10 Favorite Cartoons of Animator Chuck Jones

Academy Award-winning animator Chuck Jones (1912-2002) directed and created such iconic cartoon figures as Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Pepé Le Pew, and Roadrunner. His animated TV specials include Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In the following list, compiled in 1984, Jones discussed his favorites among the cartoons he directed.

Contents

"One Froggy Evening" (1955)
"What's Opera, Doc?" (1957)
"Feed the Kitty" (1952)
"A Bear for Punishment" (1951)
"Duck Amuck" (1953)
"Duck Dodgers in the 241/2th Century" (1953)
"For Scent-Imental Reasons" (1949)
"Whoa, Be-Gone!" (1958)
"The Dot and The Line" (1965)
"The Scarlet Pumpernickel" (1950)
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

1. "One Froggy Evening" (1955)

"It was a difficult cartoon to do, and I'm most proud of the fact that the difficulty and effort doesn't show in the product."

2. "What's Opera, Doc?" (1957)

"We took 14 hours and cut it down to six minutes. We played the music straight -- we had a sixty-piece orchestra."

3. "Feed the Kitty" (1952)

"A pugnacious dog is overcome with love for a kitten. It's just one of my favorites."

4. "A Bear for Punishment" (1951)

"This was an Archie Bunker story before its time, and we had a great cast, Bea Benaderet, Billy Bletcher, and Stan Freberg."

5. "Duck Amuck" (1953)

"Daffy has a long fight with the person drawing the cartoon. I had always wanted to do a story like that. It was a challenge, but it sure was fun."

6. "Duck Dodgers in the 241/2th Century" (1953)

"Naturally, this was a Buck Rogers satire. We did a lot of experimenting. We did this in 1953, before there was a Cape Canaveral -- we didn't even know what rockets were. You know, our cartoon looks just like Cape Canaveral. I'm often kidded that I'm the one who really designed Cape Canaveral."

7. "For Scent-Imental Reasons" (1949)

"This won an Academy Award in 1949. The star was Pepé Le Pew, and this is one of my favorites because I admire Pepé so much. Really, I want to be just like he was in this cartoon."

8. "Whoa, Be-Gone!" (1958)

"I had to include a Roadrunner picture in this list. The Roadrunner has no dialogue, so it crosses all international borders. This is my favorite Roadrunner."

9. "The Dot and The Line" (1965)

"It's quite an unusual picture, and it won an Academy Award in 1965. This is the plot: A line falls in love with a dot, and a dot falls in love with a squiggle. I got this idea from a book by Norton Juster."

10. "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" (1950)

"Daffy tries to sell a script to Jack Warner. We had all the characters in this one, and we really had the opportunity to play with Daffy's character. It was a lot of fun."

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

Helen Davies, Marjorie Dorfman, Mary Fons, Deborah Hawkins, Martin Hintz, Linnea Lundgren, David Priess, Julia Clark Robinson, Paul Seaburn, Heidi Stevens, and Steve Theunissen