Tweety

Tweety (short for Tweety Bird or Tweety Pie) is an animated fictional yellow canary in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons. The name "Tweety" is a play on words, as it originally meant "sweetie", along with "tweet" being a typical English onomatopoeia for the sounds of birds. His characteristics are based on Red Skelton's famous "Mean Widdle Kid." Tweety appeared in 47 cartoons in the golden age.

Personality and Identity

Despite the perceptions that people may hold, owing to the long lashes and high pitched voice (which Mel Blanc provided), Tweety is male, although his ambiguity was played with. For example, in an episode called "Snow Business", when Granny entered a room containing Tweety and Sylvester and said: "Here I am, boys!", whereas a 1951 cartoon was entitled Ain't She Tweet [emphasis added]. Also, his species is ambiguous; although originally and often portrayed as a young canary, he is also frequently called a rare and valuable "tweety bird" as a plot device, and once called "the only living specimen". Nevertheless, the title song of The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries directly states that the bird is a canary. His shape more closely suggests that of a baby bird, which is what he was during his early appearances (although the "baby bird" aspect has been used in a few later cartoons as a plot device). The yellow feathers were added but otherwise he retained the baby-bird shape.

In his early appearances in Bob Clampett cartoons, Tweety is a very aggressive character who tries anything to foil his foe, even kicking his enemy when he is down. One of his most notable malicious moments is in the cartoon Birdy and the Beast. A cat chases Tweety by flying until he remembers that cats cannot fly, causing him to fall. Tweety says sympathetically, "Awww, the poor kitty cat! He faw down and go (in a loud, tough, masculine voice) BOOM!!" and then grins mischievously. A similar use of that voice is in A Tale Of Two Kitties when Tweety, wearing an air raid warden's helmet, suddenly yells, "Turn out those lights!" Tweety's aggressive nature was toned down when Friz Freleng started directing the series, with the character turning into a more cutesy bird, usually going about his business, and doing little to thwart Sylvester's ill-conceived plots, allowing them to simply collapse on their own; he became even less aggressive when Granny was introduced, but occasionally Tweety still showed a malicious side.

Other appearances

Tweety had a small part in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, making Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) fall from a flag pole by playing "This Little Piggy" with Valiant's fingers and releasing his grip. The scene is essentially a re-creation of a gag from A Tale of Two Kitties, with Valiant replacing Catstello as Tweety's victim.

During the 1990s, Tweety also starred in the animated TV series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, in which Granny ran a detective agency with the assistance of Tweety, Sylvester and Hector. Tweety has the starring role the storyline carries into the 2000 direct-to-video feature-length animated film Tweety's High-Flying Adventure.

In the 1995 cartoon short Carrotblanca, a parody/homage to Casablanca, Tweety appeared as "Usmarte", a parody of the character Ugarte played by Peter Lorre in the original film. In several sequences, Tweety was speaking and laughing in character like Peter Lorre. He also does the Looney Tunes ending instead of Porky Pig or Bugs Bunny. This is also notable for being a rare instance where Tweety is playing a villain character.

In 2001, a younger version of Tweety appeared on Baby Looney Tunes, thus coming full circle from his earliest appearances.

Tweety is featured, with his Looney Tunes co-stars, in Cartoon Network's series, The Looney Tunes Show. He is voiced by Jeff Bergman. He appeared in the episode Ridiculous Journey, where he and Sylvester work together to avoid getting eaten by Taz. He had been revealed to have fought in World War II alongside a young Granny. Sylvester also asked him how old he was, to which Tweety replied, "I'll never tell." Sylvester then asked if Tweety would at least tell him if he (Tweety) was a boy or a girl. Tweety whispered into his ear and Sylvester had a surprised expression, and said "Huh, I was wrong."