The Fox and the Crow (animated characters)
cartoon characters
The Fox and the Crow are a pair of anthropomorphic cartoon characters created by Frank Tashlin for the Screen Gems studio.
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.
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. Cartoons 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.
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. The remaining backlog of completed Screen Gems shorts (which ran in theaters through 1949) included two shorts starring a redesigned and recast Fox and Crow.
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.
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