Chuck Jones

Charles Martin Jones ( born September 21, 1912 in Spokane, Washington; † 22 February 2002 in Corona del Mar, California ) was an American artist and director of animated films, where he also worked as a screenwriter.

Life

Chuck Jones grew up in Los Angeles. Early on, he developed a keen talent for drawing, which he further developed constantly. After studying at the Chouinard Art Institute, he worked as an animation assistant for the animation studios of Ub Iwerks and Walter Lantz.

1933 Jones went to Leon Schlesinger Productions, an independent production company, worked for the then even Tex Avery. There he gained his first experience as a director and delivered in 1938 with Man or mouse? his cartoon debut from. The first films came from the public but little acceptance. Colleagues also criticized the slow narrative pace, the lack of humor and kitschy style of drawing, the very oriented to Walt Disney.

1942 struck Jones with The Dover Boys an entirely new way and broke with all the usual conventions. He reduced and stylized drawings to a minimum and thus away from the more realistic standard that Disney had set years earlier. About the film The Dover Boys Jones said later: " With him I learned how to be funny. " By this time he also began to invent their own characters, such as Charlie Dog, Hubie, Bertie, and The Three Bears the later is still very popular Porky. During the Second World War, Jones worked with Theodore " Dr. Seuss " Geisel to " Private Snafu ", a series of educational and propaganda cartoons for soldiers and drew a campaign spot for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Already from the beginning of the 1930s produced the Leon Schlesinger studio for Warner Brothers cartoon series Looney Tunes. Although Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were the undisputed stars of the show, Jones also created from the mid- 1940s a number of memorable characters, including the dog, Marc Anthony, the skunk Pepe Lepew, the Martian Marvin and the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Two of his first successes as a director were the cartoons Beloved skunk (orig. For Scent - imental Reasons ) And So Much For So Little, for which he won two Oscars in 1950. Large gained popularity unnerved Duck (Duck Amuck ) from 1952, in which Daffy Duck is tormented by his draftsman.

As the animation studio from Warner Brothers in 1953 closed for two years, Jones worked in this time when competitors Disney. Parts of the film Sleeping Beauty ( 1959) come from him. After his return to Warner in 1955 he created One Froggy Evening, which is about a man who owns a singing frog. This never shows his talent, however, in the presence of other people. The main character Michigan J. Frog was for many years the mascot of Warner Brothers. In What's Opera Doc? of 1957 Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd fight in the style of Disney's Fantasia success to the sounds of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Both works are still extremely popular and are now long been considered a classic.

In the early 1960s Jones wrote on behalf of the studio UPA the screenplay for the movie Gay Purr - ee. Since Warner looked at this as a breach of contract, he was released in 1962. In 1964 he recorded for MGM some episodes of Tom and Jerry. With his own animation company Sib Tower 12, he produced the 1965 film The Dot and the Line, of a straight line is about the love to a point and won an Oscar.

1966 Jones created the animated film The Stolen Christmas ( How the Grinch stole Christmas ), who has stolen the children's book How the Grinch Christmas is based on Dr. Seuss. The film will be shown in the United States today at Christmas every year on TV.

From the 1980s, Jones worked as an animator increasingly rare. Instead, he gave numerous lectures at art schools and gave drawing lessons. Besides, he was also seen in small roles in films, as in the films of Joe Dante's Gremlins - Little Monsters (1984 ) as Mr. Jones and Innerspace (1987 ) as a supermarket customer. He worked well into old age. On February 22, 2002 Chuck Jones died of heart failure. He was married twice and had two children. Overall, he has directed nearly 300 cartoons.

Filmography (selection)

Awards and Nominations (selection)

All nominations and awards for Best Animated Short (up to So Much For So Little for Best Short Documentary )

Pictures of Chuck Jones

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