Dumb question about Looney Tunes

[MNDude]

When I was a kid, I loved to wake up Saturday morning to watch The Bugs Bunny Roadrunner hour. I bought the Looney Tunes golden collection which should contain most of the episodes, and it is money well spent. Those episodes never get old.

But I was wondering, is there anyone here old enough to remember how they were originally broadcast back in the 40s and 50s? I doubt they had Saturday morning cartoon lineups back then. Did you have to go to the movie theaters to watch them or what?

[ssaftler]

One question for you.

Are the episodes in the collection the original versions as shown before 1980 or so, or is it the “No gratuitous violence, no suggestive dialog, no making people feel bad about themselves” PC versions they show nowadays (when they show it)?

If it’s the latter, hacked-up versions, their probably not worth the DVD material they are burned on.

[rlmorel]

When I was a kid in the Sixties, I seem to recall they used to show them at the base theaters in Yokosuka and Subic Bay before movies.

[hanamizu]

Once we got a black and white TV, the earliest cartoons I remember watching,...

---

The first ones I remember on TV were silent cartoons from the 20s and 30s. Of course they had dubbed music, but they had dialogue cards, so you had to read to be able to fully ‘get’ them. They typically featured a bearded farmer and his assorted farm animals. Lots of mice—not Mickey though. To see the good cartoons you still had to go to the movies. Then Disneyland came on TV.

[ssaftler]

If it’s the latter, hacked-up versions, their they're probably not worth the DVD material they are burned on.

Okay, spelling police:

[xp38]

Leonard Maltin wrote a book "Of Mice and Magic" all about Hollywood animation from the golden era. Basically there was early experimental stuff in the silent era and that is where Disney began and learned the ropes. With the beginning of Mickey Mouse which was created from the fallout of him leaving the employ of one these early animation outfits Disney rose to dominance in animation in the 1930s with Mickey and his growing gang and also had exclusive technicolor toons when the competition like Fleischer and Warners only had black and white. When Snow White in 1937 debuted Disney had moved to the next level and was now besides doing shorts was doing feature animated movies again leading the way.

Warners with Porky Pig and eventually Bugs Bunny stole the shorts crown from Disney during the 1940s and 1950s. The animation unit petered out and went silent by the early 1960s. What you saw on your tv during the 1960s and forward were those legendary shorts from earlier shown in movie theatres recycled. They are timeless and will be enjoyed for many generations into the future.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“Extraordinarily fond memories from when America was still America.”

I was born in 1960, so by the time I was 10 or so, things were heating up and the Socialists and the Feminists were storming the castle! ;)

They did a great job of making me the ConservaTarian that I am, today. :)

[Doogle]

Usually before the featured,but occasionally they might sneak in two more much to cheers..* smiles*

[Bratch]

LOONEY TUNES (Looney Toons): BUGS BUNNY - All This and Rabbit Stew (1941) (Remastered HD)

[plain talk]

Here's an old one from Bobby Bumps

[aomagrat]

I own the Golden Collection DVDs and they are unedited. Even a couple of director cuts that didn’t originally make it past the censors.

[aomagrat]

Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!

[HartleyMBaldwin]

I stumbled across “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves” some years ago on Youtube. Made in the 40s, and about as politically incorrect as you’d guess. No idea if it’s still there.

[xp38]

I should add the creator directors at Warners Bob Clampett, Tex Avery,Isadore “Friz” Freleng and Chuck Jones were responsible for those great toons. The place they were made on the Warners lot was called the Termite Terrace.

[Fiji Hill]

One of my earliest memories of a cartoon was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKlj9d6J5v8

When I clicked on your link, I saw that cartoon for the first time in 59 years. I first saw it on our black and white TV while watching Cartoon Express, a weekday program hosted by Bill Stulla, who called himself Engineer Bill. He wore a railroad engineer's cap and his props included model trains, railroad whistles and bells.

Engineer Bill also presented other animated features as well, including Spunky and Tadpole, a series about a boy and a bear and their exploits and feats of derring do, Gumby, the adventures of a walking, talking cookie, and Loony Tunes.

[Bonemaker]

The 60’s were extremely violent, and turbulent years. I came along in 1940 so got to see WW2 and Korea plus the absolutely golden and forever singular 50’s. Things started going sideways in early 60’s with the “free speech” movement in Berkeley, JFK assassination , and the LBJ disaster. Then there was King, Bobby Kennedy, Watts, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Viet Nam and all the rest. Much of the senior current democrats came out of all that as the filth they are.

[plain talk]

Here is a close-up of that character from Bobby Bumps ~ 1917. I am posting this stuff because I fully expect these cartoons to be removed from youtube etc.

[abb]

I can recall seeing Looney Tunes in the 70s on Saturday Mornings. Maybe even the 80s.

[MV=PY]

Wow!

“This is it
The night of nights...”

[Phil DiBasquette]

it would take a lot more discussion to explain all the reasons (such as the confluence of the motion picture vertical monopolies being broken up,
the rise of TV, the UPA influence, the fall of many cartoon studios (WB MGM and Terry returned under new management several others like Universal/Lantz continued to make shorts into the late 1960s) that a cartoon like Colonel Bleep came about and found a home in the 1st decades of TV - mostly monetary, some artistic - it is a OK program (which had some input from Joseph Barbera) - it’s weak compared to really good programs from Jay Ward or even H-B but looks like a classic next to poor contemporary fare like “Clutch Cargo” or “Bucky and Pepito”

[firebrand]

Junior Frolics on Newark, NJ's own TV station played only old cartoons, with Uncle Fred doing a kind of narration, because they had no sound, usually. But there was always wonderful Flatt & Scruggs type music, which is I think why I loved them, although I didn't realize it at the time.

Here's one with the Skillet Lickers.

If you know anything about animation, you can see that these were real low-budget. The more times you could photograph the same piece of art, the more money you saved.