Pepe Le Pew

Pepé Le Pew is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. A French skunk who always strolls around in Paris in the springtime, when everyone's thoughts are of love, Pepé is constantly seeking "l'amour" of his own. However, he has two huge turnoffs to any prospective mates: his malodorous scent and the fact that he comes on too aggressively. Normally, Pepé's romantic interests should include female skunks ("petite femme skunk"), but each episode invariably revolves around Pepe pursuing a "skunk", who, unbeknownst to him, is usually a hapless black cat (retroactively named Penelope) that inadvertently gets a white stripe painted down her back. She does not, however, reciprocate his amorous feelings, especially since his smell is rather offensive to all who encounter it. (Although they may smell a little musty, real skunks do not smell awful until they release the odor, usually in self-protection.)

Related Topics:
Animated cartoon - Warner Bros. - Looney Tunes - Merrie Melodies - Skunk - Paris - Black cat - Retroactively named

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Chuck Jones, Pepé's creator, says that Pepé was based (loosely) on the personality of his Termite Terrace colleague, writer Tedd Pierce, a self-styled "ladies' man" who reportedly always assumed that his infatuations were requited. Pepé's voice, provided by Mel Blanc, was based on Charles Boyer's Pepe le Moko from Algiers (1938), a remake of the 1937 French film Pepe le Moko. Eddie Selzer, animator producer—and Jones' bitterest foe—at Warners then, once commented that no one would laugh at those cartoons. (He actually used a much less pleasant term.) However, this did not keep Selzer from accepting an award for one of Pepé's pictures several years later.

Related Topics:
Chuck Jones - Termite Terrace - Tedd Pierce - Mel Blanc - Charles Boyer - Algiers - 1938 - 1937 - French - Pepe le Moko - Eddie Selzer

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In the shorts, a kind of pidgin "French" is spoken and written primarily by adding "le" to English words, or by more creative mangling of French expressions with English ones, such as "Sacre Maroon!", "my sweet peanut of brittle", or "Ah, my little darling, it is love at first sight, is it not, no?". The writer responsible for these malapropisms was Michael Maltese.

Related Topics:
French - Malapropism - Michael Maltese

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Maltese transcribed some dialog from the Oscar-winning 1949 short "For Scent-imental Reasons":

Related Topics:
Oscar - 1949

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:Skunk: (sings) Affair d'amour? Affair d'coeur? Je ne say quois ... je vis en espoir. (Sniffs) Mmmm m mm ... un smella voo feenay ... (Hums)

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:Gendarme: Le kittee kel terriblay odeur!! Pard'm was ... Jo-seph ... apray midi le fudge is burning!

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:Proprietor: Allay Gendarme!! Allay!! Return'mwa!! This instonce!! Oh, pauvre mwa, I am ze banrupt ... (Sobs)

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:Cat: Le mew ? Le purrrrrrr.

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:Proprietor: A-a-ahhh. Le pussee ferocious! Remove zot skunk! Zot cat-pole from ze premises!! Avec!!

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:Cat: (Smells skunk) Sniff, sniff, sniff-sniff, sniff-sniff.

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:Skunk: Quel es? ... Ahhh ... la belle femme skunk fatale!! Tch-tch.

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In recent years, the shorts featuring his character have been more and more downplayed and even banned as his relentless pursuit of clearly unappreciative females comes across more as stalking. Not that it was entirely one-sided: one cartoon ended with an accidentally painted (and now terrified) Pepe being romantically pursued by a female cat with a cold!

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The cartoon that introduced the character, Jones' Odor-able Kitty (1945), differs from later entries in several particulars: it takes place in New York City rather than Paris; Pepé spends his time in (unknowing) pursuit of a male cat, who has deliberately disguised himself as a skunk for reasons of his own; and in the closing gag, Pepé is revealed to actually be a philandering American skunk named Henry (replete with wife and children!). For the remaining cartoons Jones directed, Pepé retained his accent, nationality, and bachelor status, and the object of his pursuit was always (or nearly always) female. Pépé, or a slightly altered version of the character, also appears in the Arthur Davis-directed cartoon Odor of the Day (1948); in this entry, the theme of romantic pursuit is discarded as the skunk vies with a male dog for accommodations on a bitterly cold night.

Related Topics:
Odor-able Kitty - 1945 - New York City - American - Arthur Davis - Odor of the Day - 1948

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In the French version of Pepé le Pew, Pépé le putois, Pépé is an Italian skunk with a strong Italian accent. Most of the dialog is in French, though some Italian words and expressions are also used, such as, mon petit farfalle, mon petit ravioli e pesto when talking to the cat, or c'est le moment de la mise amore. In some previous dubbings, his voice was based on typically French actor and seducer Yves Montand.

Related Topics:
Italian - Yves Montand

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Johnny Depp drew upon Pepé (along with guitarist Keith Richards) for his characterization of Captain Jack Sparrow in the film '.

Related Topics:
Johnny Depp - Keith Richards - Captain Jack Sparrow

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