‘That’s All Folks!’ Warner Bros. Artwork Arrives In Connecticut

By Shannon Hicks

BRIDGEPORT — For nearly 40 years, the Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio produced animated shorts, or cartoons, that entertained audiences of all ages. Warner Bros. opened its cartoon studio in 1930, but the theatrical division closed its doors in 1969.

While the studio may have stopped producing new shorts, the entertainment value of the cartoons with characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd have not faded in the decades since their release. In fact, 60 years after Bugs Bunny was introduced in a 1938 cartoon called “Porky’s Hare Hunt,” the character continues to win major national popularity polls. The phrase “That’s All Folks!” and the familiar red logo that surrounds Porky Pig as he stutters through those three words are etched into nearly every American’s memory, regardless of age.

Originally produced for screening in theatres, the studio’s cartoons are now shown on television hundreds of times daily around the world.

This month, The Barnum Museum has opened an exhibition called “That’s All Folks! Bugs Bunny and Friends of Warner Bros. Cartoons.” The traveling exhibition is slated for a three-month visit at the landmark institution in downtown Bridgeport.

The exhibition was curated and incepted ten years ago by Steve Schneider, the author of That’s All Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation. When the show debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in the late 1980s, it was the first time a cartoon-themed exhibition was ever developed, according to The Barnum Museum’s new curator, Kathleen Maher. The show has consistently received critical acclaim.

“I think this is going to be a very popular show,” Ms Maher said last week, the day before the exhibit’s October 2 public opening. “I don’t think anyone will step through these doors and not identify with something. It really transcends age. It’s a lot of fun.”

Through January 8, visitors can view original production artwork from the Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio in the form of over 160 drawings, paintings, celluloids and promotion pieces that were created between 1930 through the early 1960s.

“That’s All Folks!” is arranged into seven sections, each with artwork and interpretive text panels. The exhibition opens with “The History of Warner Bros.,” which offers a general introduction to the world of the Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio and its special contributions to the history of animation and American culture.

Warner Bros. cartoons are seen today, along with Disney Studios productions and similar higher-quality animated cartoons, as monuments to creativity.

In the summer of 1929, former Disney animator Hugh Harman and Rudolf Isling came up with a groundbreaking idea and presented it to Leon Schlesinger, of Pacific Art & Title (which later became Warner Bros.) The team used a character named Bosko — a male monkey who wore pants and a small rounded-top hat — to sell the idea of a cartoon series that would compete with Disney’s Mickey Mouse and the studio’s “Silly Symphonies.”

The team finished its first cartoon, “Bosko The Talk-Ink Kid,” by the end of 1929. Although it was never released by the studio, the cartoon is believed to be the first talking animated cartoon (remember, Disney’s “Steamboat Willie” was synchronized music and sound effects only). Schlesinger backed the team with a salary of $50 a week, and the ongoing cartoon war between the two studios was started.

In May 1930, the Harman-Isling team had its first cartoon release. “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub” partnered Bosko with his pal Honey, a female monkey. More cartoons and new characters followed, with Goopy Gear, Foxy, Piggy, Buddy and Cookie among them, but it was not until the legendary director and animator Fred “Tex” Avery joined Warner Bros. in 1935 that the studio hit its stride.

“He was really the creator, for Warner Bros., of the most significant characters,” Ms Maher pointed out. Avery led a pool of animators who brought life to Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, among other characters.

That same year, Warner Bros. introduced its first big character: Porky Pig. Porky was the collaboration of Avery and Bob (“Wobert Cwampett”) Clampett. The two worked in a dilapidated little building at the back of Warner Bros.’ Hollywood lot that had been dubbed “Termite Terrace.” While the outside of the building may not have been impressive, the work and creativity that was going on inside its walls put the fledgling cartoon studio under the brightest spotlight the world of animation art has ever seen.

Along with Avery, who directed 57 cartoons during his five-year tenure with Warner Bros., and Bob Clampett (who actually designed the first Mickey Mouse doll for Walt Disney while still a teenager, before joining the Warner Bros. team as an animator in 1935), who animated the first “Merrie Melodies” ever made, the studio had four additional directors who have each achieved their own legendary status through history.

Isador “Friz” Freleng produced and directed over 300 cartoons during his 33-year career at Warner Bros. Robert McKimson joined the studio in 1946. He was eventually promoted to senior director and before he retired from Warner Bros. in 1969 was responsible for the direction of over 175 cartoons. Frank “Tish Tash” Tashlin handled direction for 33 cartoons, about one-third of which were Porky Pig adventures.

Chuck Jones, the same man who would later create The Grinch and The Lorax (among many others) for Dr Seuss, joined Warner Bros. in 1936 as an animator. He was soon assigned to Tex Avery’s unit, and later became the studio’s sixth director.

