Producer
Leon Schlesinger had already produced the music-based
Looney Tunes series, and its success prompted him to try to sell a sister series to Warner Bros. His selling point was that the new cartoons would feature music from the soundtracks of Warner Bros. films and would thus serve as
advertisements for Warner Bros. recordings and sheet music. The studio agreed, and Schlesinger dubbed the series
Merrie Melodies.
Walt Disney Productions had already scored with their
Silly Symphonies. Since cartoon production usually began with a soundtrack, animating a piece of music made it easier to devise plot elements and even characters. The origins of the
Merrie Melodies series begin with the failure of a live action series of musical shorts called
Spooney Melodies, which featured popular songs of the day. These shorts included segments with a popular artist singing along with appropriate background sequences. Warner Bros. wanted to promote this music because they had recently acquired (in 1930) the ownership of
Brunswick Records along with four music publishers for US$28 million. Because of the success of their
Looney Tunes series, Warner Bros. decided to develop a new series of animated musical shorts called
Merrie Melodies.
Hugh Harman and
Rudolf Ising led the development. It was meant to be a series of musical cartoons that featured hit songs of the day, especially those then owned by Warner Bros. and featured in their musical films. In 1931, many of the shorts featured the orchestra of
Abe Lyman. The first cartoon of the new
Merrie Melodies series was
Lady, Play Your Mandolin!, released in 1931. Their success convinced Schlesinger to produce all future
Merrie Melodies shorts in color, using two-strip Technicolor.
Looney Tunes continued in black-and-white until 1943. In 1934, the cartoons began to end with the slogan "That's all Folks!" which had previously only been used on the
Looney Tunes series. The old slogan "So Long, Folks!" was completely abandoned at this time. The same year,
Merrie Melodies began using the "bulls-eye" opening and closing title sequences; beginning in 1942,
Looney Tunes used the same titles, usually with thicker rings. By 1936, Disney's exclusivity on the three-color Technicolor process ended, allowing
Merrie Melodies a full color palette for the first time, hence the use of the blue concentric rings (as a technical test) for the rest of the 1935–36 season and the 1936–37 season. The Warner Bros. shield was changed to cyan later that year before definitely changing back to red in 1938. Contractually,
Merrie Melodies cartoons were obligated to include at least one full
chorus from a Warner Bros. song. Warner Bros. requested that these songs be performed by name bands whenever possible, but this lasted only through the first few shorts. The policy annoyed the animators of
Merrie Melodies, since the songs often interrupted the cartoons' momentum and pacing. The 1938 Merrie Melodie
A Feud There Was, for example, sarcastically uses the obligatory musical number as a shift in the action, with the lead characters singing the number into a
KFWB microphone and ceding the mike to an announcer who reads a commercial. By 1940, the animators had been released from this obligation, and the
Merrie Melodies shorts came to resemble more closely the black-and-white
Looney Tunes series. In addition, several new characters were created with the initial intention of appearing exclusively in the
Merrie Melodies series. The
Merrie Melodies short "
I Haven't Got a Hat" introduced the first suite of characters, though all of these were short-lived except for
Porky Pig, who was shifted over to
Looney Tunes and became that series's
breakout star. Additional new characters –
Egghead,
Elmer Fudd,
Inki, and
Sniffles – soon followed; the most successful would be
Bugs Bunny, who had originated as a white hare in the
Looney Tunes short "
Porky's Hare Hunt" as a potential foil for Porky but was instead
sent for further development and became a
Merrie Melodies star with the debut of the 1940 short "
A Wild Hare." In 1942, Schlesinger began producing
Looney Tunes in color as well, and the two series became virtually indistinguishable except by their theme music and opening titles – in addition, characters once exclusive to one series began regularly appearing in the other as well. In 1944, the studio went to an all-color schedule; though for the first year of this, Bugs still appeared mainly in the
Merrie Melodies series (not appearing in a
Looney Tunes cartoon until the end of August), whereas Porky and
Daffy Duck appeared mainly in
Looney Tunes that year. It was not until 1945 that the two series appeared completely indistinguishable, and that Bugs appeared in more
Looney Tunes than
Merrie Melodies. By 1937, the theme music for
Looney Tunes was "
The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by
Cliff Friend and
Dave Franklin, and the theme music for
Merrie Melodies was an adaptation of "
Merrily We Roll Along" by
Charles Tobias, Murray Mencher and
Eddie Cantor (the original theme was "
Get Happy" by Harold Arlen, played at a faster tempo). This continued until 1964, when the WB cartoon logos were modernized, and "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" became the theme for the
Merrie Melodies as well. When the studio went to full color, even the animators themselves did not make any creative distinction between the two series, as evidenced in an interview quote from director
Friz Freleng, "I never knew if a film I was making would be
Looney Tunes or
Merrie Melodies, and what the hell difference would it make, anyway?". The last
Merrie Melodies cartoon was
Injun Trouble, released in 1969. The
Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons didn't start up again until 1988 with only two cartoons made,
The Night of the Living Duck (1988) and
(Blooper) Bunny (1991).
The Night of the Living Duck got a theatrical release through the compilation film ''
Daffy Duck's Quackbusters (1988), while (Blooper) Bunny'' was shelved from its intended 1991 release until it premiered on
Cartoon Network on June 13, 1997. == Blue Ribbon reissues ==