Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies

by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald

Everything you always wanted to know about Warner Bros. cartoons but were afraid to ask, this complete and indispensable reference will delight adults, children, and audiences all over the world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805008942
• ISBN13: 9780805008944
• Release Date: June 1989
• Publisher: Holt McDougal
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Search no more! They're all here!! GREAT GUIDE!!!

This guide is great! Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are a precious part of my life and I am sure they left a mark on the minds of every kid who (like me) grew up watching them. The book is organized by year. On each year, you'll find all the cartoons, its directors, date of release, musical directors, animators and (of course) who stars in it. All the synopses are quite well written and they tell you everything that happened on a particular film. You will also find all the TV specials, the feature films, compilations, unreleased, wartime films, etc. At the end you will also find title index AND a character index.The only fault is the lack of illustrations. I do think this guide deserves a new and improved edition with more space and more pages for color illustrations.Still a great buy!

Truly a Fantastic Resource!

If you like me grew up watching those great old Warner brothers cartoons and still love them, this book is for you. Listing virtually every cartoon the Warner brothers studio put out from the 1930s through the late 1980s was quite a task. And I'm sure Beck & Friedwald must have thought it would never end ("sayyyy, there's something awfully screwwy goin on around here!" to quote Elmer Fudd).Yeah by year each cartoon that was ever made is listed, complete with the people who produced it, date of original release, list of characters, and the plot and story of the cartoon. There's even a list at the back of the book of all the network TV cartoon specials.If you've ever read anything about the cartoonists that did these cartoons, you know they were probably a bit loony themselves. But Thank God, they had such a creative outlet for their looneyness!The book is 11 years old, and I would love to see an updated version. Even so, if you're a Warner brothers cartoon fan like me and want a book that is an excellent resource for all these great old cartoons, this book is a must!

This Book Lists 'Em All!

I liked what most of the reviewers had to say about this book. For anybody who is a fan of the animated Warner Bros. cartoons, this book is a must for you. It's hard to keep up with the titles of certain cartoons (I mean how many people know the singing frog cartoon as "One Froggy Evening" or the cartoon featuring "Tea For Two" with the tapdance duet with Bugs and Daffy as "Show Biz Bugs"?). This guide deals with them all (one reviewer says this is 1,000)- from the beginning with the black and white Bosco cartoons (1930)to the early days of Porky Pig (no, Mel Blanc was not the original voice; he didn't supply Porky's voice until about 1938), to the evolution of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd (Mel Blanc was not the original voice of this character either; Arthur Q Bryan was), Daffy Duck, Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, the 1st color Looney Tune (circa 1942), to the introduction of Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, the Roadrunner and Coyote, Sylvester, jr, the Tasmanian Devil (who became very famous despite the fact that he was only in about 4 cartoons during this period of 4 decades), to the closing of the Warner Bros studio in 1969 (whose final days brought us many forgettable catoon characters like Cool Cat and Merlin the Magical Mouse). It mentions who directed each cartoon (Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, and others) who composed the music (often Carl Stalling or Milt Franklyn), and includes a synopsis of each and every cartoon. A lot of hard work went into putting this together, obviously. If you loved these cartoons as a kid and still do, this book is for you! Th-th-th-th-that's all, folks!

It's too bad more people don't know about this book.

This book contains plot summaries and credits for every classic Warner Bros cartoon ever made. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand the magnitude of that statement?Warner Bros made approximately 1,000 animated shorts between 1930 and 1970. I watched many of them numerous times while growing up. There are lots of others that I have never seen. But at least with this book, I now know what is out there.

Don't read the review, just buy the book!

If you are at all interested in the Looney Tune & Merrie Melodie series from Warner Bros. you should buy this book. I'm serious, do it now! Stop reading this review and go the shopping basket I can wait...There, don't you feel better knowing this book is about to become yours? This is the "bible" of Warner Cartoons. Each one has been watched and thought about in what must have been a gruelling marathon of cartoon watching (I am SOOO jealous), resulting in a good review (and list of credits) for each and every cartoon made by the studio including some of the offshoots like Pvt Snafu and the cartoons released in the 1980s. If you are a collector of any sort this is really the ESSENTIAL book for you.