The 1940s was probably the
best decade in the history of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies for the introduction of new characters (with the 50s being a close second). Given that the mascot of the entire Looney Tunes franchise made his (official) debut midway through the
beginning of the decade, this doesn't come off as too much of a surprise.
So as the decade began with the introduction of one of the most iconic members of the Looney Tunes cast, so too would it end with one. This introduction would come courtesy of Chuck Jones, who decided to do his own satirical take on the "chase" cartoon formula that MGM popularized with Tom and Jerry (which he had a rather low opinion on). The resulting cartoon,
Fast and Furry-ous, premiered in 1949, and tells a tale of predator and prey - in this case a coyote (Carnivorus vulgaris) and a roadrunner (Accelerati incredibus). The coyote makes numerous attempts to catch (and subsequently eat) the roadrunner, only for everything - from the roadrunner's comically exaggerated speed to the various products and devices the coyote purchases from ACME (acronym for American Company Makes Everything) to
the laws of reality and physics themselves - to work against him, resulting in the coyote getting comically injured, only for him to get back up and keep trying to catch the roadrunner. Much like Tom and Jerry, it was originally planned as a one-shot (this time by the director's own choice), but the immensely positive reception from audiences led to it getting upgraded to a full series.
Unlike Tom and Jerry, however, the
Coyote and Roadrunner shorts were notably minimalistic - no characters other than the predator-and-prey duo, no setting other than the southwestern US desert, no plot variation outside of what was already established in the very first short (unless you count the variety of ACME products that the Coyote uses as well as the various other methods he employs to catch the Roadrunner), not even any spoken lines or dialogue outside of the Roadrunner's signature
Beep Beep! noise (contrary to popular belief, Tom and Jerry
have had speaking lines in some of their cartoons, even if it was an infrequent occurrence). And while Tom
has managed to score a victory against Jerry on quite a few occasions (usually when the mouse starts the feud or pushes his luck too far), the Coyote was doomed to
never be able to catch the Roadrunner - and also to never get the hint and try some other, presumably less dangerous way to obtain food (Chuck Jones would frequently describe the Coyote using George Santayana's definition of the word fanatic - "someone who redoubles his efforts when he has forgotten his aim").
Okay, those parts about the Coyote never speaking or trying to go after prey other than the Roadrunner aren't
entirely true - there were a few shorts in which he served as an adversary for Bugs Bunny, and in those he was a self-proclaimed "super genius" with a refined voice and an over-inflated ego (naturally, he has as much success going up against Bugs as he does against the Roadrunner - that is, none). The first of these (
Operation: Rabbit in 1952) would also provide him with an official name -
Wile E. Coyote.
The Coyote and Roadrunner wouldn't be the only case of Jones turning one of his one-shot chase cartoons into a full series, however. Earlier in 1945, he directed the cartoon
Odor-able Kitty, which featured an amorous skunk with a French accent trying to woo a female skunk - or rather, what he
thinks is a female skunk (it's actually just a cat painted to
look like a skunk). In this case, what motivated Jones to keep using the skunk character wasn't audience popularity, but spite - Warner Bros. Animation's current producer at the time, Eddie Selzer, wasn't a fan of the concept and ordered that no more cartoons featuring the character be produced. Never one to be told how to make cartoons (and well aware that the cartoons made at Termite Terrace would be approved regardless of Selzer's objections - when Friz Freleng threatened to quit over Selzer's attempt to veto the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, Selzer quickly backed down, not wanting to lose his studio's talent over his own personal opinions regarding their output), Jones decided to upgrade the romantic skunk - now dubbed
Pepé Le Pew - from a one-shot to a series regular. In total, 17 cartoons featuring Pepé were produced in the original run of theatrical Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons - the fourth of which (
For Scent-imental Reasons, released in 1949 and generally considered to be the cartoon that properly nailed down the Pepé Le Pew formula) managed to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject at the 22nd Academy Awards, netting Warner Bros. another victory over MGM (who still won the previous year's Best Animated Short Subject award for the Tom and Jerry short
The Little Orphan).
Not that MGM was
too concerned about this loss - they still had plenty of other chances for another win in future Academy Award ceremonies, not only with the proven success of Hanna and Barbera's Tom and Jerry shorts but also the wild and wacky cartoons of Tex Avery. They wouldn't be the only ones employing the help of a former Warner Bros. animation director, however - Columbia had hired Bob Clampett not long after the latter had left Warner Bros. in order to direct cartoons for their Screen Gems brand. While his work on Columbia's comedy series such as
Color Rhapsody and
The Fox and The Crow were exactly the sort of surrealist humor one would expect from Clampett (revitalizing these series in the process), the veteran animator decided he was in the mood for a change of pace - specifically, a chance to adapt the
John Carter of Mars series of science fiction novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs into the world of animation (he'd actually had this idea in mind since the early 1930s, even having made
test footage of the idea). As it happened, Columbia was looking to make their entry into the field of animated feature films and, once Clampett made the suggestion, figured that a sci-fi epic would help them stand out from the crowd. As a test run to see if Clampett was the right fit for a more serious, action-oriented cartoon, Columbia had him do a pair of animated Superman serials in 1947 (they had gotten the film rights to National Comics' superheroes, including Superman once Paramount dropped
their license to the Man of Steel, as part of a licensing deal that would also see NC produce comics based on Screen Gems' cast of cartoon characters) - when reception to those serials turned out positive (with the second one,
Atom Man vs. Superman, even getting an Academy Award nomination), they bought the film rights to John Carter and gave the greenlight to Clampett's project.
