Chuck Jones' unmade Droopy cartoon (2024)

This was posted among some cartoon trivia at jimhillmedia.com today. I never knew Chuck had plans to make a Droopy cartoon:

THE LOST DROOPY
One of the most popular cartoon superstars is Tex Avery's Droopy. While Avery was at MGM, there were several Droopy story proposals that were either rejected or abandoned by management. However, in the early Nineties, it was discovered in Chuck Jones' files that Jones was going to direct a Droopy cartoon. In 1962, when Jones was directing Tom and Jerry shorts for MGM, he put together a storyboard for a short to be entitled TROOPER DROOPY. One of the early scenes shows the intrepid trooper going through the North Woods. The camera pulls back to reveal Droopy riding a unicycle. He turns to the audience and says, "I know it's degrading but I save a lot of hay."

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-Jon

Wow, I didn't knew that.

I wonder what made Chuck Jones to abandon that.

It would be interesting to see what Jones would've done with the character, I wonder if his Droopy cartoons would have an even hit-and-miss record like his Tom & Jerry cartoons...

Now I really wonder what the rest of the cartoon is about...

-Thad

Very fascinating. Like Thad, I wonder what the rest of the cartoon was about.

Maybe the story involves Droopy as a park ranger who tries to catch a convict Wolf - I don't know (Jones could have easily did another variation of "Dumb Hounded" and "Northwest Hounded Police").

-Pietro

J Lee said:

Jones was employed by Warner Bros. until July 23, 1962.

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According to illustrations in Steve Schneider's "That's All, Folks!", the last two Bugs cartoons credited to Jones were on the drawing boards after that date -- Transylvania 6-5000 in August and Mad as a Mars Hare in November.

-Tony

angilbas said:

According to illustrations in Steve Schneider's "That's All, Folks!", the last two Bugs cartoons credited to Jones were on the drawing boards after that date -- Transylvania 6-5000 in August and Mad as a Mars Hare in November.

-Tony

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The 7/23/62 date for Jones' departure from Warner Bros. is cited by Mike Barrier in his book "Hollywood Cartoons." and which he said the papers can be found in the USC Warner Bros. archive. In fact, if you get the, or have the Golden Collection DVD, check out the segment on Disc 1 of "The Bugs Bunny Show" which contains shots of the storyboard of "Transylvania 6-5000." Since that episode aired on ABC on 7/31/62, it's pretty clear that the cartoon was well into the pipeline before Jones had his falling out with Wanrers over moonlighting without permission on "Gay Purr-ee."

Anyway, if the reverse was truem it would make it even less likely that Jones was working on a Droopy cartoon in 1962, other than possible on spec to pitch to the suits at MGM along with possible Tom & Jerry storyboards in order to get the contract to make new cartoons. "Penthouse Mouse" was the first one by Jones that MGM released, and it didn't show up until the end of 1963; in 1962, Metro was still releasing the last of the Gene Deitch T&Js (though Deitch's website indicates those were actually done in 1960-61, since they were made before the KFS Popeyes done by Deitch which debuted on TV in the fall of 1961).

Wow. It didnt' know about that Jones made a storyboard for a Droopy cartoon. It's always good to learn something new. It also clears up the Droopy poster in "Matinee Mouse." I always wondered why that was in that cartoon.

BTW, was Jones really canned at WB for his work on "Gay Paree" or because of the soon demise of the WB studio?

-Emmanuel

Emmanuel Cruz said:

BTW, was Jones really canned at WB for his work on "Gay Paree" or because of the soon demise of the WB studio?

-Emmanuel

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Twas. When Henry G. Saperstein bought UPA after it lost its distribution agreement with Columbia, he hired Jones animator Abe Levitow to supervise his new made-for-TV Mr. Magoo cartoons. Then when UPA and Levitow set about to make a feature film, Jones and his wife Dorothy supplied the screenplay for what eventually became "Gay Purr-ee." The problem was that when Saperstein needed a studio to distribute his new movie, he just happened to end up at Warner Bros., where studio execs viewing the finished product discovered Jones had been working outside the studio without permission.

In a repeat of the Schlesinger/J.L. Warner skirimsh with Tex Avery 21 years earlier, Jones was first suspended, and then terminated by Warners. Unlike with Avery, Warners did not remove Jones' name from the credits of the cartoons released by the studio after his dismissal (though they did yank it off the two cartoons complied from the "Adventures of the Road Runner" TV pilot), and with only nine months remaining before the studio's shut down, only one cartoon -- "The Iceman Ducketh" -- appears to have gone through production in the Jones unit after Chuck had left the studio.

J Lee said:

In a repeat of the Schlesinger/J.L. Warner skirimsh with Tex Avery 21 years earlier, Jones was first suspended, and then terminated by Warners. Unlike with Avery, Warners did not remove Jones' name from the credits of the cartoons released by the studio after his dismissal (though they did yank it off the two cartoons complied from the "Adventures of the Road Runner" TV pilot), and with only nine months remaining before the studio's shut down, only one cartoon -- "The Iceman Ducketh" -- appears to have gone through production in the Jones unit after Chuck had left the studio.

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Of the post-dismissal cartoons credited to Jones, Mad as a Mars Hare has the least Jones spirit IMO. It was still in production four months after Jones was discharged, and most of the animation appears to have been done without his supervision. Maurice Noble was credited as co-director, but may have been the film's real director.

War and Pieces was the last of this group to be released ... 22 months after Jones left. Nevertheless, it looks much like a Chuck Jones RR. According to Jeff Lenberg, Jones returned to Warner's to make this cartoon ... the same Lenberg who mistakenly listed many 1964 releases as D-FE productions. My guess is that War and Pieces was made before Mad as a Mars Hare.

Jones could have done some unpaid work if he was allowed to visit Termite Terrace after the dismissal. At any rate, the studio wasn't the same once he was off the payroll.

-Tony