(Writer's Note: This is an ongoing series on great animators of the 20th Century. Check out my previous series on Disney's Nine Old Men)
If Chuck Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) had stopped after "Duck Amuck," "One Froggy Evening," "What's Opera, Doc?" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," he would still be considered one of the greatest animators.
But he did so much more. While giving Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck some of their most memorable moments, Jones created classic characters like the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin the Martian, Pepé le Pew, Michigan J. Frog and many others.
"Chuck Jones (is) . . . the most influential individual in the history of animated film," claims film professor Bill Schaffer. "As a creator of globally recognised, intimately recalled, yet highly specific cartoon characters . . . (he) has no peer."
Looney Tunes Animator
Charles Martin Jones was born on September 21, 1912 in Spokane, Washington, and his family moved to Hollywood, California. His father ran a series of unsuccessful businesses, whose failures provided Jones with an endless supply of pencils and paper. He claimed that, by his high school graduation, he had produced over 200,000 drawings.
After graduating from the Chouinard Institute, Jones began washing cels for former Disney animator Ube Iwerks. There, Jones met his first wife: Dorothy Webster.
In 1933, Friz Freleng hired Jones to work at Leon Schlesinger Productions, the studio that produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for Warner Bros. Jones joined Tex Avery's team, which was banished to a nearby bungalow for space reasons. This became the infamous "Termite Terrace."
At Termite Terrace, Jones discovered creativity fostered by negligence. Schlesinger didn't care what his animators did as long as they produced work that sold. This allowed them to pursue their muses wherever they wished.
While Avery mocked Disney's cartoons, Jones' initial shorts were slavish imitations: lavish but humourless. It was only with 1942's "Dover Boys" that Jones "learned how to be funny."
In the 1940's, he drew the Private Snafu shorts that educated soldiers about army life, and befriended the writer: an aspiring children's author named Theodor Geisel.
After the war, Jones returned to Termite Terrace with a vengeance. Classics like "Bugs Bunny and the 3 Bears," "Rabbit Hood" (featuring an Errol Flynn cameo), and Daffy Duck's "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" poured out of his imagination and into history. Two of his shorts won Oscars: the 1949 documentary "So Much for So Little" and 1951's "For Scent-imental Reasons."
One of Jones' biggest achievements was permanently altering the Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck dynamic: changing the once wacky sidekick into Bugs' inept rival.
"Bugs is who we want to be," said Jones. "Daffy is who we are."
And there was "Duck Amuck," "One Froggy Evening," and "What's Opera, Doc?" Inducted into the National Registry in 1994, these 3 shorts are universally acclaimed masterpieces.
When Warner Bros. closed Termite Terrace in 1953, Jones joined Disney. However, he quickly realized that the only job he wanted at the Mouse House was Walt's. Since Walt Disney was unlikely to give that up, Jones quit and rejoined a revived Warner Bros. animation unit.
He continued with Warner until 1962, when his bosses discovered he had worked on UPA's animated feature film Gay Purr-ee. Since Jones had an exclusive contract, the studio fired him and Jack Warner shut down the animation unit not long after.
Tom and Jerry and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"
Jones, with his business partner Les Goldman, started an independent animation studio called Sib Tower 12 Productions. They found work producing Tom and Jerry shorts for MGM. In 1964, MGM bought the company, a move justified when Jones won his 3rd Oscar for "The Dot and the Line."
In 1966, Jones hooked up with his "Private Snafu" partner, now calling himself Dr. Seuss, in order to make the classic "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Geisel claimed Jones was the only person to do his stories justice, and history has proven him right. Horror actor Boris Karloff brilliantly narrated the tale.
Geisel and Jones collaborated again on the slightly-less-beloved "Horton Hears a Who" (not the Jim Carrey vehicle) in 1970. Unfortunately, Jones' feature film The Phantom Tollbooth didn't do well, and MGM let him go later that year.
Jones started another company, Chuck Jones Productions, and pitched The Curiosity Shop to ABC in 1971. He also worked on 3 adaptations of Rudyard Kipling stories: Mowgli's Brothers, The White Seal and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
1976 saw Jones return to Warner Bros, where he animated Bugs and Daffy for Carnival of the Animals, and linked several of his classic shorts for 1979's The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie. He produced new Road Runner shorts for The Electric Company and new material for 1979's Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales, and Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over (1980).
His wife Dorothy died in 1978; Jones married comic writer Marian Dern 3 years later.
The 80's and 90's saw Jones relishing his role as an elder statesman of animation. He sold cartoons through his daughter Linda's company, and developed a new cartoon character, Thomas Timberwolf. He appeared in the 1984 film Gremlins and animated sequences for its 1990 sequel.
He also gave lectures on animation, receiving an honorary degree from Oglethorpe University in 1993, winning an honorary Oscar in 1996, and getting a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. He personally painted an animated sequence on the very walls of London's Museum of the Moving Image.
Jones' last Looney Tunes short was 1996's "From Hare to Eternity," dedicated to Freleng who died in 1995. Jones himself died in 2002, of heart failure. He was the last surviving member of the Termite Terrace gang.
Dominic von Riedemann - Dominic is the Animated Film Feature Writer, and winner of 11 Suite 101 Editors' Choice Awards.
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