Chuck Jones, who was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1912 and died in Los Angeles in 2002, invented Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote, and Marvin the Martian. He directed hundreds of animated cartoons for Walt Disney and Warner Bros. He made our childhoods possible.
TCM’s Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (March 24 at 8 p.m.) takes a close look at Jones’s own formative years and the Hollywood upbringing that informed so many of his creations: When Jones and his friends played “store,” their store was called Acme. Daffy Duck’s greediness was rooted in Jones’s dismay over having to share his birthday cake; Pepe Le Pew was the confident alter ego to Jones’s “resistible” teenage self. Like the cartoons themselves, this short (24-minute) documentary — which draws on one of Jones’s last interviews — is bursting with imagination.
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