Elmer Fudd
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Elmer Fudd
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|---|---|
| First appearance | Elmer's Candid Camera (1940) |
| Created by | Chuck Jones |
| Voiced by | Arthur Q. Bryan (until 1959) Mel Blanc (1959 - 1989) |
| Background Information | |
| Aliases | Egghead |
| Relatives | Loud Kiddington ("son", unofficial as he was only playing a role) |
| Friends | Elmyra Duff (student) |
| Rivals | Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck , Happy Rabbit |
| Catchphrases | A speech impediment that renders his dialogue with "w" sounds in place of where "l" sounds and "r" sounds would be; "Shhhhhhhh, be vewy vewy quiet; I'm hunting wabbits, ehehehehehehe." |
The fictional cartoon character Elmer J. Fudd, now one of the most famous Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies characters, also has one of the more convoluted and disputed origins in the Warner Brothers cartoon pantheon (second only to Bugs Bunny himself). His aim is to shoot Bugs, but he always ends up seriously injuring himself.
His stock line is: "Shhhhhhhh, be vewy vewy quiet; I'm hunting wabbits, ehehehehehehe." He does not say this in every single cartoon in which he does appear; for example, Daffy Duck appeared with him in "Quack Shot," but Bugs wasn't there.
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[edit] Egghead
In 1937, Tex Avery introduced a new character in his cartoon short Egghead Rides Again. Egghead had a bulbous nose, funny/eccentric clothing, a voice like Joe Penner, and an egg-shaped head. Many cartoon historians believe that Egghead evolved into Elmer over a period of a couple of years.
Egghead made his second appearance in 1937's Little Red Walking Hood and then in 1938 teamed with Warner Brothers' newest cartoon star Daffy Duck in Daffy Duck and Egghead. Egghead continued to appear in a string of cartoons in 1938: The Isle of Pingo Pongo, Cinderella Meets Fella, and A-Lad-In Bagdad. However, it wasn't until A Feud There Was (1938) where his character was identified as "Elmer Fudd, Peacemaker", though he still maintained his Egghead-ish appearance.
Egghead (or the prototypical Elmer Fudd) made four more appearances in Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas (1938), Hamateur Night (1939), A Day At The Zoo (1939), and forty-nine years later in the 1988 compilation film Daffy Duck's Quackbusters.
In the 1939 cartoon Dangerous Dan McFoo, a new voice actor Arthur Q. Bryan was hired to provide the voice of the hero dog-character and it was in this cartoon that the popular "milk-sop" voice of Elmer Fudd was created.
[edit] Elmer emerges
In 1940, Egghead/Elmer's appearance was refined giving him a chin and a less bulbous nose (although still wearing Egghead's style of clothing) and Arthur Q. Bryan's "Dan McFoo" voice in what most people consider Elmer Fudd's first true appearance: a Chuck Jones short entitled Elmer's Candid Camera. Happy Rabbit drives Elmer insane. Later that year, in Bugs Bunny's debut cartoon A Wild Hare, Bugs appears, with a carrot, Brooklyn/Bronx accent, and "What's Up, Doc" all in place for the first time. Elmer has a better voice and a trimmer figure, too. Elmer's role in these two films, that of would-be hunter, dupe and foil for Bugs, would remain his main role forever after, and although Bugs Bunny was called upon to outwit many more worthy opponents, Elmer somehow remained Bugs' classic nemesis, despite (or because of) his legendary gullibility, small size, short temper, and shorter attention span. Somehow knowing not only that Elmer would lose, but knowing how he would lose, made the confrontation, counterintuitively, more delicious. Despite being the antagonist, Elmer lacked the malice of a true villain.
Elmer was usually cast as a hapless big-game hunter, armed with a double-barreled shotgun and creeping through the woods "hunting wabbits." In a few cartoons, though, he assumed a completely different persona — a wealthy industrialist type, occupying a luxurious penthouse, or, in one episode involving a role reversal, a sanitarium — which Bugs would of course somehow find his way into. He appears in the video game Bugs Bunny Lost in Time as the boss of the era Stone Age and in Bugs Bunny and Taz Time Busters as the boss in the Vikings era. Elmer would also appear on the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures as a teacher at Acme Looniversity, where he was the idol and favorite teacher of Elmyra Duff, the slightly deranged animal lover who resembles Elmer in her lack of intellect.
[edit] Fat Elmer
For a short time in the early 1940s, Elmer's appearance was modified again. He became a heavy-set, beer-belly character, patterned after Arthur Q. Bryan's real-life appearance, and still chasing Bugs (or vice versa). Audiences did not accept a fat Fudd, so ultimately the slimmer version (which was only fat in the head, literally and figuratively) returned for good.
