Elmer Fudd
The fictional cartoon character Elmer Fudd, now one of the most famous Looney Tunes characters, first appeared in the 1936 Tex Avery cartoon The Isle of Pingo Pongo. The character was named Elmer, and he was later given a full name of Elmer Fudd; however, he did not look or sound like the Elmer Fudd that is known and loved by audiences today. Avery took this character and renamed him "Egghead," starring him in several cartoons of his own (decades later, "Egghead" would himself cameo in the 1988 compilation film Daffy Duck's Quackbusters). The more famous version of Fudd, voiced by Arthur Q. Bryan, made his first appearance in a 1939 Chuck Jones short entitled Elmer's Candid Camera. A prototypical Bugs Bunny drives Elmer insane. A year later, in Tex Avery's The Wild Hare, Bugs reappears, but this time with carrot, Brooklyn accent, and "What's Up, Doc" all in place for the first time. Elmer has a better voice and a trimmer figure, too.
Elmer's role in these two films, that of would-be hunter, dupe and foil for Bugs, remains his main role forever after, but for a short time in the 1940s Elmer became a heavy-set, beer-belly character (still chasing Bugs). Audiences didn't initially accept a fat Fudd, so ultimately the slimmer version returned for good. Although Bugs Bunny was called upon to outwit many more worthy opponents, Elmer somehow remained Bugs' classic nemesis, despite (or because of) his legendary gullibility, small size, short temper, and shorter attention span. Somehow knowing, not only that Elmer would lose, but knowing how he would lose, made the confrontation, counterintuitively, more delicious.
Fudd was originally voiced by the radio actor Arthur Q. Bryan, but after Bryan's death in 1959 was reluctantly assumed as yet another voice by the versatile Mel Blanc (although other voice actors have alternated as Fudd's voice). The best known Elmer Fudd cartoons include Chuck Jones' masterpiece What's Opera, Doc?, (one of the few times Fudd succeeded in getting Bugs), the Rossini parody Rabbit of Seville, and the "Hunter Trilogy" of "Rabbit Season/Duck Season" shorts with Fudd, Bugs, and Daffy Duck.
He always misplaces r and l with a w when he talks.
