the MGM wolves

[Cartman]

I'm just curious, but is that hick wolf who was in BILLY BOY the same wolf who is always sexually aroused by that dancer? It is possible that he could be drawn by a different animator and given a different personality.

[Nftnat]

It is not the same wolf. The first wolf was first seen in 1943, unless you count the Blitz Wolf, which would put his debut in '42. Throw in any Avery wolf char from WB & the time would be pushed back even farther. His last cartoon was in 1949. In that year the torch was passed in Little Rural Riding Hood, the only toon in which the two wolves appeared together. The hick wolf wasn't used again until 1953, but after that he amassed a dozen cartoons, half of which were directed by Michael Lah, Avery's successor, as it were. As to different animators, it's a possibility. Only Walter Clinton was a significant member of the Avery unit for both eras. Preston Blair's last year with that unit was 1949, the year after Grant Simmons started to work there. Make of that what you will.

[Jack]

I don't know If I'd call the wolf in "Little Rural Riding Hood" the same one. He's got a different design, voice, and personalty (the hick wolf was pretty anxious, the later one was slow and laid back). I'd say his first appearance was in "The Three Little Pups," or so.

That later Huckleberry-Hound-voiced wolf seemed to be the answer to the modern design movement in cartoons. "The Three Little Pups" sort of looks like a 50s Golden Book, the old Hollywood wolf would have looked very out of place. Droopy got a little redesigned too.


Jack:D

[J Lee]

Avery's original wolf -- though far less sex-crazed -- made it into the 1950s in a couple of Droopy cartoons; "Drag Along Droopy" and "Homsteader Droopy," from 1954. At the same time, Tex debuted his other wolf in "Three Little Pups." That wolf, with the Daws Butler voice, would appear in one more Avery cartoon, "Billy Boy" and in two done in Cinemascope by Lah; "Blackboard Jumble" and "Sheep Wrecked."

Of course, the voice went in a couple of different directions -- Avery used it at Lantz for the guard dog Smedley in the 1955 Chilly Willy cartoon, "I'm Cold," Hanna-Barbera would take the voice and use it for their Huckleberry Hound series, and even Friz Freleng found use for the voice briefly twice; as the cat that gets hit with a flat iron in "Heir Conditioned" and in "A Waggly Tale" where Elvis the hound dog tells the audience he's just another little boy having a dream.