- Byname of:
- Charles Martin Jones
- Born:
- September 21, 1912, Spokane, Washington, U.S.
- Died:
- February 22, 2002, Corona del Mar, California (aged 89)
- Awards And Honors:
- Academy Award (1996)
- Academy Award (1966)
Chuck Jones
What is Chuck Jones famous for?
Why did Warner Bros. fire Chuck Jones?
What made Chuck Jones so influential?
Chuck Jones (born September 21, 1912, Spokane, Washington, U.S.âdied February 22, 2002, Corona del Mar, California) was an American animation director of critically acclaimed cartoon shorts, primarily the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies film series at Warner Bros. studios. To the general public, Chuck Jonesâs name is as synonymous with animation as that of Walt Disney. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Jones extended the boundaries of the indigenous American art form known as character, or personality, animation, in which characters act and behave in ways that reflect their psyches rather than submit to the demands of the plot.
Childhood and education
Jones grew up in a household filled with books, which he and his three siblings would devour. A particular favorite author of his was Mark Twain, whose description of a coyote in Roughing It (1872) would influence one of Jonesâs most famous characters, the scraggly, perennially down-on-his-luck Wile E. Coyote. Jonesâs parents encouraged their childrenâs creative impulses, allowing them to draw âfree from excessive criticism, and free from excessive praise,â according to Jones. The failures of their fatherâs chain of business ventures supplied the children with letterhead notepads and pencils, which they used liberally for drawing. As a boy, Jones often observed film comedians such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton on-screen and sometimes even caught glimpses of Chaplin performing before the cameras on the streets of Los Angeles. The comediansâ timing and slapstick pantomimes strongly influenced Jonesâs comic sensibilities.
Jones did not find much to like about school, so he dropped out at 15 and enrolled in the Chouinard Art Institute (later merged to form the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles.
Career
Decades at Warner Bros.
âThe Coyote is a history of my own frustration and war with all tools, multiplied only slightly.â âChuck Jones on the hapless Wile E. Coyote, Chuck Amuck (1989)
Jones worked briefly as a cel washer (an entry-level job in traditional animation, cleaning used celluloid sheets for reuse) at the studio of former Walt Disney associate Ub Iwerks and briefly at those of Charles Mintz and Walter Lantz. In 1933 he signed on as an assistant animator with the Warner Bros. cartoon unit run by Leon Schlesinger, where he worked under and learned from such directors as Tex Avery and Friz Freleng. Jones directed his first short, The Night Watchman, in 1938; like most of Jonesâs early efforts, it emulated Disneyâs timing, pacing, and design. It was with The Dover Boys at Pimento University (1942) that Jones experimented with drybrush smear lines, the reuse of character frames, and movement intentionally deviating from realismâa major stylistic shift that made the cartoon faster and more expressive. This developed into a distinctive style in the late 1940s and featured pared-down design, precision timing, and highly exaggerated poses and facial expressions, all of which served to explore the psychological depths of the characters.
Jones refined the evolving personalities of existing characters, such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig, with an emphasis on traits and motivations. Of the characters he created from scratch, perhaps the most famous are Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. In his autobiography, Chuck Amuck (1989), he wrote of the pair:
In the Road Runner cartoons, we hoped to evoke sympathy for the Coyote. It is the basis of the series: the Coyote tries by any means to capture the Road Runner, ostensibly and at first to eat him, but this motive has become beclouded, and it has become, in my mind at least, a question of loss of dignity that forces him to continue. And who is the Coyoteâs enemy? Why, the Coyote. The Road Runner has never touched him, never even startled him intentionally beyond coming up behind the Coyote occasionally and going âBeep-Beep!â
Other characters born from Jonesâs pencil include PepĂ© Le Pew and Marvin the Martian.
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Many of Jonesâs animated films are recognized as classics of the form, including Feed the Kitty (1952), about an unusual paternal relationship between a bulldog and a kitten; Duck Amuck (1953), a tour de force of personality animation starring Daffy Duck as the victim of the creative whims of an unseen animator; One Froggy Evening (1955), a parable of greed involving a singing frog; and Whatâs Opera, Doc? (1957), a brilliant compression of Richard Wagnerâs 14-hour The Ring of the Nibelung into six minutes.
Work beyond Warner Bros.
During World War II Jones directed animated educational films for the military in collaboration with Dr. Seuss, as well as The Weakly Reporter (1944), a send-up of films about domestic wartime sacrifices, including food rationing and air raids. Moonlighting with United Productions of America (UPA), he also directed a short titled Hell-Bent for Election (1944), a campaign film for Franklin D. Rooseveltâs fourth presidential bid. Jones briefly joined Disney in 1953 when work at the Warner Bros. animation studio was temporarily suspended. His experience at Disney was largely unfulfilling, as he was embroiled in salary disputes and assigned to work on the production of Sleeping Beauty (1959)âa project in the doldrums at the time with little for Jones to do.
Warner Bros. fired Jones after learning that he had worked on Gay Purr-ee (1962), an animated feature produced by UPA, in violation of his exclusive contract with Warner Bros. Though he would return to the company in 1976, in the interim he set up an independent studio with many of the animators he had worked with at Warner Bros. His new studio was contracted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1964 to produce new Tom and Jerry cartoons and adapt existing ones for TV. The studio was eventually acquired by MGM and produced several notable animated shorts, including the Academy Award-winning The Dot and the Line (1965), the tale of a love triangle between a dot, a straight line, and a squiggle. Under MGM he helmed the classic adaptations of Dr. Seussâs How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966) and Horton Hears a Who! (1970). He also directed the animated feature The Phantom Tollbooth (1970) for the studio.
Awards and recognition
Jones won numerous international awards, including two Academy Awards (one of which was for lifetime achievement), a Smithsonian 150th Anniversary Medal of Achievement, and the Edward MacDowell Medal, a national award given annually for outstanding contributions to the arts. His profusely illustrated autobiography, Chuck Amuck, appeared in 1989 and was a critically praised bestseller. In his late 80s he remained an active guest speaker at colleges and film festivals and a supervisor of television productions. More important, Jones still occasionally directed cartoons featuring the Looney Tunes gang, such as the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote in Chariots of Fur (1994), Daffy Duck in Superior Duck (1996), and Bugs Bunny in From Hare to Eternity (1997). He also directed a sequel to his classic One Froggy Evening, the well-received Another Froggy Evening (1995).