It’s weird what people will do on nothing more than a random whim. For me, I decided out of nowhere to watch a bunch of Looney Tunes shorts prominently featuring fox characters. Looney Tunes has always appealed to my inner furry, but I realized that I hadn’t seen many shorts starring foxes, despite them being one of my favourite funny animals. I wasn’t interested in the very early shorts starring Foxy, since his character design really does not appeal to me.
No, I went with anything from the 40s onward that featured a fox as a main character or otherwise strongly fox-themed, as a way to get me watching shorts again. I ended up writing a few thoughts on a couple of them, enough to realize that maybe I oughta make a larger article compiling and fleshing out those thoughts in chronological order. To be clear, these are just for any LT cartoons that had “fox” in the name that I happened to find, so shorts like What Makes Daffy Duck and The Unbearable Bear aren’t featured despite being equally fox-focused.
Of Fox and Hounds (1940, Dir. Tex Avery)
Despite Tex Avery being such an influential and legendary cartoon-maker, I haven’t watched more than maybe a dozen or so of his cartoons, and only two or three of those are from his Termite Terrace days. I’ve got a soft spot for the Art Deco sequence of Page Miss Glory, and Daffy Duck in Hollywood is a fun send-up of 30s-era Hollywood with a memorable movie climax. But when it comes to Of Fox and Hounds, it mostly doesn’t do anything for me.
I like the opening sequence, where it pans across the countryside and manor and then shows the morning hunt kicking off. It does a good job at grounding the short in a believable reality that the rest of the cartoon can bounce off. Willoughby is a charmingly dopey dog, and I can’t help but appreciate that he gives George a big kiss on the lips after every instance of him giving directions. That he keeps obeying those same directions every time is kinda funny, though I find it taking up so much screentime makes the short too languidly paced for my liking.
For what it’s worth, it might be that I’m just too far removed the original context that I can’t quite resonate with what it’s doing or how quietly innovative it was. I’d highly recommend reading Eliza Herndon’s excellent blog where she goes through the entire cartoon in great detail. Reading it helped me to better understand why other folks enjoy the cartoon, and what it manages to do well in its own right.
https://daffyduckaroo.blogspot.com/2023/04/308-of-fox-and-hounds-1940.html
Fox Pop (1942, Dir. Chuck Jones)
It’s hard to not like this one almost entirely because of its adorable main character. There’s something so endearingly innocent about him that borders on vacant, how he has absolutely no clue what he’s getting himself into. Helps that he’s backed by a gaggle of cute silly drawings and an endearing Louis Costello-esque voice (similar to Catstello from A Tale of Two Kitties that same year), so he’s a lot of fun to watch and hear. The more naive energy he radiates compared to the world-weary foxes in the prison makes for a good contrast, particularly when they’re doing the throat-slash motions as they discuss breaking out.
At the same time, I can’t help noticing on repeat viewings how fast the pacing is, that it feels like it’s almost in a rush to get through all its ideas. I appreciate that on some level, how it’s got so many ideas and it simply has no chance to drag itself out (and boy could Jones make plenty of toons with fewer ideas that dragged in his later years). But that sometimes works against the short, enough that I wish it had just an extra 20 seconds to give it a little more room to breathe, or at least make the ending less abrupt.
Like with the above cartoon, Eliza also did a great article going over the whole short with a fine-toothed comb, and I equally urge you to give it a read. Really, just read all her blogs, they’re a cracking good time!
https://daffyduckaroo.blogspot.com/2025/01/380-fox-pop-1942.html
The Foxy Duckling (1947, Dir. Art Davis)
Over the years, Art Davis has slowly become my lowkey favourite Looney Tunes director. There’s something so distinct about the strikingly idiosyncratic character animation (Don Williams’ extensive drybrush smears and chunky characters, Bill Melendez’s incredibly appealing expressions, Emery Hawkins’ frankly deranged reactions), and the absurd comic logic that makes them such a joy to watch. While I wouldn’t rank this as high as Two Gophers From Texas or Mexican Joyride, it’s still a fun watch.
I like how the opening of the short sets up the fox with a very relatably human problem, being unable to sleep through the night no matter what he does. Focusing on that for the first couple minutes helps drive home WHY he’s going after the duck for his feathers, even though it’s a stupid idea doomed to fail against the duck’s cosmic levels of trickery. I only just realized while writing this that this is one of the few Davis Looney Tunes I’ve seen that has no dialogue. That gives it a unique texture from the rest, and results in a variety of purely visual gags that land hard for me. I laughed out loud at the sudden impact of the duck call scene, after the brief but meaningful set-up implying a lengthier attempt than it turned out to be.