John Carter of Mars (adapting
A Princess of Mars, the first book in the series) would make its theatrical debut in the winter of 1949 - just a few months before Burroughs passed away. A later reissue of the film would add a dedication to him.
Besides their main Screen Gems cartoon studio, Columbia also signed a deal with UPA in 1948 that would see the latter studio's experimental one-shot animations distributed by Columbia (though they would also have one recurring series of theatrical cartoons, featuring a stubborn and nearsighted old man by the name of
Mr. Magoo). UPA's shorts distinguished themselves from their contemporaries by their minimalist style, utilizing simplified character designs and abstract backgrounds in order to break animation down to its bare essentials, to great artistic effect. One of their cartoons,
Gerald McBoing-Boing (a 1950 short about a boy who can only speak in sound effects, adapted from an audio record by children's book author Theodor "Dr." Seuss Geisel), even managed to win the 23rd Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject, beating out both Warner Bros.
and MGM.
On Disney's side of things, their strategy of alternating between package films and true features was paying off, with 1948's
Fun and Fancy Free and 1949's
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow managing to turn enough of a profit to bring the studio back to the brink of its former glory, and Walt felt that it was finally time for another ambitious animated feature film. In fact, he already had three of them in the works -
Alice in Wonderland,
Cinderella, and
Peter Pan. Originally of the three, Alice had been slated to release first, as it had been in development the longest (as in, since the early 30s, before even Snow White!), but those plans were dashed when Walter Lantz released
his feature-length animated take on the Lewis Carroll novel and its sequel in 1948, titled
The Adventures of Alice. Realizing that Disney'd be seen as copying off of Lantz if their Alice feature released as intended (and also, on further thought, deciding that the original Alice in Wonderland story didn't have enough of an actual plot to be a good fit for a proper feature film anyway - Lantz's adaptation got around this issue by being essentially an extensive series of comedic gags based on the events and characters of the original Alice novels, which to Walt only served to reinforce said decision), Walt decided to convert the already finished Alice footage into a series of short films and instead have Cinderella slated for a 1950 release as his studio's big comeback feature (with Peter Pan to follow a few years later). This worked like a charm - Cinderella proved to be a huge hit both critically and at the box office, and while the Alice shorts
did face some negative criticism (both the expected "riding off of Lantz's coattails" accusations and the fact that there were some obvious tells in the earlier shorts that they were originally intended as part of a feature film, though the second criticism would be addressed by later Alice shorts being designed with the animated short format in mind), they managed to gain a cult following with audiences for their surrealist imagery. Decades later, dedicated fans of the shorts, with the assistance of some animation historians and former Disney employees, would edit together the earlier Alice shorts along with cut footage, cut recordings, and pencil tests in order to recreate the Alice in Wonderland film that Walt originally intended to release - the "Wonderland" cut has since become something of a Holy Grail among animation enthusiasts.
With RKO (through Disney), Paramount (through Famous), Universal (through Lantz), and Columbia (through Screen Gems) all having released animated feature films at this point, Warner Bros. and MGM both decided that it was high time that they finally made their own...
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So yeah, we're entering the 1950s now!
Regarding Columbia, Screen Gems, and UPA, what I have right now is that Screen Gems (with Dave Fleischer and/or Bob Clampett) handles the
Color Rhapsody and
Fox and Crow cartoons as well as the NC (later DC) comic adaptations, while UPA handles the
Mr. Magoo series and the experimental one-shots like
Gerald McBoing-Boing and
Rooty Toot Toot (though the former
did get a few follow-up cartoons, which is still the case ITTL). I may or may not merge the studios later on...
As for Alice, I'd actually been going back and forth on whether Disney should release it like IOTL, or if another studio should release the animated Alice feature (in this case, Walter Lantz Studios). In the end, I decided on a situation similar to the one with Disney's
Aladdin and Richard Williams'
The Thief and The Cobbler IOTL, where one film has been in development for
far longer but ends up being abruptly changed due to a feature with a similar premise and setting (or in the case of Alice, the
same premise and setting) but a different tone and a smoother development releasing first (I even giving Disney's Alice its own equivalent to the Recobbled Cut). It helps somewhat that Disney's
Alice in Wonderland was a critical and commercial failure that Walt himself was disappointed in when it first released IOTL, only gaining a more positive reception later on.
Next up, we take a look at the development of a certain black-feathered duck, and how it will lead up to him scoring two key victories over his rabbit rival as both Warner Bros. and MGM finally make their move on the animated feature film scene...
