Goofy Gophers
Encyclopedia
The Goofy Gophers are animated
cartoon
characters
in the Warner Bros.
Looney Tunes
and Merrie Melodies
series of cartoons. The gopher
s, named Mac and Tosh, are small and brown with tan bellies and buck teeth. They both have British accents.
Robert Clampett for the 1947 short film The Goofy Gophers
. Norm McCabe had previously used a pair of gophers in his 1942 short Gopher Goofy, but they bear little resemblance to Clampett's characters. Clampett left the studio before the short went to production, so Arthur Davis took over as director
. The cartoon features the gophers' repeated incursions into a vegetable garden guarded by a dog whom they relentlessly, though politely, torment. Voice actor Mel Blanc
plays Mac and Stan Freberg
Tosh. Both speak with high-pitched British accents like those used in upper-class stereotypes around at the time. After classic cartoons, Joe Alaskey
plays Mac.
Some sources claim Clampett intended the Goofy Gophers to be a spoof of Disney's
chipmunk
characters, Chip 'n' Dale, with whom they are sometimes confused. Others, however, point out that this seems unlikely given the two pairs of characters are so different in characterization. The only real similarities are the fact that the characters are rodent
s, are paired up, and have pun
s for names.
The gophers' mannerisms and speech were patterned after Frederick Burr Opper
's comics characters Alphonse and Gaston, which in the early 1900s engendered a "good honest laugh". The crux of each four-frame strip was the ridiculousness of the characters' over-politeness preventing their ability to get on with the task at hand.
The pair's dialogue is peppered with such over politeness as "Indubitably!", "You first, my dear," and "But, no, no, no. It must be you who goes first!" The two often also tend to use unnecessarily long words, for example, in Lumber Jerks, instead of "We gotta get our tree back", they say "We must take vital steps to reclaim our property." Clampett later stated that the gophers' effeminate mannerisms were derived from character actor
s Franklin Pangborn
and Edward Everett Horton
.
Davis would direct one other Goofy Gophers short, 1948's "Two Gophers from Texas
". This time, the dog from the first film pursues the gophers with a gopher cookbook in hand.
Robert McKimson
was the next Warners director to utilize the characters. He pitted them against Clampett and Arthur's dog once again in the 1949 film "A Ham in a Role
" wherein the dog's efforts to become a Shakespearean
actor are foiled by the rambunctious rodents.
The Gophers lay dormant for two years until Friz Freleng
made a series of four shorts beginning with 1951's "A Bone for a Bone
", another dog-versus-gophers short. This was followed by "I Gopher You" in 1954, featuring the Gophers in their first cartoon without the dog, attempting to retrieve their vegetables from a food processing plant; "Pests for Guests" in 1955, which has the gophers counter-antagonize the helpless Elmer Fudd
when he buys a chest of drawers that they found appropriate for nut storage; and "Lumber Jerks" later that year, where the Gophers visit a saw mill in an attempt to retrieve their stolen tree home.
After Freleng finished with the characters, they would star in two more cartoons, once again directed by McKimson. These two cartoons, "Gopher Broke
" in 1958 and "Tease for Two
" in 1965, pit the Gophers against the Barnyard Dawg
and Daffy Duck
, respectively. Both gophers were voiced by Mel Blanc in the latter short instead of one by Blanc and the other by Freberg.
The Goofy Gophers were largely forgotten by Warner Bros. in the years since the animation studio's closing in 1969. However, in recent years, they have made a few cameos in various Warners projects. They are seen briefly in the 1996 movie Space Jam
, and are also briefly spotted peeking out of the brick wall that leads to Toontown
in the final scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit
. They feature prominently in episodes of the animated series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
("I Gopher You") and Duck Dodgers
("K-9 Kaddy"). In the latter they are reinvented as green-furred, six-limbed Martian gophers.
The Goofy Gophers (Mac and Tosh Gophers) have been revived in The Looney Tunes Show
voiced by Rob Paulsen
and Jess Harnell
. They appear in episodes 1, 8, 9, 12 (in the Merrie Melodies segment), 13 and 23 (also in the Merrie Melodies segment) so far.
