This article is about the character. For the cancelled film of the same name, see Pep Le Pew (film).

Pep Le Pew

Pep Le Pew is a character in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series. An anthropomorphic French skunk, Pep is in search of romance, but his scent, self-delusion, and his overly persistent manner inhibit his efforts.

Chuck Jones first introduced the character, originally named Stinky, and once called Henry, in the 1945 short "Odor-able Kitty". This differs from later entries in several areas: Pep spends his time in pursuit of a male cat, who has disguised himself as a skunk with a Limburger scent in order to scare off a bunch of characters mistreating him; in the closing gag, Pep is revealed to be a philandering, hen-pecked American skunk named Henry with a wife and children. For the remaining cartoons Jones directed, Pep retained his accent, nationality, and bachelor status throughout.

There have been theories that Pep was based on Maurice Chevalier. However, in the short film Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, Chuck says Pep was actually based on himself, but that he was very shy with girls, and Pep obviously was not. A prototype Pep appears in the 1948 cartoon "Bugs Bunny Rides Again", but sounds similar to Porky Pig.

An antecedent in 1944's "I Got Plenty of Mutton" is a ram called Killer Diller that behaves very much as Pep later would, pursuing a reluctant female, speaking with a French accent (Mel Blanc used the same voice as he would for Pep), smothering the female with kisses, constantly turning up in the victim's hiding places, and nonchalantly bouncing after a frantically scrambling target.

Pep Le Pew cartoons typically feature the amorous polecat pursuing what he believes is a "female skunk." Usually, however, the supposed female skunk is actually a black cat who runs away from Pep because of either his putrid odor or overly assertive manner or both, but the skunk won't take "no" for an answer, and hops after her at a leisurely pace.

A running gag often found in the Pepe Le Pew cartoons are instances of the side characters encountering skunks (either Pepe or any cat in skunk disguises, such as Penelope Pussycat) and fleeing away from their putrid odor and/or skunk-like appearances in a comical fashion at the start of the cartoon. Very often, since the Pepe series are set in France beginning with the Academy Award-winning "For Scent-imental Reasons", many of these side characters tend to react to this with exaggerated French accents (and very often, are given minimal dialogue, often nothing more than a repulsed, "Le pew!").

A skunk often identified as Pep appears in the Art Davis-directed cartoon "Odor of the Day" (1948); in this entry, the theme of romantic pursuit is missing as the skunk (in a nonspeaking role, save for a shared "Gesundheit!" at the finish) vies with a male dog for lodging accommodations on a bitterly cold night. This should be noted as one of the two cartoons where the character, if this is indeed Pep, used his scent-spray as a deliberate weapon: delivered from his tail in a machine gun-like fashion. The other one is "Touch and Go", where he frees himself from the jaws of a shark.

In a role-reversal, the Academy Award-winning short "For Scent-imental Reasons" ends with an accidentally painted (and, at this point, terrified) Pep being amorously pursued by a love-struck Penelope (who has been dunked under dirty water, leaving her with a ratty guise as well as a developing head cold that has completely clogged up her nose). Penelope locks him up inside a perfume shop, hides the key down her chest, and proceeds to turn the tables on the now-imprisoned and effectively odorless Pep.

In another short, "Little Beau Pep", Pep, attempting to find the most arousing cologne with which to impress Penelope, sprays a combination of perfumes and colognes upon himself. This results in something close to a love-potion, leading Penelope to fall madly in love with Pep. Pep is revealed to be extremely frightened of overly-affectionate women, as Penelope quickly captures him and smothers him in more love than even he could imagine.

And yet again, in "Really Scent", Pep removes his odor by locking himself in a deodorant plant so Penelope (or "Fabrette," as she is called in this cartoon) would like him (this is also the only film-short in which Pep is acutely aware of his own odor, having checked the word "P.U." in a dictionary). However, Penelope (who in this cartoon is actually trying to have a relationship with Pep because all the male cats of New Orleans take her to be a skunk and run like blazes, but is appalled by his odor) has decided to make her own odor match her appearance and has locked herself in a Limburger cheese factory. Now more forceful and demanding, Penelope quickly corners the terrified Pep, who, after smelling her new stench, wants nothing more than to escape the amorous female cat. Unfortunately, she will not take "no" for an answer and proceeds to chase Pep off into the distance, with no intention of letting him escape. (Credited to Abe Levitow, this cartoon is the only film-short in the Pep Le Pew series not directed by Chuck Jones, besides the disputable "Odor of the Day").

