“The Revisionist History of Screen Comedy”

Click here for all 15 Hanna-Barbera essays.
Or, click here for my full Hanna-Barbera index.

Think of great movie comedians.  Charlie Chaplin. Bob Hope. Bugs Bunny ?  Or how about TV stars?  Lucille Ball. Jackie Gleason. Fred Flintstone?  From years of indoctrination into Hollywood history, the cartoon comedians seem out of place in these lists.  And yet aren’t these animated comedians just as funny as the live actors? Why shouldn’t they be honored right up there with the live-action greats?  They were in their
day.  Bugs Bunny received and Oscar for his film comedy.  Tom & Jerry earned seven, along with an additional four nominations.  Bob Hope?  Three.

For some reason, as the history of movie and TV comedy is written, cartoons are usually ignored.  Maybe it’s because they’re short.  (Although a seven-minute cartoon often has a better laugh-per-minute  ratio than a 90-minute feature comedy.)  Maybe cartoons are neglected because they’re drawn rather than shot with live actors.  (Then again, which takes more work?  Drawing thousands and thousands of cartoons or pointing a camera and saying “action!” ?)  Maybe cartoons get the short shrift because they’re “just for kids.”  (Of course, until the TV era, cartoons were made for adults and families to see in theaters.)

We have our own theory about the absence of cartoons from the comedy history books:  they’re the secret guilty pleasures  of cinema and television historians.  Where Chaplin is considered “high-brow” art, cartoons with cats chasing mice are too common, too “low-brow.”  But we’ll bet that when no one is looking, those people who write the history books don’t sit in plush screening rooms to enjoy the sophisticated wit of classic
movie comedy half as much as they curl up on the couch with a bag of chips and watch Tom and Jerry, Bugs, Daffy, Huckleberry Hound or The Jetsons. Just like the rest of us!

“The Revisionist History of Screen Comedy”
Essay #5 (of 15)
Original essay written by Bill Burnett, Creative Director, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, 1993-1996