|
Happy-Go-Nutty
Screwy Squirrel (also known as Screwball Squirrel) is an animated cartoon character, an anthropomorphic squirrel created by Tex Avery for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He is generally considered the wackiest and outright most antagonistic of the screwball cartoon characters of the 1940s. Among the most outrageous cartoon characters ever created, Screwy can do almost anything to almost anyone: he pulls objects out of thin air, doubles himself, and constantly breaks the fourth wall, all the while uttering a characteristic cackling laugh. The character was not as successful as Avery's Droopy was at this time, and Screwy appeared in only five cartoons: ''Screwball Squirrel'' (1944), ''Happy-Go-Nutty'' (1944), ''Big Heel-Watha'' (1944), ''The Screwy Truant'' (1945), and ''Lonesome Lenny'' (1946).Adamson, Joe, ''Tex Avery: King of Cartoons'', 1975, Da Capo Press Biography The character was known for being brash and erratic, with few sympathetic personality characteristics such as Bugs Bunny' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wally Maher
Wally Maher (August 4, 1908 – December 26, 1951) was an American actor, primarily on old-time radio; he was also known as the original voice of Tex Avery's cartoon character Screwy Squirrel. Early years Maher was born in Cincinnati on August 4, 1908. He was the son of Daniel and Mary Maher, and he had three brothers and two sisters. He dropped out of high school to pursue a career in acting. Career Theater Maher gained early acting experience with a stock theater company in Cincinnati. His radio debut came when he portrayed Paul Baumer in a production of ''All Quiet on the Western Front''. However, a lack of future acting opportunities led him to pray for divine guidance, and soon after he had another acting opportunity. On Broadway, Maher portrayed Rittenhoff in ''Every Man for Himself'' (1940). Radio In 1936, he began working on several radio dramas from the West Coast. That same year he had one of his most prominent film performances as the reporter who films the mob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Cartoon Studio
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio was an American animation studio operated by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) during the Golden Age of American animation. Active from 1937 until 1957, the studio was responsible for producing animated shorts to accompany MGM feature films in Loew's Theaters, which included popular cartoon characters ''Tom and Jerry'', ''Droopy'', and ''Barney Bear''. Prior to forming its own cartoon studio, MGM released the work of independent animation producer Ub Iwerks, and later the ''Happy Harmonies'' series from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. The MGM cartoon studio was founded to replace Harman and Ising, although both men eventually became employees of the studio. After a slow start, the studio began to take off in 1940 after its short ''The Milky Way'' became the first non-Disney cartoon to win the Academy Award for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons. The studio's roster of talent benefited from an exodus of animators from the Warner Bros. Cartoons and Disne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fourth Wall
The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th century onward, the rise of illusionism in staging practices, which culminated in the realism and naturalism of the theatre of the 19th century, led to the development of the fourth wall concept. The metaphor suggests a relationship to the mise-en-scène behind a proscenium arch. When a scene is set indoors and three of the walls of its room are presented onstage, in what is known as a box set, the fourth of them would run along the line (technically called the proscenium) dividing the room from the auditorium. The ''fourth wall'', though, is a theatrical convention, rather than of set design. The actors ignore the audience, focus their attention exclusively on the dramatic world, and remain absorbed in its fiction, in a state that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parody
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subject is an original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, etc), but a parody can also be about a real-life person (e.g. a politician), event, or movement (e.g. the French Revolution or 1960s counterculture). Literary scholar Professor Simon Dentith defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice". The literary theorist Linda Hutcheon said "parody ... is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music, theater, television and film, animation, and gaming. Some parody is practiced in theater. The writer and critic John Gross observes in his ''Oxford Boo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elmer Fudd
Elmer J.''Hare Brush'' (1956) Fudd is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. '' Looney Tunes''/'' Merrie Melodies'' series and the archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He has one of the more disputed origins in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheon (second only to Bugs himself).Elmer Fudd at Don Markstein's Toonopedia Archived from the original on June 16, 2016. But it was evidenced that the true origins of Elmer was that he was actually created by Fred "Tex" Avery in 1937, as a "Running Gag" characte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, director, and painter, best known for his work with Warner Bros. Cartoons on the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of shorts. He wrote, produced, and/or directed many classic animated cartoon, Animated Cartoon shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Pepé Le Pew, and Porky Pig, among others. Jones started his career in 1933 alongside Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, and Robert McKimson at the Leon Schlesinger Production's Termite Terrace studio, where they created and developed the Looney Tunes characters. During the World War II, Second World War, Jones directed many of the ''Private Snafu'' (1943–1946) shorts which were shown to members of the United States military. After his career at Warner Bros. ended in 1962, Jones started MGM Animation/Visual Arts, Sib Tower 12 Productions and began producing cartoons for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
What's Opera Doc?