Although Pep usually mistakes Penelope for a female skunk, in "Past Perfumance", he realizes that she is a cat when her stripe washes off. Undeterred, he proceeds to cover his white stripe with black paint, taking the appearance of a cat before resuming the chase.

Penelope is always mute (more precisely - does only natural cat sounds) in these stories; only the self-deluded Pep speaks (several non-recurring human characters are given minimal dialogue, often nothing more than a repulsed, "Le pew!").

Throughout the 90s, merchandise, including statuettes, apparel, and framed pictures, mostly from the now defunct Warner Brothers studio store, showed Pepe and Penelope as a mutually loving couple.

Sometimes this formula is subverted. In his debut appearance, "Odor-able Kitty", Pep (technically he is a different character because he is eventually revealed to be an American-accented family skunk named "Henry" with two sons and a wife who beats him up for his "unfaithfulness") unwittingly pursues a male cat who disguises himself as a skunk. "Scent-imental over You" has Pep pursuing a female dog who has donned a skunk pelt (mistaking it for a fur coat). In the end, she removed her pelt, revealing that she's a dog. Pepe then, "revealed" himself as another dog and the two embrace. However, he later revealed to the viewers that he's indeed a skunk. In "Wild over You", Pep attempts to woo a wildcat who has escaped from a zoo (during what is called "Le grande tour du Zoo" at the start of the 20th century exhibition), and painted itself to look like a skunk to escape its keepers. This cartoon is notable for not only diverging from the usual Pep And Penelope dynamic, but also rather cheekily showing that Pep likes to be beaten up, considering the wildcat thrashes him numerous times.

Chuck Jones, Pep's creator, wrote that Pep was based (loosely) on the personality of screenwriter Tedd Pierce, a self-styled "ladies' man" who reportedly always assumed that his infatuations were requited. Chuck also created Pep because he saw Pep as the person he wanted to be as a young man, thinking of himself as "unattractive"[1]. Pep's voice, provided by Mel Blanc, was based on Charles Boyer's Pp Le Moko from Algiers, a remake of the 1937 French film Pp Le Moko.[citation needed]

Eddie Selzer, animation producer (and Chuck's bitterest foe) at Warner Bros. Cartoons then once profanely commented that no one would laugh at those cartoons. However, this did not keep Eddie from accepting an award for one of Pep's pictures several years later.[citation needed]

In the shorts, a kind of fake French is spoken and written primarily by adding "le" to English words (example: "le skunk de pew"), or by more creative mangling of French expressions with English ones, such as "Sacre Maroon!", "My sweet peanut of brittle", "Come to me, my little melon-baby collie!" or "Ah, my little darling, it is love at first sight, is it not, no?", and "It is love at sight first!" The screenwriter responsible for these malapropisms was Michael Maltese.[citation needed]

Some transcribed Maltese dialogue from the Oscar-winning 1949 short "For Scent-imental Reasons":

A possible cameo appearance is at the end of "Fair and Worm-er" (Chuck Jones, 1946). This skunk doesn't speak, but looks identical (or is a close relation) and shares the same mode of travel and a slight variation of Pep's hopping music. His function here is to chase a string of characters who had all been chasing each other ( la "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly").

Pep himself made a more obvious cameo in "Dog Pounded" (1954), where he was attracted to Sylvester after the latter tried to get around a pack of guard dogs, in his latest attempt to capture and eat Tweety, by painting a white stripe down his back (in his only appearance in a Freleng short).

Pep possibly makes a small appearance as a baby skunk in "Mouse-Placed Kitten" (1959), where he is reluctantly adopted by a mouse couple at the cartoon end.

Pep makes an appearance at the beginning of the "The Oswald Awards" section of the 1981 compilation movie Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie.

Pep made several cameo appearances on the 1990 series Tiny Toon Adventures as a professor at Acme Looniversity and the mentor to the female skunk character Fifi La Fume. He appeared briefly in "The Looney Beginning" and had a more extended cameo in "It's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special". The segment "Out Of Odor" from the episode "Viewer Mail Day" saw character Elmyra dressed As A Pepe Le Pew Costume in an attempt to lure Fifi into a trap, only to have Fifi begin aggressively wooing her In A Chase.

