Foxy (Merrie Melodies)
Foxy | |
---|---|
Merrie Melodies character | |
First appearance | Lady, Play Your Mandolin! (1931) |
Last appearance | Two-Tone Town (1992) |
Created by | Rudolf Ising |
Voiced by | Johnny Murray (1931) Rob Paulsen (1992) |
In-universe information | |
Species | Fox |
Gender | Male |
Foxy is an
Concept and creation
In 1925, Hugh Harman drew images of mice on a portrait of
"Never in animation, before or since, has a character looked more like Mickey Mouse. Smooth out the tiny points that supposedly turned his big, round ears into fox ears, shave the bushiness off of his tail, and they were ringers. Do the same to his girlfriend (unnamed at the time), and she looked exactly like Minnie [Mouse]. They also acted like Mickey and Minnie did at the time. Despite this lack of originality, Foxy was the first character to originate at Warner (as opposed to being brought in from outside, like Bosko)".[3]
Screen history
Merrie Melodies
Foxy was the star of the first Merrie Melodies cartoons Ising directed for
Foxy and his then-nameless girlfriend would appear in another cartoon that same year: Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! (September 5, 1931), a musical set on a trolley.[4] The plot bears some similarities to Trolley Troubles, a 1927 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon to which Harman and Ising contributed.[citation needed] This also marks the first time Foxy's name was mentioned.
On October 3, 1931, a third short,
Foxy's film career ended abruptly with a phone call by Walt Disney, who asked Ising not to use a character so visually similar to Mickey Mouse.[citation needed] He was then replaced by Piggy, who appeared on the following two Merrie Melodies cartoons.
At the end of each short, Foxy peeks out from behind a bass drum that reads "A MERRIE MELODY", walks and says to the viewer, "So long, folks!", while rasing his arm, which would become the sign-off for Merrie Melodies cartoons until the end of 1934.
Upon leaving Warner Bros. two years later, Ising took the rights to Foxy and other characters he and/or Harman conceived (including Piggy and Goopy Geer). Though Harman-Ising eventually found another distributor in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, none of their WB-era characters besides Bosko appeared in any more theatrical cartoons. All three Foxy shorts eventually went into the public domain.[5]
Later appearances
Foxy appeared along with his girlfriend (here christened "Roxy") and fellow forgotten Warner Bros. progenitor
References
- ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
- ^ Kenworthy, John The Hand Behind the Mouse, Disney Editions: New York, 2001. p. 54.
- ^ Foxy at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on July 30, 2016.
- ^ ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
- ^ Cooke, Jon (ed.). "Looney Tunes in the Public Domain". Looney.GoldenAgeCartoons.com. Archived from the original on April 18, 2015. Retrieved April 13, 2011. Source cites Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain, 1894-1939, Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain, 1940-1949 and Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain, 1950-1959, all by Walter E. Hurst.
External links
- "Foxy & Roxy". ToonZone. Archived from the original on June 3, 2013.