Chuck Jones, American animator, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2002)
Charles Martin Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, voice actor, 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 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 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 Sib Tower 12 Productions and began producing cartoons for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, including a new series of Tom and Jerry shorts (1963–1967) as well as the television adaptations of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966) and Horton Hears a Who! (1970). He later started his own studio, Chuck Jones Enterprises, where he directed and produced the film adaptation of Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (1970).
Jones' work along with the other animators was showcased in the documentary, Bugs Bunny: Superstar (1975). Jones directed the first feature-length animated Looney Tunes compilation film, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (1979). In 1990 he wrote his memoir, Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, which was made into a documentary film, Chuck Amuck (1991). He was also profiled in the American Masters documentary Chuck Jones: Extremes & Inbetweens – A Life in Animation (2000) which aired on PBS.
Jones won three Academy Awards. The cartoons which he directed, For Scent-imental Reasons, So Much for So Little, and The Dot and the Line won the Best Animated Short. Robin Williams presented Jones with an Honorary Academy Award in 1996 for his work in the animation industry. Film historian Leonard Maltin has praised Jones's work at Warner Bros., MGM and Chuck Jones Enterprises. In Jerry Beck's The 50 Greatest Cartoons, a group of animated professionals ranked What's Opera, Doc? (1957) as the greatest cartoon of all time, with ten of the entries being directed by Jones including Duck Amuck (1953), Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953), One Froggy Evening (1955), Rabbit of Seville (1950), and Rabbit Seasoning (1952).
1912Sep, 21
Chuck Jones
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Events on 1912
- 6Mar
Airship
Italo-Turkish War: Italian forces become the first to use airships in war, as two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet. - 15Apr
Sinking of the RMS Titanic
The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,227 passengers and crew on board survive. - 14Oct
Theodore Roosevelt
While campaigning in Milwaukee, the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, is shot and mildly wounded by John Schrank, a mentally-disturbed saloon keeper. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Mr. Roosevelt still carries out his scheduled public speech. - 17Oct
First Balkan War
Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire, joining Montenegro in the First Balkan War. - 26Oct
Thessaloniki
First Balkan War: The Ottoman occupied city of Thessaloniki, is liberated and unified with Greece on the feast day of its patron saint Demetrius. On the same day, Serbian troops captured Skopje.