Charles Martin Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, filmmaker, painter, and voice actor, 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, Marvin the Martian, and Porky Pig, among others.
Jones started his career at Leon Schlesinger Productions in 1933, animating for director Tex Avery and his co-worker Bob Clampett, before receiving his own directorial unit after Frank Tashlin's departure. Initially known for his Disney-esque cartoons focusing on story and characters, he slowly developed a wry and fast-paced sense of humor that defined the series' most notable cartoons and gained prominence at the studio. During World War II, 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's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966) and [[Horton Hears a Who! (TV special)
|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's 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.
Two Warner Brothers cartoons that Jones directed, For Scent-imental Reasons and So Much for So Little, won Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film, though at this time it was customary for the statuette to be given to a cartoon's producer, not the director. Jones did not receive a Best Animated Short Film Oscar of his own until winning for The Dot and the Line in 1966. Robin Williams later 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 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, a group of animation 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).
Early life
Charles Martin Jones was born on September 21, 1912, in Spokane, Washington, to Mabel McQuiddy (née Martin) and Charles Adams Jones. When he was six months old, he moved with his parents and three siblings to Los Angeles, California.
In his autobiography, Chuck Amuck, Jones credits his artistic bent to circumstances surrounding his father, who was an unsuccessful businessman in California in the 1920s. He recounted that his father would start every new business venture by purchasing new stationery and new pencils with the company name on them. When the business failed, his father would quietly turn the huge stacks of useless stationery and pencils over to his children, requiring them to use up all the material as fast as possible. The children drew frequently, owing to the abundance of high-quality paper and pencils. Later, in one art school class, the professor gravely informed the students that they each had 100,000 bad drawings in them that they must first get past before they could possibly draw anything worthwhile. Jones recounted years later that this pronouncement came as a great relief to him, as he was well past the 200,000 mark, having used up all that stationery. Jones and several of his siblings went on to artistic careers.
During his artistic education, he worked part-time as a janitor. After graduating from Chouinard Art Institute, Jones got a phone call from a friend named Fred Kopietz, who had been hired by Ub Iwerks' studio Animated Pictures, and offered him a job. He worked his way up in the animation industry, starting as a cel washer; "then I moved up to become a painter in black and white, some color. Then I went on to take animator's drawings and traced them onto the celluloid. Then I became what they call an in-betweener, which is the guy that does the drawing between the drawings the animator makes". While at Iwerks, he met a cel painter named Dorothy Webster, who later became his first wife.
Career
Warner Bros. Cartoons
Jones joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, the independent studio that produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros. Pictures, in 1933 as an assistant animator. In 1935 he was promoted to animator and assigned to work with a new Schlesinger director, Tex Avery. There was no room for the new Avery unit in Leon Schlesinger's small studio, so Avery, Jones, and fellow animators Bob Clampett, Virgil Ross, and Sid Sutherland were moved into a small adjacent building they dubbed "Termite Terrace". In 1937, Jones' old boss Ub Iwerks was subcontracted to produce several Looney Tunes shorts for Schlesinger, with Clampett and Jones brought in to assist him. Iwerks completed only two shorts before he left, with Clampett taking his position soon after. Jones worked alongside Clampett as an animator and an uncredited co-director (or "supervisor", the original title for an animation director in the studio) before becoming a main director himself in 1938 when Frank Tashlin left the studio, a position that was initially offered to animator Robert McKimson. The following year, Jones created his first major character, Sniffles, a cute Disney-style mouse, who went on to star in twelve Warner Bros. cartoons.
Jones initially struggled in with his directorial style in his formative years. Unlike the other directors in the studio, Jones wanted to make cartoons that would rival the quality and tone to that of ones made by Walt Disney Productions. However, his cartoons suffered from sluggish pacing and a lack of any humor, with Jones himself later describing his early conception of timing and dialog to have been "formed by watching the action in the La Brea Tar Pits". Schlesinger and the studio heads were unsatisfied with his Disney-esque style and demanded him make cartoons that were funnier. Jones began to change his directorial style starting with the 1942 short The Draft Horse, but the cartoon that was generally considered his true turning point was The Dover Boys at Pimento University later that year. The short became highly regarded in recent years for its quick-timed gags and extensive use of stylized animation. Despite this, Schlesinger and the studios heads were still dissatisfied and begun the process to fire him, but because they were unable to find a replacement due to a labor shortage stemming from World War II, Jones kept his position.
Jones was actively involved in efforts to unionize the staff of Leon Schlesinger Productions. He was responsible for recruiting animators, layout men, and background people. Almost all animators joined, in reaction to salary cuts imposed by Schlesinger. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio had already signed a union contract, encouraging their counterparts under Schlesinger. In a meeting with his staff, Schlesinger talked for a few minutes, then turned over the meeting to his attorney. His insulting manner had a unifying effect on the staff. Jones gave a pep talk at the union headquarters. As negotiations…