Chuck Jones, American animator supreme, died Friday at his home in Corona del Mar, Calif. He was 89–and regarded by many as the greatest maker of short cartoons in American movie history.
But that’s not all, folks.
A master of drawing, animation, wild humor and sheer cartoon buffoonery, Mr. Jones was the creator of some of the best-loved cartoons and characters in movies. The brain and hand behind sarcastic Bugs Bunny, raging Daffy Duck and befuddled Elmer Fudd, he probably brought more delight to more people than any of his colleagues.
He died of congestive heart failure, surrounded by his family, including his wife, Marian, and daughter Linda Jones Clough.
Working at Warner Bros. in the heyday of Looney Tunes, Mr. Jones gave birth to Pepe Le Pew, the seductive skunk, and those desert road warriors, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. And though he didn’t create Bugs, Elmer, Daffy or Porky Pig, Mr. Jones gave them their finest moments on screen in such lightning-fast gems as “What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957), “Duck Amuck” (1953) and “Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century” (1953).
Indeed, when the Cartoon Network presented a critics’ and cartoonists’ countdown of the 50 Greatest Cartoons in 1994, Mr. Jones dominated the list. He not only took the No. 1 spot–with “What’s Opera, Doc?”–but four of the top five and 10 of the top 50. Cartoonists young and old revered his work, with its matchlessly clean lines, expressive characters, rapid-fire humor and split-second timing.
His career spanned more than 60 years, beginning in 1938 with his Warner debut, “The Night Watchman,” and lasting through 2000, when he created “Timber Wolf.” Along the way he won many awards: three Oscars (for 1949’s “So Much, So Little” and “For Scent-imental Reasons,” and 1965’s “The Dot and the Line”); a Lifetime Achievement Oscar (1996); and honorary life membership in the Screen Directors Guild.
And he won the laughter and love of legions of fans around the world.
Yet for most of the early part of his career, from the late 1930s to the early ’60s, Mr. Jones was underrecognized. While critics heaped praise on early Disney in the ’30s and the stylized U.P.A. Gerald McBoing Boing shorts in the early ’50s, the brash, frenzied, wildly irreverent Looney Tunes of Mr. Jones–as well as of his Warner pals Bob Clampett, Tex Avery and Friz Freleng–were often taken for granted.
Born on Sept. 21, 1912, in Spokane, Wash., he graduated from Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia) and joined Warner Bros. in 1936, after first working as cel washer for Disney partner Ub Iwerks. He quickly became a leading member of the zany group that was about to change cartoon history, pouring out a stream of hilarious films–scored with the zesty carnival music of Carl Stalling and explosive multiple voices by the great Mel Blanc, the mighty mouth behind Bugs and Daffy.
Mr. Jones rose steadily, making the innovative “The Dover Boys” in 1942, winning his first two Oscars in 1949, and then in the 1950s unleashing a string of classics when short theatrical cartoons seemed under assault by television. Those masterpieces included the Road Runner cartoons, in which the fleet bird eternally eluded the endlessly frustrated Wile E. Coyote, whose elaborate traps (all from the Acme Co.) often ended with the hapless beast disappearing over a mesa ledge and vanishing into a tiny puff of smoke below.
“Duck Amuck” (1953) is the great reflexive cartoon in which Daffy is tormented by an unseen artist who keeps drawing and plunging him into one lunatic new costume and scene after another. “Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century,” beloved by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, charts the clash between space ranger Daffy and the ineffable pipsqueak Marvin the Martian.
The dazzling “One Froggy Evening” (1955) showcases the maddening Michigan J. Frog, a Jolsonesque singing amphibian who always clams up when a talent scout shows up.
Mr. Jones also worked on the 1966 TV classic “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
After he left Warner for a brief stopover at MGM, Mr. Jones freelanced, writing and directing the feature “The Phantom Tollbooth,” making cartoons for television (“Riki Tiki Tavi” and “The White Seal”) and later returning to Warner for compilation films like “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie” (1979).