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
characters
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
and Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
series of cartoons. The gopher
Gopher (animal)
The term gopher as it is commonly used does not relate to any one species, but is a generic term used to describe any of several small burrowing rodents endemic to North America, including the pocket gopher , also called true gophers, and the ground squirrel , including Richardson's ground squirrel...
s, named Mac and Tosh, are small and brown with tan bellies and buck teeth. They both have British accents.
Character biography
The Goofy Gophers were created by Warners animatorAnimator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
Robert Clampett for the 1947 short film The Goofy Gophers
The Goofy Gophers
The Goofy Gophers is a 1946 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon released on January 25, 1947. It stars the Goofy Gophers with a cameo by Bugs Bunny at the end...
. Norm McCabe had previously used a pair of gophers in his 1942 short Gopher Goofy, but they bear little resemblance to Clampett's characters. Clampett left the studio before the short went to production, so Arthur Davis took over as director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
. The cartoon features the gophers' repeated incursions into a vegetable garden guarded by a dog whom they relentlessly, though politely, torment. Voice actor Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
plays Mac and Stan Freberg
Stan Freberg
Stanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...
Tosh. Both speak with high-pitched British accents like those used in upper-class stereotypes around at the time. After classic cartoons, Joe Alaskey
Joe Alaskey
Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...
plays Mac.
Some sources claim Clampett intended the Goofy Gophers to be a spoof of Disney's
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
chipmunk
Chipmunk
Chipmunks are small striped squirrels native to North America and Asia. They are usually classed either as a single genus with three subgenera, or as three genera.-Etymology and taxonomy:...
characters, Chip 'n' Dale, with whom they are sometimes confused. Others, however, point out that this seems unlikely given the two pairs of characters are so different in characterization. The only real similarities are the fact that the characters are rodent
Rodent
Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....
s, are paired up, and have pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s for names.
The gophers' mannerisms and speech were patterned after Frederick Burr Opper
Frederick Burr Opper
Frederick Burr Opper is regarded as one of the pioneers of American newspaper comic strips, best known for his comic strip Happy Hooligan...
's comics characters Alphonse and Gaston, which in the early 1900s engendered a "good honest laugh". The crux of each four-frame strip was the ridiculousness of the characters' over-politeness preventing their ability to get on with the task at hand.
The pair's dialogue is peppered with such over politeness as "Indubitably!", "You first, my dear," and "But, no, no, no. It must be you who goes first!" The two often also tend to use unnecessarily long words, for example, in Lumber Jerks, instead of "We gotta get our tree back", they say "We must take vital steps to reclaim our property." Clampett later stated that the gophers' effeminate mannerisms were derived from character actor
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...
s Franklin Pangborn
Franklin Pangborn
Franklin Pangborn was an American comedic character actor. Pangborn was famous for small, but memorable roles, with a comic flair. He appeared in many Preston Sturges movies as well as the W.C. Fields films International House, The Bank Dick, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break...
and Edward Everett Horton
Edward Everett Horton
Edward Everett Horton was an American character actor. He had a long career in film, theater, radio, television and voice work for animated cartoons. He is especially known for his work in the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.-Early life:Horton was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Isabella...
.
Davis would direct one other Goofy Gophers short, 1948's "Two Gophers from Texas
Two Gophers from Texas
Two Gophers from Texas is a 1948 Merrie Melodies short starring the Goofy Gophers directed by Arthur Davis and produced by Eddie Selzer. Mel Blanc voiced the unnamed dog and Mac, while an uncredited Stan Freberg voiced Tosh. The title is a pun on Two Guys from Texas, a comedy released earlier that...
". This time, the dog from the first film pursues the gophers with a gopher cookbook in hand.
Robert McKimson
Robert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
was the next Warners director to utilize the characters. He pitted them against Clampett and Arthur's dog once again in the 1949 film "A Ham in a Role
A Ham in a Role
A Ham in a Role is a Looney Tunes short starring the Goofy Gophers along with an unnamed dog. The cartoon, released in December 1949, was directed by Robert McKimson and released by Warner Bros. Pictures...
" wherein the dog's efforts to become a Shakespearean
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
actor are foiled by the rambunctious rodents.
