In the first in-depth examination of music written for Hollywood animated cartoons of the 1930s through the 1950s, Daniel Goldmark provides a brilliant account of the enormous creative effort that went into setting cartoons to music and shows how this effort shaped the characters and stories that have become embedded in American culture. Focusing on classical music, opera, and jazz, Goldmark considers the genre and compositional style of cartoons produced by major Hollywood animation studios, including Warner Bros., MGM, Lantz, and the Fleischers. Tunes for 'Toons discusses several well-known cartoons in detail, including What's Opera, Doc?, the 1957 Warner Bros. parody of Wagner and opera that is one of the most popular cartoons ever created. Goldmark pays particular attention to the work of Carl Stalling and Scott Bradley, arguably the two most influential composers of music for theatrical cartoons. Though their musical backgrounds and approaches to scoring differed greatly, Stalling and Bradley together established a unique sound for animated comedies that has not changed in more than seventy years. Using a rich range of sources including cue sheets, scores, informal interviews, and articles from hard-to-find journals, the author evaluates how music works in an animated universe. Reminding readers of the larger context in which films are produced and viewed, this book looks at how studios employed culturally charged music to inspire their stories and explores the degree to which composers integrated stylistic elements of jazz and the classics into their scores.

The popularity of cartoon music, from Carl Stalling's work for Warner Bros. to Disney sound tracks and "The Simpsons"' song parodies, has never been greater. This lively and fascinating look at cartoon music's past and present collects contributions from well-known music critics and cartoonists, and interviews with the principal cartoon composers. Here Mark Mothersbaugh talks about his music for "Rugrats," Alf Clausen about composing for "The Simpsons," Carl Stalling about his work for Walt Disney and Warner Bros., Irwin Chusid about Raymond Scott's work, Will Friedwald about "Casper the Friendly Ghost," Richard Stone about his music for "Animaniacs," Joseph Lanza about "Ren and Stimpy," and much, much more.

Celebrate the best of Looney Tunes cartoons, just in time for Bugs Bunny’s 80th birthday! In a world of rascally rabbits, megalomaniacal ducks, and stuttering pigs, what defines greatness? This question was posed to thousands of cartoon fans, historians, and animators to create The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Cartoons, the definitive Looney Tunes collection. Jerry Beck and the Cartoon Brew team of animation experts reveal the amusing anecdotes and secret origins behind such classics as “What’s Opera, Doc?,” “One Froggy Evening,” and “Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century.” Featuring more than 300 pieces of original art from private collectors and the Warner Bros. archives, The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Cartoons settles the debate on the best of the best, and poses a new question: Is your favorite one of the greatest?

Here is the first comprehensive record of the classic Warner Bros. cartoon studio, wonderfully and richly illustrated in full color. "This comic valentine offers impeccable research, interviews wiuth the animated geniuses who breathed life and laughter into their Looney Tunes, and hundreds of rare illustrations".--Time. 225 full-color illustrations. 100 line drawings.

Everything you always wanted to know about Warner Bros. cartoons but were afraid to ask, this complete and indispensable reference will delight adults, children, and audiences all over the world.

Step-by-step instructions using well known Looney Tunes characters to demonstrate the techniques used in drawing figures and creating action for animation.

Warner Bros. and Chronicle Books proudly present Draw the Looney Tunes. For years, this was the textbook used by in-house artists to learn the ropes at Warner Bros. This exclusive edition brings the book to the general public for the very first time. But in no way have we stripped it down. We're not kwazy. We've left all the bells and whistles in place: vellum overlays, landscape four-color foldouts, vintage cartoons, step-by-step instruction, and how-to textquite the package! With good humor and wise counsel the artists reveal their secrets of success and outline everything necessary to master the basic principles. It's written for every level of expertise, so budding cartoonists and those well into their craft will learn how to bring characters to life, train the eye to really "see," create rhythm and movement, show perspective, and perfect the finer points of drawing Bugs himself. Chockful of all this and more, Draw the Looney Tunes is a veritable open vault of information and inspiration from those in the knowand th-th-th-th-that's a lot, folks!

Looney Tunes cartoons, writes celebrated television critic Jaime Weinman, are the high-water mark of American filmed comedy. Surreal, irreverent, philosophical, and riotously funny, they have maintained their power over audiences for generations and inspired such giants of the cinema as Mel Brooks, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. Here, finally, Weinman gives Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety, Sylvester, and the whole cast of animated icons their long-awaited due. With meticulous research, he takes us inside the Warners' studio to unlock the mystery of how an unlikely band of directors and artists working in the shadow of Walt Disney created a wild, visually stunning and oh-so-violent brand of comedy that has never been matched for sheer volume of laughs. The result is an unexpected and fascinating story that matches the Looney Tunes themselves for energy, humor, and ingenuity.

Tweety Bird was colored yellow because censors felt the original pink made the bird look nude. Betty Boop's dress was lengthened so that her garter didn't show. And in recent years, a segment of Mighty Mouse was dropped after protest groups claimed the mouse was actually sniffing cocaine, not flower petals. These changes and many others like them have been demanded by official censors or organized groups before the cartoons could be shown in theaters or on television. How the slightly risque gags in some silent cartoons were replaced by rigid standards in the sound film era is the first misadventure covered in this history of censorship in the animation industry. The perpetuation of racial stereotypes in many early cartoons is examined, as are the studios' efforts to stop producing such animation. This is followed by a look at many of the uncensored cartoons, such as Lenny Bruce's Thank You Mask Man and Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat. The censorship of television cartoons is next covered, from the changes made in theatrical releases shown on television to the different standards that apply to small screen animation. The final chapter discusses the many animators who were blacklisted from the industry in the 1950s for alleged sympathies to the Communist Party.