characters in their fully developed forms. It is considered the first fully developed appearance of the character. Animation historian Joe Adamson counts A Wild Hare as the first "official" Bugs Bunny short. It is also the first cartoon where Mel Blanc uses the version of Bugs' voice that would become the standard.
Popeye the Sailor is a fictional hero famous for appearing in comic strips and animated films as well as numerous TV shows. He was created by Elzie Crisler Segar,[1] and first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. As of January 1, 2009, Segar's character of Popeye (though not the various films, TV shows, theme music, and other media based on him) has entered the public domain[2] in most countries.
Although Segar's Thimble Theatre strip, first published on December 19, 1919, was in its tenth year when Popeye made his debut, the sailor quickly became the main focus of the strip and Thimble Theatre became one of King Features' most popular strips during the 1930s. Thimble Theatre was carried on after Segar's death in 1938 by several writers and artists, including Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf. The strip, now titled Popeye, continues to appear in first-run installments in Sunday papers, written and drawn by Hy Eisman. The daily strips are reprints of old Sagendorf stories.
In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, and the Fleischers—and later Paramount's own Famous Studios—continued production through 1957.
Since then, Popeye has appeared in comic books, television cartoons, arcade and video games, hundreds of advertisements and peripheral products, and including a 1980 live-action film directed by Robert Altman starring comedian Robin Williams as Popeye.
Famous/Paramount continued producing the Popeye series until 1957, with Spooky Swabs being the last of the 125 Famous shorts in the series. Paramount then sold the Popeye film catalog to Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.), which was bought out by United Artists in 1958 and later merged with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which was itself purchased by Turner Entertainment in 1986. Turner sold off the production end of MGM/UA in 1988, but retained the film catalog, giving it the rights to the theatrical Popeye library.
The black-and-white Popeye shorts were shipped to South Korea in 1985, where artists retraced them into color. The process was intended to make the shorts more marketable in the modern television era, but prevented the viewers from seeing the original Fleischer pen-and-ink work, as well as the three-dimensional backgrounds created by Fleischer's "Stereoptical" process. Every other frame was traced, changing the animation from being "on ones" (24 fps) to being "on twos" (12 fps), and softening the pace of the films. These colorized shorts began airing on Superstation WTBS in 1986 during their Tom & Jerry and Friends 90-minute weekday morning and hour long weekday afternoon shows. The retraced shorts were syndicated in 1987 on a barter basis, and remained available until the early 1990s. Turner merged with Time Warner in 1996, and Warner Bros. (through its Turner subsidiary) therefore currently controls the rights to the Popeye shorts.
During the first half of 2006, a new series called Tom and Jerry Tales was produced at Warner Bros. Animation. Thirteen half-hour episodes (each consisting of three shorts) were produced, with only markets outside of the United States and United Kingdom signed up. The show then came to the U.K. in February 2006 on Boomerang, and it went to the U.S. on The CW4Kids on The CW.[7]. Tales is the first Tom and Jerry TV series that utilizes the original style of the classic shorts, along with the violence. This recently is the last Tom and Jerry-based cartoon show for television as the show ended on March 22, 2008.
The plots of each short usually center on Tom's (the cat) numerous attempts to capture Jerry (the mouse) and the mayhem and destruction that ensues. Since Tom rarely attempts to eat Jerry and because the pair actually seem to get along in some cartoon shorts it is unclear why Tom chases Jerry so much. Some reasons given may include normal feline/murine enmity, duty according to his owner, Jerry's attempt at ruining a task that Tom is entrusted with, revenge, Jerry saving other potential prey (such as ducks, canaries, or goldfish) from being eaten by Tom or competition with another cat, and attempts to seduce feline femme fatales, among other reasons
After the last of the Deitch cartoons were released,Jones had just ended his thirty-plus year tenure at Warner Bros. Cartoons and started his own animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions, with partner, Les Goldman. Beginning in 1963, Jones and Goldman went on to produce 34 more Tom and Jerry shorts, all of which carried Jones' distinctive style (and a slight psychedelic influence). However, despite being animated by essentially the same artists who worked with Jones at Warners, these new shorts had varying degrees of critical success.
