Looney Tunes

Looney Tunes is a Warner Brothers animated cartoon series which ran in many movie theatres from 1930 to 1969. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and is Warner Bros. Animation's first animated theatrical series. The regular Warner Bros. more...

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animation cast also became known as the "Looney Tunes" (often misspelled, intentionally or not, as "Looney Toons").

The name Looney Tunes is a variation on Silly Symphonies, the name of Walt Disney's concurrent series of music-based cartoon shorts.

History

In the beginning, both Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies drew their storylines from Warner's vast music library. However, eventually the two series distinguished themselves by Looney Tunes becoming the umbrella for the studio's various recurring characters, while Merrie Melodies continued with the use of one-shot characters. Also, from 1934 to 1943 Merrie Melodies were produced in color and Looney Tunes in black and white; after 1943, however, both series were produced in color; the only real difference between the two series was in the variation between the opening theme music and titles. Both series also made use of the various Warner Bros. cartoon characters. By 1943, the theme music for Looney Tunes was "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin; the theme music for Merrie Melodies was an adaptation of "Merrily We Roll Along" by Charles Tobias, Murray Mencher and Eddie Cantor.

In 1930, Warner Bros. became interested in developing a series of musical animated shorts in order to promote their music. They had recently acquired the ownership of Brunswick Records along with four music publishers for US $28 million. Consequently, they were eager to start promoting this material in order to cash in on the sales of sheet music and phonograph records. Warners made a deal with Leon Schlesinger to produce cartoons for Warner Bros. Schlesinger hired Rudolph Ising and Hugh Harman to produce their first series of cartoons. Bosko was Looney Tunes first major star, debuting in the short "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" in 1930. When Harman and Ising left the Warner Bros. in 1933 over a budget dispute with Schlesinger, they took with them all the rights of the characters and cartoons which they had created. Schlesinger had to negotiate with them in order to keep the rights to the name Looney Tunes as well as for the right to use the slogan That's All Folks! at the end of the cartoons.

A bland white-washed version of Bosko called Buddy became the star of the Looney Tunes series for the next few years. With the animators working in the Termite Terrace studio, they debuted of the first truly major Looney Tunes star, Porky Pig, who was introduced in 1935 along with Beans the Cat in the Merrie Melodie cartoon I Haven't Got a Hat directed by Friz Freleng. Beans was the star of the next Porky/Beans cartoon Golddiggers of '49, but it was Porky who emerged as the star instead of Beans. This was followed by the debuts of other memorable Looney Tunes stars such as Daffy Duck (in 1937) and the most famous of the Looney Tunes cast, Bugs Bunny (in 1940). Bugs appeared mostly in the color Merrie Melodies and formally joined the Looney Tunes crew , Buckaroo Bugs. Bugs Bunny made a cameo appearance in 1942 in the Avery/Clampett Cartoon Crazy Cruise and also at the end of the Frank Tashlin 1943 cartoon "Porky Pig's Feat" (Bugs Bunny's only black and white appearance). He made another cameo in "Patient Porky" in 1940. Schlesinger sold his interest in the cartoon studio in 1944 to Warner Bros.

Read more at Wikipedia.org