CHUCK AMUCK!

Animator, Andy Latham asked in a comment to my post on Daffy Duck in Sherwood Forest whether I'd ever met the great Chuck Jones, the legendary animator and director of Robin Hood Daffy and dozens of other Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies and Loony Tunes cartoons, including such revered classics of such seven-minute masterpieces of the genre that is the short cartoon as Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening and What's Opera, Doc?

As I told Andy, I did have an encounter with the mighty Chuck when - at least twenty years ago, now - I hosted a Guardian Lecture with him at London's National Film Theatre. The event coincided with his coming to Britain to create a huge mural of Warner Brothers characters for the wall of the Museum of the Moving Image that (along with the museum itself) is, alas, long gone.

It was, I recall, a slightly nerve-wracking experience: as Chuck was maliciously playful and took some delight in seeing his interviewer discomforted.

We got off to a decidedly rocky start when I referred to the fact that he had studied (as had many of the great Disney animators) at the Chouinard Art Institute, founded in Los Angeles in 1921 by Mrs Nelbert Chouinard.

Having never heard Mrs C's name pronounced aloud, I said Choo-i-nard and Chuck immediately corrected my ignorance: "We say, Choonard!" he said, as if it was one of those English-American words the pronunciation of which differs depending what side of the Atlantic you're on.

Somewhat unsettled, I blundered on until, for some reason, the subject of kangaroos came up and Chuck, getting momentarily muddled, referred to the animal as a Wallaboo. I instantly countered with: "We say, Wallaby!"

He fixed me with a Wile E Coyote stare, chuckled and said, "You say Choo-i-nard, I say Wallaboo, let's call the whole thing off!" After which the interview went swimmingly!

At dinner, after the lecture, he drew this little thank you note in my autograph book...

And here's a Chuck Jones film that may be new to you. Entitled The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics it was based on the book by Norton Juster (the author The Phantom Tollbooth, which Jones also directed on film) and has narration by Robert Morley. Utterly charming, it's hardly surprising that it won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short in 1965...

By the way, this is as good a place as any to mention that I have just started a new blog devoted to things that are - as it's title indicates - DECIDEDLY DISNEY. I hope those of you with an interest in Uncle Walt and Disney animation will pop over for a visit it now and again...