''What's Opera, Doc?'' is a 1957 American Warner Bros. ''Merrie Melodies'' cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. The short was released on July 6, 1957, and stars Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. The story features Elmer chasing Bugs through a parody of 19th-century classical composer Richard Wagner's operas, particularly ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''), ''Der Fliegende Holländer'' (''The Flying Dutchman''), and ''Tannhäuser''. It borrows heavily from the second opera in the "Ring Cycle" ''Die Walküre'', woven around the typical Bugs–Elmer feud. The short marks the final appearance of Elmer Fudd in a Chuck Jones cartoon. It has been widely praised by many in the animation industry as the greatest animated cartoon that Warner Bros. ever released, and has been ranked as such in the top 50 animated cartoons of all time. In 1992, the Library of Congress deemed it "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant", and selected ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kill Off
The killing off of a character is a device in fiction, whereby a character dies, but the story continues. The term, frequently applied to television, film, video game, anime, manga and chronological series, often denotes an untimely or unexpected death motivated by factors beyond the storyline. In productions featuring actors, the unwillingness or inability of an actor to continue with the production for financial or other reasons (including illness, death, or producers' unwillingness to retain an actor) may lead to that character being "killed off" or phased out from the storyline in another way. Examples Literature ''"The Final Problem"'' by Conan Doyle ends with Sherlock Holmes plunging to his death at the Reichenbach Falls, in struggle with his arch enemy Professor Moriarty. There is ample evidence that Doyle fully intended this to be Holmes' definite and final end. Doyle wanted to write no more Sherlock Holmes stories, feeling that they were distracting him from more se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Of Mice And Men
''Of Mice and Men'' is a novella written by John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. Steinbeck based the novella on his own experiences working alongside migrant farm workers as a teenager in the 1910s (before the arrival of the Okies that he would describe in ''The Grapes of Wrath''). The title is taken from Robert Burns' poem "To a Mouse", which reads: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley". (The best laid schemes of mice and men / Often go awry.) While it is a book taught in many schools, ''Of Mice and Men'' has been a frequent target of censors for vulgarity, and what some consider offensive and racist language; consequently, it appears on the American Library Association's list of the ''Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century''. Plot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters." During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels ''Tortilla Flat'' (1935) and ''Cannery Row'' (1945), the multi-generation epic '' East of Eden'' (1952), and the novellas ''The Red Pony'' (1933) and ''Of Mice and Men'' (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning ''The Grapes of Wrath'' (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies. Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cal Howard
Calvin Henry Howard (March 24, 1911 – September 10, 1993) was an American cartoon story artist, animator and director mostly remembered for his work at Walter Lantz Productions and Warner Bros. Cartoons. He was also the voice actor of Gabby Goat in '' Get Rich Quick Porky'' and Meathead Dog in ''Screwball Squirrel''. Career In the late 1920s, Howard became a story man and animator for Walter Lantz Productions, then Walt Disney Animation in 1929. During his career, he worked for several pioneer animators besides Lantz and Disney, including Max Fleischer and Ub Iwerks. From 1930 to 1933, Howard serves as a story man for Iwerks and then Lantz. In 1938, Howard left Warner Bros. Cartoons with his friend Tedd Pierce to work for Fleischer Studios in Miami, and served as the live-action model for Prince David in Fleischer's '' Gulliver's Travels''. In the 1940s, Howard moved to a different studio. He left Fleischer for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio in 1942, where he served as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
