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Monday, October 15, 2007

Pictures of Tweety Bird

Pictures of Tweety Bird 1

Pictures of Tweety Bird
Bob Clampett created the character that would become Tweety in the 1942 short A Tale of Two Kitties, pitting him against two hungry cats named Babbit and Catstello (based on the famous comedians Abbott and Costello). On the original model sheet, Tweety was named Orson (which was also the name of a bird character from an earlier Clampett cartoon Wacky Blackouts

Pictures of Tweety Bird 2
Pictures of Tweety Bird
Tweety was originally naked (pink), jowly, and far more aggressive and saucy, as opposed to the later, more well-known version of him as a less hot-tempered (but still somewhat ornery) yellow canary. In the movie Bugs Bunny Superstar, animator Clampett stated, in a sotto voce "aside" to the audience, that Tweety had been based "on my own naked baby picture". Clampett did three more shorts with the "naked genius", as a Jimmy Durante-ish cat once called him in Gruesome Twosome. The last of these, Birdy and the Beast, finally bestowed the baby bird with his name.

Many of Mel Blanc's characters are notable for speech impediments. Tweety's most noticeable is that "s" gets changed to "t" or "d"; for example, "pussy cat" comes out as "putty tat" or "puddy tat", and "sweetie pie" comes out as "tweetie pie", although it is doubtful he ever actually called himself by that name on-screen. Aside from this speech challenge, Tweety's voice (and a fair amount of his attitude) is similar to that of Bugs Bunny.

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