Jones had trouble adapting his style to Tom and Jerry's brand of humor, and a number of the cartoons favored poses, personality, and style over storyline. The characters underwent a slight change of appearance: Tom was given thicker, Boris Karloff-like eyebrows (resembling Jones' Grinch or Count Blood Count), a less complex look (including the color of his fur becoming gray), sharper ears, and furrier cheeks, while Jerry was given larger eyes and ears, a lighter brown color, and a sweeter, Porky Pig-like expression
Another recurring character in the series was Quacker the duckling, who was later adapted into the Hanna-Barbera character Yakky Doodle. He appears in Little Quacker, The Duck Doctor, Just Ducky, Downhearted Duckling, Southbound Duckling, That's My Mommy, Happy Go Ducky and The Vanishing Duck. In addition. Butch also appeared as one of Tom's pals or chums as in some cartoons, where Butch is leader of Tom's buddies, who are Meathead and Topsy. The last recurring character is a small unnamed green devil that looks like Jerry. He only appears in two episodes: Springtime for Thomas and Smitten Kitten. Whenever Tom falls in love with a female cat, the devil advises Jerry to try to break the two apart
Tom is a blue-grey tomcat, who lives a pampered life, while Jerry is a small brown house mouse who always lives in close proximity to him. "Tom" is a generic name for a male cat or tomcat (the Warner Bros. cartoon character Sylvester was originally called "Thomas"). Tom was originally called "Jasper" in the very first short, Puss Gets the Boot, while Jerry was unnamed, though the animators gave him the nickname "Jinx
Tom is a blue-grey tomcat, who lives a pampered life, while Jerry is a small brown house mouse who always lives in close proximity to him. "Tom" is a generic name for a male cat or tomcat (the Warner Bros. cartoon character Sylvester was originally called "Thomas"). Tom was originally called "Jasper" in the very first short, Puss Gets the Boot, while Jerry was unnamed, though the animators gave him the nickname "Jinx
Tom changes his love interest many times. The first love interest is Sheikie and speaks in a haughty tone in The Zoot Cat, and calls him "Tommy" in The Mouse Comes to Dinner. The second and most frequent love interest of Tom's is Toodles Galore, who never has any dialogue in Tom and Jerry
Jerry adopted a little gray mouse orphan named Nibbles (also later known as Tuffy), coming from a certain "Mrs. Bide-a-Wee Mouse Home." In Nibbles' earliest appearances, he is depicted as constantly hungry and he also wears a diaper. In later years, Nibbles lost the gluttonous element of his personality and often spoke, usually in a foreign accent or language keeping with the theme and setting of the short (for example, French in Touché, Pussy C
In 1960, MGM decided to produce new Tom and Jerry shorts, and had producer William L. Snyder arrange with Czech-based animation director Gene Deitch and his studio, Rembrandt Films, to make the films overseas in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Deitch/Snyder team turned out 13 shorts, many of which have a surrealistic quality.
Since the Deitch/Snyder team had seen only a handful of the original Tom and Jerry shorts, the resulting films were considered unusual, and, in many ways, bizarre. The characters' gestures were often performed at high speed, frequently causing heavy motion blur. As a result, the animation of the characters looked choppy and sickly. The soundtracks featured sparse music, spacey sound effects, dialogue that was mumbled rather than spoken, and heavy use of reverb. Fans that typically rooted for Tom criticized Deitch's cartoons for having Tom never become a threat to Jerry, and the only time when Tom ever attempts to hurt Jerry is when he gets in his way. Tom's new owner, a corpulent white man, was also more graphically brutal in punishing Tom's mistakes as compared to Mammy. Surprisingly, the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoons are still rerun today on a semi-regular basis.
These shorts are among the few Tom and Jerry cartoons not to carry the "Made In Hollywood, U.S.A." phrase at the end. Due to Deitch's studio being behind the Iron Curtain, the production studio's location is omitted entirely on it.
Tom then fires a dart gun at Jerry, catching him by the tail as he attempts to dive into his mousehole. Tom grabs the mouse and tie him to a rocket, which he lights up. However, Jerry helps Tom to tie himself up. Jerry emerges from the ropes, with Tom oblivious until he waves to Tom. The cat fails to blow out the rocket, and it shoots up with a helpless Tom, and explodes in the air, provoking a set of fireworks forming the United States flag. Jerry proudly salutes the flag, and we see another war communique: "Send more cats! Lt. Jerry Mouse"
Like a number of other animated cartoons in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Tom and Jerry was not considered politically correct in later years. There were at least twenty-four cartoons that featured either racism or with characters shown in blackface following an explosion, which are subsequently cut when shown on television today, although The Yankee Doodle Mouse blackface gag as well as another blackface gag at the end of Safety Second remain intact, depending on the country. The black maid, Mammy Two Shoes, is often considered racist because she is depicted as a poor black woman who has a rodent problem. Her voice was redubbed by Turner in the mid-1990s in hopes of making the character sound less stereotypical; the resulting accent sounded more Irish than African-American. One cartoon in particular, His Mouse Friday, is often completely out of television rotation due to the cannibals being seen as racist stereotypes. If shown, the cannibals' dialogue is edited out, although their mouths can be seen moving.
In 1945, Jerry made an appearance in the live-action MGM musical feature film Anchors Aweigh, in which, through the use of special effects, he performs a dance routine with Gene Kelly. In this sequence, Gene Kelly is telling a class of school kids a fictional tale of how he earned his Medal of Honor. Jerry is the king of a magical world populated with cartoon animals, whom he has forbidden to dance as he himself does not know how. Gene Kelly's character then comes along and guides Jerry through an elaborate dance routine, resulting in Jerry awarding him with a medal. Jerry speaks and sings in this short film; his voice is performed by Sara Berner. Tom has a cameo in the sequence as one of Jerry's servants.
Both Tom and Jerry appear with Esther Williams in a dream sequence in another big-screen musical, Dangerous When Wet. In the film, Tom and Jerry are chasing each other underwater, when they run into Esther Williams, with whom they perform an extended synchronized swimming routine. Tom and Jerry have to save Williams from a lecherous octopus, who tries to lure and woo her into (many of) his arms.
