SUBMITTED BY Timbo

November 14, 2003 — With a new Looney Tunes movie in theaters, and a DVD compilation of the classic cartoons on store shelves everywhere, Bugs, Daffy and gang are the only movie stars who hit it big in the 40s and 50s still on the silver screen today.

The original Looney Tunes themselves, restored for the first time from the original negatives, are now part of what is perhaps the most complete DVD cartoon compilation ever released, the boxed set Looney Tunes Golden Collection. This four-disc collection contains 57 of the most acclaimed cartoons, plus long-lost footage. Although Warner Bros. has released two otherLooney Tunes DVD collections at the same time,GoldenCollection is considered more definitive.

No one foresaw such a legacy.

"The feeling in the '30s and '40s and even into the '50s were that these cartoons were ephemeral," says Jerry Beck, author of the newly published Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide. "They never thought that anyone would be studying them frame by frame 60 years later."

Though the cartoons have lasted, the people who made them have not. Directors Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin and Robert McKimson are gone. So is Mel Blanc, the celebrated voice of almost all the characters, as well as brilliant composer Carl Stalling and most of the animators and writers.

The most recent attempt to bring Bugs back to the big screen, 1996's Space Jam, was a hit but disappointed fans. Backin Action is the start of a new era, Nelson vows, that will see new Looney Tunes shorts in theaters.

"We have a relatively new strategy," Nelson says. "We're going to get the content right even if takes a little bit longer, rather than focusing on ancillary business opportunities. We're not losing sight of what made them great originally."

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