I can’t say I’m a fan of most of the artwork being posted at the Chuck Redux blog, but I absolutely love the reprinting of the letters Chuck Jones wrote in the early 1950s. The tone of them is the same as what we’d later read in his autobiographies, so the guy was like this long before the accolades came in, when he was still putting out brilliant work on a regular 9 to 5 schedule. I like this one in particular, about some incident that started with Mr. Warner’s wife mistaking the Bugs Bunny Bond Rally she saw on TV for Krazy Kat, with his “bricks of freedom”.
Thad’s Books
Also reveals that his view of Daffy Duck wasn’t something he made up after the fact.
Yeesh! Chuck Jones was a brilliant genius and my one true animation idol….. but that doesn’t change the fact that he actually was also kind of scary at times…..
It sounds like it was pretty insane over there during this period with the studio’s fear of television! It’s pretty obvious that the cartoonists were the sane ones at WB! I love Jones’ writing style on this. Thanks for posting the letter.
The ironic thing about Chuck’s J.L.-television ban diatribe is three years later Warner was the first of the studio heads to decide TV wasn’t such a bad thing after all and signed his deal to put the WB name on ABC shows (though I support Harry Cohen beat him to it, but weasled around the ban by sticking his Screen Gems moniker — minus Torch Babe — on Columbia’s early/mid-50s TV stuff).
I’m addicted to these letters, they’re a diary of Chuck’s life, work & thoughts during his most famous period.
These letters make me re-evaluate what I thought of Jones, and in a good way. There’s a consistancy of vision here that I wasn’t expecting. I had always thought he created a new role for himself in the 70’s on up, to sound good on the talk shows. Evidently, I was wrong.
He always saw the world and his characters the same way from the early days until he left this planet. It’s fascinating. The whole thing about having been well-read in childhood and continuing on in a very intellectual path was true. His interst in square dancing makes him look a little more well-rounded. So now we learn that it was a very interesting guy that made those great cartoons!