[edit] The voice of Elmer Fudd
Fudd was originally voiced by radio actor Arthur Q. Bryan, but after Bryan's death in 1959, was reluctantly assumed as yet another voice by the versatile Mel Blanc (although other voice actors have alternated as Fudd's voice). Bryan's characterization remains the definitive one. He was never credited onscreen, because only Blanc had the clause in his contract that required a screen credit. Blanc admitted in his autobiography that he found the voice difficult to get "right", and he never quite made it his own. In Speechless, the famous print issued following Blanc's death, Elmer is not shown among the characters bowing their heads in tribute to Blanc. Elmer has also been voiced by Daws Butler, Greg Burson, Jeff Bergman, Billy West and others over the years.
The best known Elmer Fudd cartoons include Chuck Jones' masterpiece What's Opera, Doc? (one of the few times Fudd succeeded in besting Bugs, and he feels bad about it), the Rossini parody Rabbit of Seville, and the "Hunter Trilogy" of "Rabbit Season/Duck Season" shorts (Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck, Rabbit, Duck!) with Fudd himself, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck.
He nearly always misplaced r and l with w (a trait that also characterized Tweety Bird) when he would talk in his slightly raspy voice. That characterization seemed to fit his somewhat timid and childlike persona. Naturally, the writers often gave him lines filled with those letters, such as doing Shakespeare's Romeo as "Soft, what wight thwough yonduh window bweaks!" or Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries as "Kiww the wabbit, kiww the wabbit, kiww the wabbit...!" or "The Beautifuw Bwue Danube, by Johann Stwauss".
Part of the joke is that Elmer is presumably incapable of pronouncing his own first name correctly.
Elmer's easily mimicked voice lends itself to endless takeoffs. In recent times, Robin Williams has parodied Elmer doing Bruce Springsteen: "I'm dwivin' in my cah... a man comes on the wadio..." or as Marlon Brando's character in A Streetcar Named Desire saying "Stewwa!" During a stand-up performance, Gilbert Gottfried once parodied parodied Elmer being in a scene from Apocalypse Now: "Da howaww...da howaaww."
Occasionally Elmer would properly pronounce an r or l sound, depending on whether or not it was vital for the audience to understand what the word was. (For example, in 1944's The Old Gray Hare, he clearly pronounces the r in the word "picture")
[edit] Notes
- A preserved World War II B-17 Flying Fortress Bomber carries the name "Fuddy Duddy", with Elmer painted on the side.
- In Marvel Comics, a foe of Howard the Duck is named Judge Elmer Dwedd, and appears as a mixture of Elmer and comic-book character Judge Dredd.
[edit] Trivia
- Paul Dickson's book, Dickson's Word Treasury (ISBN 0471551686) quotes the Oxford English Dictionary as saying that "fud" is "the proper term for a rabbit's anus."
- Google allows you to change the active language to Elmer Fudd in the options. [1]
- Elmer appears in the Histeria! episode "The Teddy Roosevelt Show". In the sketch he appears in, Loud Kiddington appears as the son of Elmer's character, suggesting that Elmer is Loud's father. However, as Histeria! fan writer JusSonic had mentioned in one of his fanfics, Elmer is only playing Loud's father, and therefore the relationship between the two is not canon.
- When United States Vice President Dick Cheney, himself rotund and bald, accidentally shot his friend Harry Whittington while hunting quail, countless parodies arose on the Internet drawing parallels between Vice President Cheney and Elmer Fudd.
- In Confederate Honey (1940), there is an Elmer-esque character named Ned Cutler.
- Actor/director Mel Gibson is known for his accurate Elmer Fudd impersonation. In fact, as a practical joke on the set of Braveheart, he directed several scenes in Elmer Fudd's voice, causing several actors to break character and burst out laughing at various points.
- In an episode of Seinfeld ("The Bubble Boy"), Jerry is dating a woman who laughs like "Elmer Fudd sitting on a juicer", which turns Jerry off.
- Elmer Fudd makes a cameo appearance in Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, in a cut-away where he actually kills Bugs by shooting him in the chest and then snapping his neck. He also appears in Drawn Together, in which he is heavily implied to be a homosexual. This contrasts with some occasions in the older cartoons, where an attractive female would appear and Elmer would whistle and hoot like any of the other male characters. In all likelihood, Elmer's Drawn Together appearance was done simply for the humor of hearing Elmer, with his speech impediment, say gay sexual innuendo.
- Elmer appears in an episode of the Adult Swim show "Robot Chicken", under the pseudonym "Elmer Phudd", where he engages in a rap battle with "B-Rabbit" (Bugs Bunny) in a parody of 8-Mile.
- The name "Elmer" was not uncommon in the era when the character was created. Perhaps because of simply falling out of favor with time, or perhaps because of such a strong popular association of that name with this character, the name "Elmer" is seldom given to children now.
[edit] External links
- Elmer Fudd downloadable movie
- Elmer now has his own version of Google
- Fresh Hare and Corny Concerto Two Classic Public Domain Elmer Fudd Cartoons (Free to Download)
