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Who created Bugs Bunny

01:00 Mon 18th Mar 2002 |

A.� Animator Chuck Jones first drew Bugs Bunny and his pals Daffy Duck and the Road Runner. Jones, who died this year aged 89, got a job after art school as an animator in the studio of former Disney cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks.

But it was his leap in 1936 to a Warner Bros studio that led to the highlight of his career. During the Golden Age of animation in the 1930s and 1940s, he oversaw the development of well-loved characters like Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. At Looney Tunes, Jones also created his own group of characters, including Wile E. Coyote and his tormentor, the Road Runner.

Jones' s success was that he created cartoons which displayed a dark humour, that appealed to adults as well as children. After the closure of the Warner Bros studio in 1962, Jones moved to MGM where he brought his wit to Tom & Jerry cartoons. In 1965, he directed the short, The Dot and The Line, for which he won an Oscar.

Q.� How did the industry recognise his talent - and the contribution Bugs Bunny has made

A.� During his 30-year career, Jones made more than 300 animated shorts and won four Oscars, including three for his work as a director in the Looney Tunes stable. In 1996, he won an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in animation.

One of his most popular films, What's Opera, Doc was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1992 for being "among the most culturally, historically and aesthetically significant films of our time".

In the preface to his 1989 autobiography, Chuch Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg wrote: "Chuck Jones's originality, his humour and his pacing still have no peer today".

Jones, who was born in Spokane, Washington in 1912, established his own production company, Chuck Jones Enterprises, in 1962 and produced nine half-hour animation films for television.

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By Katharine MacColl

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