Comprehensive information and links about Tex Avery

Tex Avery (February 26, 1908 – August 26, 1980) was an animator, cartoonist, and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros. (Termite Terrace) and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, creating the characters of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Droopy; and his influence was found in almost all of the animated cartoon series by various studios in the 1940s and 1950s.

Avery's of directing broke the mold of ultra-realism established by Walt Disney, and encouraged animators to stretch the boundaries of the medium to do things in a cartoon that could not be done in the world of live-action film. An often-quoted line from Avery's cartoons was, "In a cartoon you can do anything," and his cartoons often did just that.

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Early years

Tex Avery was born to George Walton Avery (June 8, 1867 - January 14, 1935) and Mary Augusta "Jessie" Bean (1886 - 1931) in Taylor, Texas. His father was born in Alabama. His mother was born in Buena Vista, Chickasaw County, Mississippi.

His paternal grandparents were Needham Avery (October 8, 1838 - after 1892) and his wife Lucinda C. Baxly (May 11, 1844 - March 10, 1892). His maternal grandparents were Frederick Mumford Bean (1852 - October 23, 1886) and his wife Minnie Edgar (July 25, 1854 - May 7, 1940).

Avery was said to be a descedant of Judge Roy Bean. However his maternal great-grandparents were actually Mumford Bean from Tennessee (August 22, 1805 - October 10, 1892) and his wife Lutica from Alabama. Mumford was son of William Bean and his wife Nancy Blevins from Virginia. Their relation to Roy is uncertain though his paternal grandparents were also from Virginia. Avery family tradition also claimed descent from Daniel Boone.

Avery was raised in his native Taylor. A popular catchphrase at his high school was "What's up, doc?", which he would later popularize with Bugs Bunny in the 1940s.

Avery first began his animation career at the Walter Lantz studios in the early 1930s, working on cartoons. During some office horseplay, a paperclip flew into Avery's left eye and caused him to lose use of that eye. Some speculate it was his lack of depth perception that gave him his unique look at animation and bizarre directorial Warner Bros. studio in late 1935, fast-talking Schlesinger into letting him head his own production unit of animators and create cartoons the way he wanted them to be made. Schlesinger responded by assigning the Avery unit, including animators Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones, to a five-room bungalow at the Warner Bros. Sunset Blvd. backlot. The Avery unit, assigned to work primarily on the black-and-white , soon dubbed their quarters "Termite Terrace", due to its significant termite population.

"Termite Terrace" later became the nickname for the entire SchlesingerWarners studio, primarily because Avery and his unit were the ones who defined what became known as "the Warner Bros. cartoon". Their first short, (1936), is recognized as the first cartoon to make Porky Pig a star, and Avery’s experimentation with the medium continued from there.

Creation of Looney Tunes stars

Avery, with the assistance of Clampett, Jones, and new associate director Frank Tashlin, laid the foundation for a of animation that dethroned The Walt Disney Studio as the kings of animated short films, and created a legion of cartoon stars whose names still shine around the world today. Avery in particular was deeply involved; a perfectionist, Avery constantly crafted gags for the shorts, periodically provided voices for them (including his trademark belly laugh), and held such control over the timing of the shorts that he would splice frames out of the final negative if he felt a gag's timing wasn't quite right.

introduced the character of Daffy Duck, who possessed a new form of "lunacy" and zaniness that had not been seen before in animated cartoons. Daffy was an almost completely out-of-control "darnfool duck" who frequently bounced around the film frame in double-speed, screaming "Hoo-hoo! hoo-hoo" in a high-pitched, electronically sped-up voice provided by veteran Warners voice artist Mel Blanc.

is seen as the first cartoon to truly establish the personality of Bugs Bunny, after a series of shorts featuring a Daffy Duck-like rabbit directed by Ben Hardaway, Cal Dalton and Chuck Jones, who was promoted to director along with Bob Clampett in the late 1930s. Avery's Bugs was a super-cool rabbit who is always in control of the situation and who runs rings around his opponents. also marks the first pairing of him and bald, meek Elmer Fudd, a revamp of Avery's Egghead, a big nosed little fellow who, in turn, was modeled after radio comedian Joe Penner. It is in that Bugs casually walks up to Elmer, who is out "hunting wabbits", and asks him, calmly as anything, "What's up, doc?" The juxtaposition of Bug's calmness and the potentially dangerous situation got a strong reaction from audiences, and Avery made "What's up, doc?" the rabbit's catch phrase.

