The Fox and the Crow (animated characters)

*The Fox and the Crow*
The Fox and the Crow
	The Fox and the Crow #1 (Jan. 1952). Cover artist unknown.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
Publication date	Dec. 1951/Jan. 1952 - February–March 1968
No. of issues	108
Main character(s)	The Fox and the Crow; Stanley and His Monster
Creative team
Written by	Cecil Beard and Alpine Harper
Artist(s)	Jim Davis

Fox and Crow
Fox and Crow
First appearance	The Fox and the Grapes (December 5, 1941)
Last appearance	Punchy de Leon (January 12, 1950)
Created by	Frank Tashlin
Based on	The Fox and the Grapes and The Fox and the Crow from Aesop's Fables
Voiced by	Both characters:; Mel Blanc (1941); Frank Graham (1942–1946); Cal Howard (1947–1949) (as Fox); Dave Barry (1947–1949) (as Crow); John T. Smith (1948–1949); Daws Butler (1950)
In-universe information
Species	Fox (Fauntleroy); Crow (Crawford)
Gender	Males

The Fox and the Crow are a pair of anthropomorphic cartoon characters created by Frank Tashlin for the Screen Gems studio.^[1]

The characters, the refined but gullible Fauntleroy Fox and the streetwise Crawford Crow, appeared in a series of animated short subjects released by Screen Gems through its parent company, Columbia Pictures.^[2]^[3]

Columbia cartoons

Tashlin directed the first film in the series, the 1941 Color Rhapsody short The Fox and the Grapes, loosely based on the Aesop fable of that name. Warner Bros. animation director Chuck Jones later acknowledged this short, which features a series of blackout gags as the Fox repeatedly tries and fails to obtain a bunch of grapes in the possession of the Crow, as one of the inspirations for his popular Road Runner cartoons.^[4]

Although Tashlin directed no more films in the series (despite playing a supervisory role on the following two shorts, Woodman, Spare That Tree and Toll Bridge Troubles, prior to his departure), Screen Gems continued producing Fox and the Crow shorts, many of them directed by Bob Wickersham, until the studio closed in 1946.^[5] Screen Gems had acquired enough of a backlog of completed films that the "Fox and Crow" series continued through 1949.

By this time, Columbia had signed a distribution deal with a new animation studio, United Productions of America (UPA), to produce three "Fox and the Crow" shorts, Robin Hoodlum (1948), The Magic Fluke (1949), and Punchy De Leon (1950). All three UPA Fox and the Crow cartoons were directed by John Hubley. The first two each received an Academy Award nomination for Animated Short Subject.

An unrelated, six-minute, silent animated short titled The Fox and the Crow, produced by Fables Studio, was released in 1921.^[6]

List of shorts

Screen Gems

In 1943, due to the series' success, Columbia gave the Fox and the Crow their own series separate from the Color Rhapsodies; it lasted until 1946. All cartoons from Room and Bored (1943) to Mysto-Fox (1946) belong to this series.

Film	Direction	Original release date	Series
The Fox and the Grapes	Frank Tashlin	December 5, 1941	Color Rhapsody
Woodman, Spare That Tree	Bob Wickersham	July 2, 1942
Toll Bridge Troubles		November 27, 1942
Slay It With Flowers		January 8, 1943
Plenty Below Zero		May 14, 1943
Tree for Two		June 21, 1943
A-Hunting We Won't Go		August 23, 1943
Room and Bored		September 30, 1943	Fox and Crow
Way Down Yonder in the Corn		November 25, 1943
The Dream Kids		January 5, 1944
Mr. Moocher		September 8, 1944
Be Patient, Patient		October 27, 1944
The Egg-Yegg		December 8, 1944
Ku-Ku Nuts		March 30, 1945
Treasure Jest	Howard Swift	August 30, 1945
Phoney Baloney	Bob Wickersham	September 13, 1945
Foxy Flatfoots	Bob Wickersham	April 11, 1946
Unsure Runts	Howard Swift	May 16, 1946
Mysto-Fox	Bob Wickersham	August 29, 1946
Tooth or Consequences	Howard Swift	June 5, 1947	Phantasy
Grape Nutty	Alex Lovy	April 14, 1949	Color Rhapsody

UPA

Film	Direction	Original release date	Series
Robin Hoodlum	John Hubley	December 23, 1948	Jolly Frolics
The Magic Fluke		March 24, 1949	Jolly Frolics
Punchy de Leon		January 12, 1950	Jolly Frolics

In other media

Comic books

The Fox and the Crow starred in several talking animal comic books published by DC Comics, from the 1940s well into the 1960s. They starred with other characters in DC's Columbia-licensed talking-animal anthology Real Screen Comics (first issue titled Real Screen Funnies) beginning in 1945,^[7] then did likewise when DC converted the superhero title Comic Cavalcade to a talking-animal series in 1948.

The duo received its own title, The Fox and the Crow, which ran 108 issues (Jan. 1952 - March 1968). Until the 1954 demise of Comic Cavalcade, Fox and Crow were cover-featured on three DC titles. They continued on the cover of Real Screen Comics through its title change to TV Screen Cartoons from #129-138 (Aug. 1959 - Feb. 1961), the final issue.

The Fox and the Crow itself was renamed Stanley and His Monster beginning with #109 (May 1968), after the back-up feature, begun in #95 (Jan. 1966), that had taken over in popularity. For the last ten years of its existence, The Fox and the Crow was written by Cecil Beard, assisted by his wife, Alpine Harper. The illustrator was Jim Davis (b. 1915), although it was generally unsigned.^[8]

Feature films

Fauntleroy Fox and Crawford Crow were going to have a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but were later dropped for unknown reasons.^[9]

Footnotes

^ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 82–83. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
^ "The Comic Book Price Guide For Great Britain - FOX AND THE CROW". www.comicpriceguide.co.uk.
^ "1940s Columbia Screen Gems Posters |". cartoonresearch.com.
^ Maltin, Leonard (1980). "Columbia: Charles Mintz and Screen Gems". Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New American Library. p. 214. ISBN 9780452259935.
^ Markstein, Don. "The Fox and the Crow". Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
^ DataBase, The Big Cartoon. "The Fox And The Crow (Fables Studios, Keith-Albee Theatres)". Big Cartoon DataBase (BCDB).^{[dead link‍]}
^ Wallace, Daniel; Dolan, Hannah, ed. (2010). "1940s". DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle. Dorling Kindersley. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-7566-6742-9. Animated cartoons were big business on movie screens, and lots of publishers hoped that success could translate onto the pages of comic books.... DC editor Whitney Ellsworth licensed the characters of Charles Mintz' Screen Gems Studio from their distributor, Columbia. The resulting anthology, Real Screen Comics, starred the Fox and the Crow. {{cite book}}: |first2= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ The Fox and The Crow #97, April–May 1966 letters column
^ "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman". www.dailyscript.com.