A Fox in a Fix (1951, Dir. Bob McKimson)
I’m quite impressed at how filmic that beginning is, with the fox quietly sneaking into the farm amidst the pale moonlight and Stalling’s suspenseful underscore. It’s very good at building up tension, which is hilariously released the second he’s caught by the guard dog and freaks out with a wild shriek and panicky animation. That the guard dog is so softly spoken makes for a great contrast to the more excitable fox. (Knowing the dog mainly from those shorts with the unlucky cat like Early To Bet and It’s Hummer Time, it also makes me appreciate how traits that have always been there gain a new significance when placed against a different character.)
The fox wanders between looking quite adorable and unhinged in that way McKimson cartoons from this time always seem to manage, making for a pretty funny short. Nothing really stands out to me apart from the fox and dog sleeping in the same bed, with the dog even tucking him into the sheets so he’s as cozy as possible. That’s a sweet detail, and also one heck of a relationship goal.
Foxy by Proxy (1952, Dir. Friz Freleng)
Perhaps this shouldn’t quite count considering it’s a Bugs Bunny cartoon, where he’s sometimes dressed up as a fox. But I think it’s worth discussing because they reused the opening from Of Fox and Hounds, not in a spiritual sense as you might expect but verbatim reusing the opening pan and scenes of the morning hunt (albeit cut more quickly). It’s fascinating to see that, and how such a direct lift allows a more knowledgeable viewer to pick up on where the two shorts parallel and diverge.
Like Of Fox and Hounds, this kicks off by following the dim dog at the back of the pack as he gets duped by a trickster target, but it then shifts into a very different kind of short. The audience sympathy moves to Bugs with his disdain for fox hunts, and the dog gets swapped out after several gags for the hunting pack – a gloriously silly wall of dogs that chase Bugs down for the short’s climax.
That wall of dogs is my favourite part of the short for how ludicrous they look, with a surprising amount of cute repeating animations to make it feel that much more believable. The character animation is generally great in that more naturalistic way that Freleng cartoons around this time often managed, especially when Art Davis appears to deliver his more snappily timed scenes. Otherwise, it’s a fine enough short where Bugs plays the standard trickster with a decent ending, but one that doesn’t do much for me.
Fox-Terror (1957, Dir. Bob McKimson)
That fox looks surprisingly dapper in that gameshow host suit, and that’s the only thought I really have towards this. Despite the Foghorn Leghorn shorts accounting for one of my earliest Looney Tunes memories (taped from a TV re-run of The Road Runner Show), I don’t have much attachment to them. It’s only in recent years that I finally got the joke of Leghorn being such an obnoxious blowhard that everyone dearly wishes would shut up, and I think I’m still too inexperienced with his shorts to really “get” their appeal for more than a couple toons.
I bring all that up to say that I’d have more to say about Fox-Terror if I were more knowledgeable, because this is one of three shorts that Michael Maltese wrote instead of Ted Pierce. That sounds like it should be make for an interesting comparison in how Maltese plays around with the characters differently from Pierce. There’s a neat idea in how it pits multiple parties against each other (Leghorn, the dog, the fox trying to steal the chickens, and the little chicken sounding the alarm) in different combinations based on whatever fits the moment.
I originally posted a version of this on Letterboxd, and I found that Tim Brayton wrote a pretty good analysis of the short I’d recommend reading. They definitely have the experience with Leghorn’s other cartoons to inform their perspective on what this one’s trying to do: https://letterboxd.com/timbrayton/film/fox-terror/
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When I finished watching these, I realized that nearly every major Looney Tunes director of the 40s and 50s had taken a crack at directing a fox cartoon. The only exceptions to this seem to be Bob Clampett and Frank Tashlin, which surprised me. Not that it really matters, all of them have made all sorts of cracking good cartoons, but it was nice to get a taster of various directors over the course of doing this silly article.
FrDougal9000 writes for hardcoregaming101.net as Apollo Chungus. When he isn’t writing about video games, he is cultivating his love of animation that’s only increased over the last few years as he’s explored the wide, weird and wonderful world of the medium.