Avery ended up directing only four Bugs Bunny cartoons: , 1941).

Avery's tenure at Schlesinger ended in late 1941, when he and the producer quarreled over the ending to , milking the gag to its comic extreme. Schlesinger intervened (supposedly on orders from Jack Warner himself), and edited the film so that the characters only fall of the cliff once. An enraged Avery promptly quit the studio, leaving a number of cartoons, including MGM

By 1942, Avery was in the employ of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, working in their cartoon division under the supervision of Fred Quimby. Avery felt that Schlesinger had stifled him; at MGM, Avery's creativity reached its peak. His cartoons became known for their sheer lunacy, breakneck pace, and a penchant playing with the medium of animation and film in general that few other directors dared to approach. MGM also offered larger budgets and a higher quality level than the Warners films. These changes were evident in Avery's first MGM short, the Adolf Hitler-parodying , which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) in 1942. Avery's most famous MGM character debuted in 1943's . Droopy Dog (originally "Happy Hound") was a calm, little, slow-moving and slow-talking dog who still won out in the end. He also created a series of racy and risqué cartoons, beginning with 1943's , featuring a sexy female star who never had a set name, but who influenced the minds of young boys--and future animators--worldwide. Other Avery characters at MGM included Screwball "Screwy" Squirrel and the . Avery began his stint at MGM working with lush colors and realistic backgrounds, but he slowly abandoned this for a more frenetic, less realistic approach. The newer, more stylized look reflected the influence of the up-and-coming UPA studio, the need to cut costs as budgets grew higher, and Avery's own desire to leave reality behind and make cartoons that were not tied to the real world of live action. During this period, he made a notable series of films which explored the technology of the future: (spoofing common live-action promotional shorts of the time). He also introduced a slow-talking wolf character, who was the prototype for MGM associates Hanna-Barbera's Huckleberry Hound character.

Tex Avery's last original cartoon for MGM was , completed in 1953 and released in 1955. Like many of his later cartoons, it was co-directed by Avery unit animator Michael Lah. A burnt-out Avery left MGM in 1953 to return to the Walter Lantz studio, and Lah began directing a handful of CinemaScope Droopy shorts on his own, including

Avery's return to the Walter Lantz studio did not last long. He directed four cartoons in 1954-1955: the one-shots were nominated for Academy Awards, Avery left Lantz over a salary dispute, effectively ending his career in theatrical animation.

He turned to animated television commercials, most notably the Raid commercials of the 1960s, ("Oh no! RAID! ") and the creation of Frito-Lay's controversial mascot, the Frito Bandito. Avery also produced ads for fruit drinks starring the Warners Bros. characters he'd once helped create during his Termite Terrace days.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Avery became steadily reserved and depressed, although he continued to draw respect from his peers. His final employer was Hanna-Barbera Productions, where he wrote gags for Saturday morning cartoons such as the Droopy-esque .

On August 26, 1980, Avery passed away on the job at the Hanna-Barbera studios. He had been suffering from lung cancer.

Although he was no longer alive to experience the late-1980s renaissance of animation, his work was rediscovered and he began to receive widespread attention and praise by the modern animation and film communities. His influence is strongly reflected in modern cartoons such as Spümco's . Today, he is seen as one of the most influential animation directors of all time, whose mark on the industry was surpassed only by Walt Disney.

Tex Avery is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park at Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, California.