Harry and Jack, the brothers of Warner Bros., had no idea what the studio's stable of animators was up to at Termite Terrace.
"Jack didn't even know where the animation studio was," Chuck Jones recalled years later, "and Harry said, 'The only thing I know about our cartoon studio is that's where we make Mickey Mouse.' "
Wrong critter, Harry. Mickey Mouse was at Walt Disney Studios. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester, Tweety, Road Runner and his eternal nemesis, Wile E. Coyote, were cartoon stars at Warner Bros.
And while the studio bosses left them alone – Jones finally met the brothers 15 years into his employment – the Warner Bros. animation team created some of the zaniest characters in cartoon history.
"What always distinguished Warner Bros. from the get-go was that Disney was so sweet, so for children, and Warner Bros. wrote for adults," says Diana Daniels, associate curator at the Crocker Art Museum.
The traveling exhibition "The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons" will be at the Crocker through Jan. 18.
The 160-piece collection of original drawings, paintings and animation "cels," displayed on two floors of the museum, tells the step-by-step story behind the six-minute cartoons shown with Warner's feature films in movie theaters. The museum also is showing classic cartoons on television monitors.
In addition, the Crocker will host a Warner Bros. film festival Saturday afternoon at the Guild Theater, along with a cartoon workshop and other related events in December. A two-part animation workshop is set for January.
"Animation is probably the most famous art to come out of California," says Daniels. "Most of the people who worked on these cartoons, especially when the shop was first formed, were highly trained artists who, during the Depression, were glad to have the employment. They were sort of the bad boys of the Warner Bros. studio. They were outside the normal studio system, so they could be a bit more sarcastic, more on the edge than other people."
Jones, along with Tex Avery, Fritz Freleng, Bob Clampett and Robert McKimson, were some of the big-name animators and directors who worked out of Termite Terrace, the run-down studio-lot bungalow once described as resembling "the hold of a slave ship."
The animation studio opened in 1930, under producer Leon Schlesinger, whose personality and toupee would inspire the Elmer Fudd character.
Porky Pig was introduced in 1935, with Daffy Duck following two years later. In 1940, moviegoers got their first look at Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. Tweety came along in 1942. Sylvester, Pepe Le Pew and Yosemite Sam debuted in 1945. Warner's cartoonists continued to introduce new characters throughout the 1940s and early 1950s.
"Jack and Harry Warner believed we did Mickey Mouse until 1962, and when they found out we didn't, they shut (the cartoon unit) down," Jones wrote in his autobiography, "Chuck Amuck."
The Warners closed the "classic era" animation studio in 1963, but not before the characters had become cultural icons.
Bugs Bunny, with his carrot chomping and his wiseguy "What's up, Doc?" attitude, was the biggest star of them all.
"Because he is so street-smart," says Daniels, who grew up on Warner Bros. cartoons, "he always comes out on top. He always manages to trick the genie in the lamp. Bugs has his failings, though. Bugs is ultimately only interested in Bugs."
The Warner Bros. exhibition follows the Crocker's "American Pop" show, which closed earlier this month and featured Andy Warhol's portraits of athletes.
"In a way, these cartoons are some of the popular culture that influenced pop art," says Daniels. "We just have the order reversed. A lot of these characters saturated American culture, and that streetwise, 'Let's poke fun at the establishment' influenced pop art."
Call The Bee's Dixie Reid, (916) 321-1134.
