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The Tasmanian Devil is one of the most popular
Warner Brothers cartoon
characters. Merchandise based on him, from calendars to plush toys to
T-shirts, is available
on at least an equal basis as memorabilia
involving any other Looney Tunes character. He is the star of a 1990s
television
series, Taz-Mania, run first on the Fox Network and now in
syndication. Yet, the Tasmanian Devil was never a regular performer
in
cartoon shorts during the classic era of Warner Brothers animation.
Only 5 classic era cartoons featured
the diminutive but fierce
juggernaut from down-under, with a sixth cartoon short produced for
Bugs Bunny's
Looney Christmas Tales in 1979, a minor role as Yosemite
Sam's stooge in the 1983 feature film, Daffy Duck's Fantastic
Island,
and a few appearances in between-cartoon stage scenes on the 1960-2
Bugs Bunny Show. And even these appearances
were not initially popular
with critics and audiences. So, why has Taz become a lucrative
signature character
for Warner Brothers animation, almost second to
Bugs?
The Tasmanian Devil was conceived by director
Robert McKimson and
writer Sid Marcus in 1954 as they were brainstorming to find a new
opponent for Bugs Bunny. One
of them remarked that the combined talents
of animators at the studio had turned practically every animal in
existence
into a cartoon character and that all that was left was a
Tasmanian Devil. Intrigued, McKimson designed a creature shorter
than
Bugs and whose body was dominated by his stomach and mouth cavity- and
whose rather feeble-looking legs and arms
powered a spinning juggernaut
that terrified animals of all shapes and sizes.
Taz's first cartoon, "Devil May Hare" (1954),
involves the creature
from down-under somehow escaping captivity and instilling frantic fear
in the animals of a typical
American forest, all of whom stampede past
Bugs' hole. Bugs stops one of the fleeing critters, a turtle, and asks
what
the commotion is about, and the turtle replies that,
"The Tasmanian Devil is on the loose! Run! Run! Run for your lives!
Run!" Bugs does not know what a Tasmanian Devil is and must consult an
encyclopedia, which tells him that the Tasmanian
Devil is a carnivore
with no limit to what it eats. Taz casts his eager eyes on Bugs, but
Bugs deflects Taz's
attention by promising to prepare for the Devil a
feast with an animal with more meat on its bones. Bugs uses Taz's
hungry gullibility to trick him into attempting to dig for ground hogs,
to slingshot a wooden deer, and to eat
a bubble gum chicken and an
inflatable raft adjusted by Bugs to look ridiculously like a pig.
This scenario was essentially repeated in "Bedevilled
Rabbit" in 1957,
the only significant difference being that instead of the Tasmanian
Devil wreaking havoc
in Bugs' territory, this time Bugs is in Tasmania,
airdropped there in a crate of carrots. And, of course, the Tasmanian
Devil, in his native habitat, is just as ferociously hungry. These two
films established the short-lived, very
formulaic series, in which
nearly every cartoon involves panic of animals or men, all fleeing the
on-the-loose
Devil, Taz encountering Bugs and craving the bunny as a
meal, and Bugs outwitting the not-very-astute beast, usually by
appealing to his gastronomic urges for other types of fauna.
The three-year time passage between the first
two films was due to the
fact that "Devil May Hare" did not attract the hoped-for enthusiastic
laughter
from theatre audiences, and general producer Eddie Selzer,
who among other things did not approve of gags involving
bullfights,
camels, or French-speaking skunks, ordered McKimson not to make any
more cartoons with the bizarre
Tasmanian creature. But in 1956, Selzer
was asked by studio mogul Jack Warner what had become of the Tasmanian
Devil,
and Selzer replied that Taz had just been a one-cartoon
character. Warner commanded Selzer to produce more films with
Taz, and
Selzer passed the edict to McKimson, who, with writer Tedd Pierce,
resumed Taz's career with "Bedevilled
Rabbit" and shortly thereafter
with "Ducking the Devil" (1957), pairing Taz with Daffy Duck.
"Ducking the Devil" is one of McKimson's most successful
films, because
it aptly combines the ferocity of Taz with the cowardliness and
avarice of Daffy Duck, who learns
that he can collect a cash reward of
$5,000 if he can lure the Devil back to a zoo in a city, and Taz can
only
be rendered docile enough to be lured anywhere by the use of
music. The premise works admirably, and the scenes of Daffy
scrambling
to provide music, first from a radio whose plug cord is not sufficiently
long, next from a trombone
that comes apart, then from his own, drying
vocal chords, each time finding a solution at the last possible moment
before
Taz devours him, are all superbly animated.
Taz did not appear again, though, until 1962's
"Bill of Hare", which
returned him to confronting Bugs Bunny, who again deflects the
attention of the on-the-loose
carnivore by promising to help him to
procure meat from other animals. He tricks Taz into hunting for a moose
on
a train track and into swallowing shish kabob made of dynamite.
"Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare" in 1964 reused the idea
of a stampede of
animals, all fleeing the wrath of the ravenous Tasmanian Devil, and the
setting this time is
a jungle of unnamed location. Most of the gags in
this cartoon transpire in a Medical hut, where Bugs pretends to
be a
doctor concerned for Taz's health and gives to him nitroglycerin
medicine and a Freudian psychoanalysis
("Now, just relaxing und tell
me about your id vhen you vas a kid, ya?").
Senior director Friz Freleng always felt that Taz
was a one-dimensional
character who only howled and growled and craved any kind of food.
There was, to Freleng,
no other way to use the Tasmanian Devil than to
repeat the premise of McKimson's five films. Yet, if the setting
and
situation were bizarre enough, Freleng knew that Taz could be relied
upon to garner some laughter. And when
he was looking for a character
to pair with Bugs in the third cartoon short in Bugs Bunny's Looney
Christmas
Tales (1979), Freleng decided to use Taz, perhaps also as a
tribute to McKimson, who died two years before.
"Fright Before Christmas" is a hilarious variation
on Clement Moore's
"The Night Before Christmas". Taz frees himself from a crate aboard a
cargo airplane flying
a transpolar route to Australia from North
America (a very strange route to travel as it would be quicker to just
fly
across the Pacific Ocean to Australia from the U.S.A.) and
parachutes into Santa Claus' clothes, which are being
hung outside to
freeze-dry, then is slingshot upward by the clothesline into Santa's
sleigh. The frightened reindeer
take the Devil away from the North Pole,
into American suburbia, and atop Bugs Bunny's house, in which Bugs is
reading
Clement Moore's poem to little Clyde Rabbit. After Clyde goes
to bed, Bugs receives a soot-covered visitor, who has
arrived via the
chimney. Recognizing Taz immediately, Bugs acts as though he thinks
Taz is really Saint Nick
and offers to the red-garbed Devil milk and
cookies, which Taz eats along with plate and dining table, and reads
Clyde's
Christmas want list, which includes controlling interest in
IBM, Frank Sinatra's old address book, a "Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde"
chemical set, a second-hand diver, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Bugs gives Taz a wrapped gift, which
Taz swallows whole. It is a rubber
life raft that self-inflates inside of Taz's stomach and lifts him
into
the sky.
It was a short, rather unvaried, and mostly
unremarkable career,
compared to that of other Looney Tune characters, who starred in from
30 to more than 100
classic cartoons. So, the question remains.
Why has Taz become an icon, a signature character for Warner Brothers'
cartoons,
and popular enough to have all 6 of his cartoons released
on one home videotape, while three of said cartoons were
already on
other videotapes? Probably because of the animal energy displayed by
him during his forages through forests
or jungles in search of food.
Unlike any other semi-regular character in the Warner Brothers cartoons,
Taz is
the most brutally destructive. Spinning like a tornado, he can
shear through trees, rocks, and mountains. Only the
quaking Wile E.
Coyote in "Hopalong Casualty" ever comes close to Taz's destructive
power. Taz does not need
guns or bombs to destroy; he does it with his
own brute strength, big mouth, and chainsaw-sharp teeth. Taz is
blissfully
unaware that there is anything wrong with this destructive
power. He is a brute with an all-consuming urge to consume,
and he
will eat anything: animal, vegetable, or mineral. Yet, he is not a
schemer. He does not plot the demise of
others like Yosemite Sam does.
He has no evil machinations. He is not greedy in the sense of wanting
power,
monetary or political, over others. He just wants to eat, by
all and any means.
Taz is an innocent savage. He never fell from
grace because he never
had it. He never ascended to a civilized state and then reverted. He
has remained in a state
of nature as its most powerful force. And
unlike the lion in "Tweety's Circus" that offends Sylvester's pride by
reminding
the putty tat that he descended from the wildcat and causes
him to project his loathing of the animal within himself
onto the lion,
Taz evokes no such visceral reaction in viewers. He is so outlandish
as to not remind viewers
of the brutes from which they evolved. Rather
, Taz makes the beast of instinct look completely external, lovably
innocent,
and easy to outwit.
He has a big mouth but says very little. He is ravenous
in his quest
for food but can be easily duped by Bugs Bunny or pacified with music,
even with the banal lyrics
of a greedy Daffy Duck. What is so very
lovable about such a character is his purity. An uninhibited brute that
is
not evil. A creature from an untamed region of Earth who can be
easily tricked by Bugs into eating a phoney turkey dinner,
trying to
slingshot a wooden deer, hunting moose on a train track, or swallowing
a dynamite shish kabob. He can survive
the explosion of bombs fed to
him by Bugs, as his stomach is strong enough to withstand three-fold
stretching. He
eats anything and is never poisoned. He eats and eats-
and gains no weight. How most people must envy that! Bugs may be
what
people most aspire to be, but Taz is what they wish would represent
"the other side of the coin", a fearsome
but ultimately harmless brute,
fun to watch and to have around. The ultimate party animal!
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