Today (September 21) would have been Chuck Jones’ 109th birthday and several words come to mind: Legendary. Iconic. Prolific. Ingenious. Innovative.

Whether he was directing Bugs to take a left at Albuquerque or sending characters to Planet Mars, the legendary animator created and entertained us with over 300 films across a seven-decade career in animation.

Chuck said that he never had to leave home to flesh out any character he ever developed or helped to develop. He only had to reach down inside of himself and there he would find the fundamental nature of his characters, whether it was Daffy Duck, Coyote, Elmer, or Marvin Martian. All he had to do was bring the character’s essence to the surface.

As Chuck once said, “we are all Daffy Ducks, Chaplin’s the Tramp, and Coyotes inside. We are all haplessly and hopelessly hopeful … they are mirrors of what we do, or, in the case of the comic hero, what we would like to be able to do.”

An avid reader as a child (and a habit that stayed with him to the end) and “rolling in tons of lovely white bond paper and the finest Ticonderoga pencils,” he was able to draw to his heart’s content. He went from a poor, starving artist who began making a living drawing pencil portraits for a dollar a piece on Olvera Street, a historic Los Angeles marketplace to being nominated for 9 Academy Awards (winning 3). He was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar by the Academy in 1996. He created or co-created possibly the most memorable and enduring set of characters in history, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin Martian, Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, Pepe le Pew, Michigan J. Frog, Ralph & Sam, Hubie & Bertie, Marc Anthony & Kitty, and dozens more. 

As Robin Williams once stated, “you don’t have to travel all the way to the Louvre in France or the Sistine Chapel in Italy to enjoy the artwork of Chuck Jones … You can, however, find Chuck’s work just about anywhere else in the world.”