![]() ![]() (It would take about a decade for Daffy to become the arrogant, dumped-on fool of, say, Chuck Jones’ Duck Amuck.) Avery was also the one who developed a rabbit who’d been making the animation rounds, and found his true character in 1940’s A Wild Hare. He gradually started imposing his own ideas about pacing and jokes, resulting in dense yuk-fests like The Village Smithy and Porky’s Duck Hunt, which introduced a deranged, bouncing, whooping duck soon to be named Daffy. He didn’t want to charm people, he wanted to make them laugh. His solution? Stress that the company’s cartoons were comedies. Schlesinger cartoons were their slightly dirtier rivals, often based around jazz songs ( Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! I Haven’t Got a Hat, etc.), though they still struggled to find their voice. Disney shorts certainly weren’t always fun the Silly Symphonies, often built around classical music, were cute and serious, even pretentious. But he had grand ideas about making cartoons more manic, meta, and fun. At first, he played ball with the house style, not wanting to be fired. In 1935, as a former inker and an animator who had never directed, he scored a directing job at Leon Schlesinger Productions, whose cartoons were released by Warner Bros. via PolygonĪvery lied his way into his first gig. ![]() The Big Bad Wolf objects to theater latecomers in 1937’s Little Red Walking Hood Image: Warner Bros. Tex Avery’s tend to not have either foot in our world. Most cartoons still have a foot in reality. In 1946’s The Hick Chick, two characters get into a fight, and one of them jumps inside the other’s body, punching at him from inside his stomach. They’ll burst into pieces, like broken vases, or split in two like Dutch doors. In split-screen scenes, the characters will reach out to each other, transcending space. Characters talk to the audience, to the narrator, or to Avery himself. In one of Avery’s cartoons, 1944’s Big Heel-Watha - one of a number of Avery shorts with unfortunate racist gags - a character turns to the audience and says, “In a cartoon, you can do anything.” That might as well have been Avery’s mission statement. He’s not trying to play nice, like Disney, who he often mocked in his cartoons. When his name pops up onscreen, it’s a hint that what’s ahead is coming from a specific mindset that includes relentless gags, visual puns, meta asides, and a heavy dose of surrealism, all delivered with lightning speed. HBO Max’s animation collection and the cartoon streamer Boomerang have made his work more accessible now than ever. When he moved to MGM, he created Droopy as well as his risqué take on the fairy-tale Wolf, who doesn’t want to eat Red Riding Hood so much as get her in the sack.īut Avery is more than just a pioneer and origin point for a few cultural touchstones. ![]() And he’s arguably the architect of the Looney Tunes / Merrie Melodies style - the one who helped make the series more than a clone of Disney’s cartoons, mainly by picking up the pace and adding an air of anything-goes chaos. He slimmed down the initially enormous Porky Pig into something more like his lovable current appearance. ![]() He created the character Egghead, who later evolved into Elmer Fudd. The phrase “What’s up, Doc?” was his contribution - it’s a saying from his native Texas. Avery made what are considered the first cartoons to feature Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. When it comes to the masters of the Golden Age of animation, Tex Avery doesn’t get mentioned as often as Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Max Fleischer, or Walt Disney. ![]()
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