Whats the difference between a Looney Tune and a Merrie Melody?
Dear Cecil:Some Warner Brothers cartoons are called Looney Tunes; some are called Merrie Melodies. What’s the difference between the two? — Arnold Wright Blan, Sugar Hill, Georgia Dear Arnold: My initial idea was to tell you that Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies reflected the dichotomy between the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses or, if you will, the classical and romantic modes of creative expression. However, even I couldn’t keep up a crock like that. Then I figured, this was Hollywood, there’s gotta be some mercenary angle to it. Sure enough. While there were differences between Tunes and Melodies, the main reason for having two separate series was that’s the way they’d structured the deal. At the outset, the two series were made under separate agreements between Warner Brothers and producer Leon Schlesinger using different production teams. The Looney Tunes series, created by Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising, was introduced in 1930. A blatant rip-off of Disney’s Silly Symphonies seri