Jones directed the cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?” in 1957. In the piece, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd go through the motions of a bittersweet opera with some of the most lavish background and sound work ever produced by the studio. Thirty-five years after it was released, Jones’ cartoon was inducted into the National Film Registry in December 1992 for being “among the most culturally, historically or aesthetically significant films of our time.”

It is important to note here that while the directors at Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio were the ones who received the majority of the credit for each cartoon, an entire pool of animators, sound effects people (both with character voices and background noises), and musical directors all contributed to a single cartoon. During the early days of cartoons, when every cel was produced by hand, a single six or seven-minute cartoon would be in production from several months to a year, with dozens of artists working on different stages of the process.

A section in the exhibition called “How Cartoons Were Made At Warner Bros.” offers a rare inside look at what was produced at Termite Terrace. Visitors can see original story sketches, model sheets, printed model sheets, character layout drawings, an exposure sheet, animation drawings, backgrounds, cel transfers and promotional drawings.

“Animation art is amazingly complex,” Ms Maher commented last week. The curator admitted that after seeing the artifacts that were being put into the new exhibition last week, she went home and watched a few “Merrie Melodies” and “Looney Tunes” releases again for the first time in years. The experience, she said, gave her a brand-new appreciation for the animators and their skills.

“These, to me, really stand as a tribute to animation genius,” she said.

Never intended for public display, the artwork reveals the talent and ingenuity that went into producing the finished films — a library of thousands that were in fact created for audiences of all ages.

Cartoons have always been generally accepted as entertainment for children. It has only been within the past decade, with the introduction of such mainstream fare as South Park, The Simpsons and King of the Hill, that cartoons aimed at an adult audience have become more prevalent.

When the animators at Warner Bros. were first creating their “Merrie Melodies” and “Looney Tunes” originals, the adult humor was a little more subtle. Hidden innuendoes in dialogue, characterization and even cartoon titles were not as obvious as what today’s animation projects rely on for their laughs.

Some of the Warner Bros.’ toons’ dialogue have references to happenings of the times when they were first produced, and even story lines seem completely incorrect by today’s standards (1943’s “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs,” which retold the children’s fairy tale Snow White with its main character in blackface, would never be allowed past any censors’ board today). But most of Warner Bros.’ punchlines continue to bring laughs from all ages today.

Disney Studios releases were “child-like” in their humor, said Ms Maher, while Warner Bros. creators used more “hard core, in your face humor that we still love today.”

Perhaps because they were seen as simply children’s entertainment, the brilliance of Warner Bros. cartoons was not recognized by critics and writers or the Academy of Arts & Sciences for nearly a decade after the introduction of “Merrie Melodies” and “Looney Tunes” became a regular release in movie theatres.

But once Manny Farber opened the door in 1943, when he wrote in The New Republic, “The surprising facts about them are that the good ones are masterpieces...,” the rest of Warner Bros.’ accolades began to roll into place. By 1958, the studio had been honored with five Emmy Awards for its cartoons, four of which were directed by Friz Freling. “Tweety Pie” (1947), “For Scent-imental Reasons” (1949, directed by Chuck Jones), “Speedy Gonzales” (1955), “Birds Anonymous” (1957) and “Knighty Knight Bugs” (1958) each earned an Emmy for the studio; another 21 cartoons were nominated between 1932 and 1963.

The Barnum exhibition continues with sections devoted to “Porky Pig and Daffy Duck,” the studio’s first major cartoon creations; “Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd,” which offers an in-depth look at the studio’s most famous creation and his eternally frustrated foil; and “Eternal Adversaries” (featuring Tweety Pie and Sylvester, and The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote). The section “Other Characters” offers visitors a look at some of the studio’s lesser-known but still adored characters, among Sniffles, Miss Prissy, Playboy Penguin, Henery Hawk and Pepe Le Pew.

Finally, the “Two Classic Cartoons” section presents finished cartoons shown on video screens in the museum’s brand-new special exhibitions wing. The gallery space being used for “That’s All Folks!” is an extension of the museum’s Special Exhibitions Wing. Formerly classroom space and additional storage area, the new 2,000 square foot gallery will now be used for additional exhibitions.

The Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio may have closed in 1969, but television rediscovered the cartoons during the mid 1970s and have been screening them ever since. Generations of children have grown up laughing with the antics of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Bosko, and they have continued to laugh at the cartoons as they grow up and understand some of the more adult punchlines.

Even now, says Kathleen Maher, Bugs Bunny and The Road Runner are still the most popular and identifiable characters ever created by any studio, beating even all the Disney and Muppets characters.

“No other studio has developed such a longstanding list of characters,” Ms Maher said. “Everyone has their favorite, and what’s amazing is that some of these are characters and their sayings are still with us today.”