The 11 Censored Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons That Haven’t Been Aired Since 1968

For decades and decades, Warn­er Bros.’ Looney Tunes and Mer­rie Melodies car­toons have served as a kind of default chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment. Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived for the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion in the nine­teen-thir­ties, they were ani­mat­ed to a stan­dard that held its own against the sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions along­side which they would lat­er be broad­cast. Even their clas­si­cal music-laden sound­tracks seemed to sig­nal high­er aspi­ra­tions. But when scru­ti­nized close­ly enough, they turned out not to be as time­less and inof­fen­sive as every­one had assumed. In fact, eleven Looney Tunes and Mer­rie Melodies car­toons have been with­held from syn­di­ca­tion since the nine­teen-six­ties due to their con­tent.

The LSu­per­Son­icQ video above takes a look at the “Cen­sored Eleven,” all of which have been sup­pressed for qual­i­ties like “exag­ger­at­ed fea­tures, racist tones, and out­dat­ed ref­er­ences.” Pro­duced between 1931 and 1944, these car­toons have been described as reflect­ing per­cep­tions wide­ly held by view­ers at the time that have since become unac­cept­able. Take, for exam­ple, the black pro­to-Elmer Fudd in “All This and Rab­bit Stew,” from 1941, a col­lec­tion of “eth­nic stereo­types includ­ing over­sized cloth­ing, a shuf­fle to his move­ment, and mum­bling sen­tences.” In oth­er pro­duc­tions, like “Jun­gle Jit­ters” and “The Isle of Pin­go Pon­go,” the offense is against native islanders, depict­ed there­in as hard-par­ty­ing can­ni­bals.

At first glance, “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs,” from 1943, may resem­ble a grotesque car­ni­val of stereo­types. But as direc­tor Bob Clam­pett lat­er explained, it orig­i­nat­ed when he “was approached in Hol­ly­wood by the cast of an all-black musi­cal off-broad­way pro­duc­tion called Jump For Joy while they were doing some spe­cial per­for­mances in Los Ange­les. They asked me why there weren’t any Warn­er’s car­toons with black char­ac­ters and I did­n’t have any good answer for that ques­tion. So we sat down togeth­er and came up with a par­o­dy of Dis­ney’s Snow White, and ‘Coal Black’ was the result.” These per­form­ers pro­vid­ed the voic­es (cred­it­ed, out of con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion, to Mel Blanc), and Clam­pett paid trib­ute in the char­ac­ter designs to real jazz musi­cians he knew from Cen­tral Avenue.

How­ev­er admirable the inten­tions of “Coal Black” — and how­ev­er mas­ter­ful its ani­ma­tion, which has come in for great praise from his­to­ri­ans of the medi­um — it remains rel­e­gat­ed to the banned-car­toons nether­world. Of course, this does­n’t mean you can’t see it today: like most of the “Cen­sored Eleven,” it’s long been boot­legged, and it even under­went restora­tion for the first annu­al Turn­er Clas­sic Movies Film Fes­ti­val in 2010. Some of these con­tro­ver­sial shorts appear on the Looney Tunes Gold Col­lec­tion Vol­ume: 3 DVDs, intro­duced by Whoopi Gold­berg, who makes the sen­si­ble point that “remov­ing these inex­cus­able images and jokes from this col­lec­tion would be the same as say­ing they nev­er exist­ed.” Grown-ups may be okay with that, but kids — always the most dis­cern­ing audi­ence for Warn­er Bros. car­toons — know when they’re being lied to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock: The School­house Rock Par­o­dy Sat­ur­day Night Live May Have Cen­sored

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.