19 Replies to “Frankly, My Dear”

  1. Thanks Kate. M. Le Pew is indeed a classic caricature. I’ve written about Mr. Chuck Jones’ work before, for example, under the 1938 entry here ~ tinyurl.com/ozn46 ~ and I must say he really is a (perhaps the) master of the art form. By the way, if anyone’s interested, here is possibly the only episode in which Pepe discovers that the target of his amour is not in fact un skonk, in which case, true to caricature, he behaves flawlessly:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbKbloYBDi0

  2. Could be it’s just me, yet I see no statism or theism in M. Le Pew,
    that’s rather part of the story, I think, by omission if you like.

  3. Vitruvius; it is just fun. I remember Pepe from when I was a kid. At the theater, in the little town forty miles from our place, they used to play a newsreel (we did not have TV) then a cartoon and then the feature presentation – all for 15 cents!! We all made fun of each other using the name of Pepe la Phew.
    The genius of this cartoon is that it actually creates the atmosphere of the Casbah and romance.

  4. I too first saw this type of cartoon in the late ’50s, Jema, when my grandma took my sister and I to Saturday afternoon matinees, and then some five-ish years later, on Saturday television at 17:00 hours. So I want to note that it is not my intention in thinking about these cartoons to distract from their prima facie value, rather it is that I go on and on and on about them because I find them both fascinating and delightful, and that’s worth something too I think, sort of like a fan club. Anyway, with that proviso, I certainly do agree, Jema, that Mr. Jones’ caricaturization of the Casbah in this sketch, especially considering the constraints of the media and his fealty to the character of M. Le Pew, was brilliantly executed.

  5. What a great way to start my Sunday! Pepe has always been one of my favorites.

  6. I always looked forward to seeing Pepe cartoons when I was a kid. But that cat! What a pussy.

  7. Mel Blanc used to have KMIT on his license plates. Because of their bans on innuendo and advertising, someome in the California Bureau of Motor Vehicles asked him what it stood for. His reply, “Know Me In Truth.”
    “Oh, that’s lovely,” she replied.
    As he later told Johnny Carson it really meant, “Kish mier in toochis” *Yiddish for “Kiss my @ss”

  8. I’m surprised no knitpickers have noted that the camel has two humps, which would render it more at home in the Gobi Desert, rather than the single-humped variety in the Sahara/Casbah. Oh, I suppose this submission makes me the knitpicker…

  9. If a dirty stinking spitting camel can put up with the sandaled feet of an Arab who hasn’t bathed since they filmed the Wizard of Oz then a skunk should be a walk in the park.
    Methinks that might have been the point…

  10. The back to nature eco-wackos smell so bad they would make that french skunk gag

  11. I couldn’t stand Pepe as a kid; when he flashed across my TV that was always enough for me to go outside & do something – anything – but watch him.
    My fav 1-timer? That wonderful singing frog…
    “Oh I’M JUST WI-I-I-I-L-L-L-D ABOUT HAR-R-R-Y-Y-Y, AND HARRY’S WILD ABOUT ME-E-E-E-E !!!”
    mhb23re
    at gmail d0t calm

  12. Aviator, it’s nits you are picking, not knits. What does that make me – nitpicking the knitpicker?

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