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Chuck Jones, Animator of Bugs and Daffy, Dies at 89

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chuck Jones, the animator and director who brought to life Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote and other beloved cartoon characters, transforming them into worldwide celebrities, died on Friday (2/22/02) at his home in Corona del Mar, Calif. He was 89.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter, Linda Jones Clough, said.

In a career in animation that spanned nearly 70 years, Mr. Jones directed more than 300 films, three of which won Academy Awards. In 1996 he also received an Oscar for special achievement in recognition of his life's work.

Mr. Jones was best known for his work at Warner Brothers, where from 1933 to 1963, in collaboration with other legendary animators including Tex Avery and Friz Freleng, he helped create Bugs, Daffy, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd and other stars of the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies productions.

And he single-handedly invented Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, which underscored his belief that the success of cartoon characters lay in their acting, not in dialogue. One of his strict rules for the Coyote-Road Runner series was: "No dialogue ever, except `beep beep.' "

The series, which made its debut in 1949, was a minimalist revolution with its stark desert setting and the tight parameters of the Coyote's always futile efforts to obliterate his co-star. Other rules were "No outside force can harm the Coyote - only his own ineptitude or the failure of the Acme products" and "The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures."

Mr. Jones also invented the gallant Gallic skunk Pepe Le Pew, Marvin Martian, Michigan J. Frog and Gossamer.

Mr. Jones and his collaborators at Warner Brothers were so successful in making the carrot-chomping Bugs Bunny into a lifelike celebrity that a child once accused him of being nothing more than a member of the cartoon paparazzi. "A small child once said to me: `You don't draw Bugs Bunny, you draw pictures of Bugs Bunny,' " Mr. Jones said, adding, "That's a very profound observation because it means that he thinks the characters are alive, which, as far as I am concerned, is true."

Mr. Jones so identified with his characters that at times he gave interviews on their behalf. "Bugs never anticipated such a fuss in the first place," said Mr. Jones on Bugs Bunny's 50th birthday. "Bugs had no concept that people would celebrate his 50th, because he never thought his pictures would last," Mr. Jones said. "All of us thought they'd just go into a vault. But now they're even shown in museums."

Charles Martin Jones was born on Sept. 12, 1912, in Spokane, Wash., the fourth child of Charles A. and Mabel Jones. He was just 6 months old when the family moved to California and, as a boy in Hollywood, he often watched through a fence as Charlie Chaplin rehearsed his films.

The young Chuck Jones also worked as a child extra in Mack Sennett comedies. But he often credited his start in drawing to his father's succession of failed businesses, which left pencils and stationery strewn around the house.

He dropped out of high school but attended the Chouinard Art Institute . He began his career cleaning off cels, the transparent sheets that animators used to draw the moving parts of a frame. Mr. Jones moved up in the ranks, becoming a cel painter, a cel inker and eventually an in- betweener, or assistant animator. At one point he was fired by a studio secretary, Dorothy Webster, who later became his wife.

In 1933 he joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, which was later sold to Warner Brothers. Mr. Jones was assigned to a newly formed cartoon production unit, where Daffy Duck and Porky Pig were created.

In 1938, Mr. Jones directed his first cartoon, "The Night Watchman."

In1940 he won an award for an animated patriotic cartoon called "Old Glory," and during World War II he worked with Theodor S. Geisel (a k a Dr. Seuss) on a cartoon about a goofy soldier, "Private Snafu."

(A quarter-century later Mr. Jones and Mr. Geisel collaborated on the productions of "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" and "Horton Hears a Who.")

In 1938, Bugs Bunny made his debut with a bit part in a cartoon called "Porky's Hare Hunt." But it was in 1940 that Bugs catapulted to stardom in "A Wild Hare." From there, Mr. Jones went on to sketch Bugs for more than 50 years.

In those early years all the classic cartoons were drawn in the same fashion that movies were filmed - at 24 frames a second. When the cartoons reached the peak of their popularity in the 1940's and 50's, they ran for exactly six minutes and were 540 feet long, each requiring 5,000 drawings. A good animator could do about 15 seconds of film time a week.

When Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote made their debut in 1949, Mr. Jones said that his inspiration for the coyote had come from Mark Twain's "Roughing It."

After Warner Brothers closed its animation studio in 1962, Mr. Jones worked briefly for Disney, and later for MGM, where he worked on episodes of "Tom and Jerry."

Three of his films won Oscars: "For Scent-Imental Reasons" (1949) and "So Much for So Little" (1949) won Oscars that went to the films' producers, and Mr. Jones himself was awarded the Oscar for best short animated film for "The Dot and the Line" (1965).

Mr. Jones continued drawing until just a month before his death, his daughter said. His last major film was "Chariots of Fur" featuring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, which was released by Warner Brothers in 1996.

Mr. Jones's first wife, Dorothy, died in 1978. Aside from his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Marian Dern Jones of Corona del Mar; a stepson, Peter Dern of Los Angeles; a stepdaughter, Rosalind Bellante of Mission Viejo, Calif.; three grandchildren; three stepgrandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

In his autobiography, "Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist," (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1989) Mr. Jones wrote, "Perhaps the most accurate remark about me was uttered by Ray Bradbury at his 55th birthday party. In answer to the usual question: `What do you want to be when you grow up?' Ray replied: `I want to be 14 years old like Chuck Jones.' Perhaps this will be my most apt possible epitaph."