The Gophers lay dormant for two years until Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
made a series of four shorts beginning with 1951's "A Bone for a Bone
A Bone for a Bone
A Bone for a Bone is a Looney Tunes short starring the Goofy Gophers. The cartoon, released in 1951, was directed by Friz Freleng and released by Warner Bros. Pictures, and was the first of four Goofy Gophers cartoon directed by Freleng, and would be the final work by J.B. Hardaway at the Warner Bros...
", another dog-versus-gophers short. This was followed by "I Gopher You" in 1954, featuring the Gophers in their first cartoon without the dog, attempting to retrieve their vegetables from a food processing plant; "Pests for Guests" in 1955, which has the gophers counter-antagonize the helpless Elmer Fudd
Elmer Fudd
Elmer J. Fudd/Egghead is a fictional cartoon character and one of the most famous Looney Tunes characters, and the de facto archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He has one of the more disputed origins in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheon . His aim is to hunt Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring...
when he buys a chest of drawers that they found appropriate for nut storage; and "Lumber Jerks" later that year, where the Gophers visit a saw mill in an attempt to retrieve their stolen tree home.
After Freleng finished with the characters, they would star in two more cartoons, once again directed by McKimson. These two cartoons, "Gopher Broke
Gopher Broke
Gopher Broke is a "Looney Tunes" cartoon animated short starring the Goofy Gophers and the Barnyard Dawg . Released November 15, 1958, the cartoon is directed by Robert McKimson. The voices were performed by Mel Blanc and Stan Freberg...
" in 1958 and "Tease for Two
Tease for Two
Tease for Two is a "Looney Tunes" cartoon animated short starring Daffy Duck and the Goofy Gophers . Released August 28, 1965, the cartoon is directed by Robert McKimson. The voices were performed by Mel Blanc....
" in 1965, pit the Gophers against the Barnyard Dawg
Barnyard Dawg
Barnyard Dawg is a Looney Tunes character. An adult anthropomorphic basset hound, he is the archenemy of Foghorn Leghorn. He was created by Robert McKimson, who also created Foghorn and was voiced by Mel Blanc...
and Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
, respectively. Both gophers were voiced by Mel Blanc in the latter short instead of one by Blanc and the other by Freberg.
The Goofy Gophers were largely forgotten by Warner Bros. in the years since the animation studio's closing in 1969. However, in recent years, they have made a few cameos in various Warners projects. They are seen briefly in the 1996 movie Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
, and are also briefly spotted peeking out of the brick wall that leads to Toontown
Toontown
Toontown is a fictional anthropomorphic city where animated cartoon characters, known as Toons, reside.-Description:In the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the whole city of Toontown is cartoonish, except for anything foreign to the city, such as people and objects from outside of Toontown...
in the final scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
. They feature prominently in episodes of the animated series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
("I Gopher You") and Duck Dodgers
Duck Dodgers (TV series)
Duck Dodgers is an American animated television series, based on the classic cartoon short Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, produced by Warner Bros. Animation from 2003 to 2005. The series aired on Cartoon Network and starred Daffy Duck as the titular character...
("K-9 Kaddy"). In the latter they are reinvented as green-furred, six-limbed Martian gophers.
The Goofy Gophers (Mac and Tosh Gophers) have been revived in The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show
The Looney Tunes Show is a packaged show, created for Cartoon Network, and broadcast from 2002 to 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show featured cartoon shorts from the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon series produced from 1930 to 1969.-External links:...
voiced by Rob Paulsen
Rob Paulsen
Robert Fredrick "Rob" Paulsen III , sometimes credited as Rob Paulson, is an American voice actor, best known as the voice behind Raphael from the 1987 cartoon of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Yakko Warner and Dr...
and Jess Harnell
Jess Harnell
Jess Q. Harnell is an American voice actor and singer, best known for voicing Wakko Warner on Animaniacs. Harnell has been the announcer for America's Funniest Home Videos since 1998.-Life and acting career:...
. They appear in episodes 1, 8, 9, 12 (in the Merrie Melodies segment), 13 and 23 (also in the Merrie Melodies segment) so far.