Why did they change his appearence and then change it back?
I don’t recall them ever changing him back…I do recall that he lost quite a good deal of weight…
Could you be more specific?
On the Looney Toons Golden Collection, the commentary to one of the “Fat” Elmers cartoons explains this. One of the guys had been hired from Tex Avery’s unit over at MGM suggested bulking up Elmer to make him funnier. They tried it for at least two of the toons, and the results were unsatisfactory, so they put Elmer on a diet.
Also originally Elmer Fudd was another character called Egghead. I’m not sure why they changed him though. They probably just liked the design more.
Elmer was little at first then they made him a “newwer, fatter Fudd.” Then they changed him back to basically what he was before.
The Fat Fudd was supposed to resemble the guy who did Fudd’s voice who was Arthur Q. Bryan. Like pesch said they didn’t really care for this new version and so returned to the classic Fudd.
There’s a pic of him on this page. Not a very good one though.
Whaaa? You mean Mel Blanc didn’t do the voice of Elmer Fudd?
I looked him op on Imdb, and it seems to be right. I’ll be damned.
Well, Bryan died in 59. This site seems to hint that Mel gave it a go after then but it wasn’t the same. And this one states it flat out. Now that I think about it those 60s toons never sounded right.
There were several other voice actors working for WB. It’s just that Mel Blanc was practically the only one who ever got into the credits by name. Indeed in the Looney Tunes DVD they make it sound like the only time anyone else made the credits was when Mel wasn’t participating. It did all change eventually, Not sure of the date though.
Elmer Fudd has a fascinating history, mot f it given above. Apparently he started out as a character called “Egghead”, who was suppoed to be based somehow on a adio comedian named Joe Penner. I always found Egghead really annying. So, apparently, did a lot of other folks. In one of his cartoons he shows up on a motorscooter that bears the legend “Elmer Fudd”.
Egghead was a Tex Avery character. I think it was some other animator who first gave us the non-Egghead Elmer, with the normal-colored nose and the Arthur Bryant voice. Bryan apparently voiced baby or babyish characters on the radio, an he’s the one who gave u the distinctive “Elmer” voice (Another annoying part about Egghead, besides his personalitry, was his stupid voice), with it’s “r” and “l” changed to “w” (“Scwewy Wabbit!”)
Bob Clampett is the one who tried out the “fat” elmer with the smaller head, bac in the 1940s. It’s hard for us to realize it now, when the characters have been around so long that they seem set in stone, but back then, nobody knew what they were supposed to look like, or sound like, or act. They were always experimenting with them, and changing them. Chuck Jones’ Daffy Duck (the “rich and greedy miser”, and the confident yet incompetant foil to Bugs) is worlds away and completely different from Bob Clampett’s easrlier version, for instance. So there was no reason to try out th fatter Elmer. It didn’t work, so they went back to the thinner version.
(Elmers not the only bald guy who’s been tried out in thin ad fat versions. For a while DC comics tried a fat version of Lex Luthor. And the post-1987 version has generally ben beefier than the earlier version.)
AFAIK, Bryany voiced Elmer until his death. Mel Blanc took over afterwards. Blanc says he didn’t like copying other people’s work, but I think he referred to other living voice artists. His Elmer sounds a lot like Bryant’s. I don’t knw who’s doing Elmer now. But now Elmer *is[/i set in stone, and it would be hard to imagine anyone seriously changing the character design, personality, or voice.
After the death of Bryan, Blanc and Dave Barry (a comedian, not the humor columnist) tried their turns at Elmer. An example of Blanc’s Elmer can be heard in Chuck Jones’ swashbuckling spoof The Scarlet Pumpernickel. It isn’t very good.
As CalMeacham stated, the characters evovled quite grandly. Bugs Bunny went through a number of stages before he became the smart-alecky wiseguy he is today. He started out as a Woody Woodpecker-esque screwball (even though Woody didn’t exist back then), then slowly evolved into the modern-day Bugs. Although, as Chuck Jones pointed out, he wasn’t always the wiseguy-he actually loses in his second cartoon! It takes a lot of work to get a great character just right. Bob Clampett thought a fat Elmer would be hilarious. It turned out he was wrong.
What was really cool about that was that in Gaiman and McKean’s Black Orchid Luthor was modeled on Marlon Brando.
Don Markstein sets the record stright about Elmer and Egghead.
Warner Brothers considered the two of them separate characters, and indicated they were brothers. Since they looked similar and never appeared together, most authorities say Egghead evolved into Elmer, but they were separate until Egghead was discontinued.
One reason why they created Yosemite Sam was so that Mel Blanc could do the voice after Bryan died.
Sorry – this an’t right. I resec Markstein and like his site, but all you have to do is watch a cartoon with Egghead in it and you know that his voic is completely different from Fudd’s (in any of his incarnations), and so is his character. I don’t know about the off-cartoon promotional material or anything that says Egghad and Elmer were brothers, but I’d like to know more. As for that name appearing in A Feud There Was – it appears on the side of the motorscooter that Egghead is riding, which tends to make one think Egghead and Elmer were the same. It’s too Byzantine to think that it’s the name of an unseen and uncredited brother whose transporation he happened to be borrowing.
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A quick “me too” on the Egghead-morphed-into-Elmer side - I have a screen snap of Egghead riding a scooter bearing the legend “Elmer Fudd ~ Peace Maker” from Feud.
Not only are the voices very different, but the character is as well - Egghead was a complete goof - pretty much a sight gag - Elmer is a full character - not a winning character (he cann’t even beat an ant colony), but a full, believable character.
Also, consider this:
“Fud” is an old word meaning “rabbit’s tail.” Elmer Fudd is constantly tailing a rabbit.
Coincidence?
For those still reading, see:
http://toolooney.toonzone.net/feud.jpg
for the screen snap of Egghead-come-Elmer
Although that entry needs updating now. Egghead had a cameo at the end of Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
I thought Elmer sounded off in that cartoon.
The link won’t let me in. Is this correct?
Cite?