Pep also makes cameo appearances in the Histeria! episode "When America Was Young" and in the Goodfeathers segment, "We're No Pigeons", on Animaniacs.

In the 1995 animated short "Carrotblanca", a parody/homage of the classic film Casablanca, both Pep and Penelope appear: Pep (voiced by Greg Burson) as Captain Renault and Penelope (voiced by Tress MacNeille) as "Kitty Ketty," modeled after Ingrid Bergman performance as Ilsa. Unlike the character's other appearances in cartoons, Penelope (as Kitty) has extensive speaking parts in Carrotblanca.

In the The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries episode "Platinum Wheel of Fortune", Sylvester gets a white stripe on his back and a skunk immediately falls in love with him. This is not Pep, but his fourth cousin, "Pitu Le Pew". He says, "What can I say, Pep Le Pew is my fourth cousin. It runs in the family". Pep would later appear in the episode "Paris is Stinking", where he pursues Sylvester who is unintentionally dressed in drag. Pep would appear once more in Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, falling in love with both Sylvester and Penelope (Sylvester had gotten a white stripe on his back from Penelope as they fought over Tweety), actually showing a preference for Sylvester.

Pep also appears in Space Jam, where his voice has curiously been changed into an approximation of Maurice Chevalier, as opposed to more traditional vocalization.

Pep was, at one point, integral to the storyline for the movie Looney Tunes Back in Action. Originally, once Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, DJ, and Kate arrived in Paris, Pep was to give them a mission briefing inside a gift shop. Perhaps because of the group receiving their equipment in Area 52, Pep's scene was cut, and in the final film, he plays only a bit part, dressed like a police officer, who tries to help DJ (played by Brendan Fraser) after Kate (played by Jenna Elfman) is kidnapped.[citation needed]

However, some unused animation of him and Penelope appears during the end credits, thus giving viewers a rare glimpse at his cut scene, and his cut scene appears in the movie's print adaptations.

Pepe also appeared in Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas, working in the Lucky Duck Department store, as a more controlled but still quite amorous perfume salesman trying to sell perfume to Penelope. She's still put off by his odor, though after Daffy's rude and aggressive sales pitch, It's the duck she clobbers. Ultimately, Penelope is the one who pulls Pepe into a romantic embrace and under the mistletoe.

In Loonatics Unleashed, a human based on Pep Le Pew named Pierre Le Pew (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) has appeared as one of the villains of the second season of the show. Additionally, Pep and Penelope Pussycat appear as cameos in a display of Otto the Odd, in the series. In the episode "The World is My Circus", Lexi Bunny complains that "this Pep Le Pew look is definitely not me" after being mutated into a skunk-like creature.

A 2009 Valentine's Day-themed AT&T commercial brings Pep and Penelope's relationship up to date, depicting Penelope not as repulsed by Pep, but madly in love with him. The commercial begins with Penelope deliberately painting a white stripe on her own back; when her cell phone rings and displays Pep's picture, Penelope's lovestruck beating heart bulges beneath her chest in a classic cartoon image.[2]

Pep Le Pew has appeared in the The Looney Tunes Show episode "Members Only" voiced by Ren Auberjonois. He also made a short cameo appearance with Penelope Pussycat in the Merrie Melodies segment "Cock of the Walk" sung by Foghorn Leghorn. He appeared in his own music video "Skunk Funk" in the 16th episode "That's My Baby". He also appeared again in another Merrie Melodies segment "You Like/I Like" sung by Mac and Tosh. His first appearance in the second season was in the second episode, entitled, "You've Got Hate Mail", reading a hate-filled email accidentally sent by Daffy Duck.

Pep Le Pew made a cameo in a MetLife commercial in 2012 titled, "Everyone". In it, he was shown hopping along in the forest and when he sees his love interest, Penelope, atop the back of Battle Cat, he immediately hops after her.

Pep Le Pew has appeared in Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run voiced by Jeff Bergman.

In New Looney Tunes, Pep Le Pew is a James Bond-esque spy who hits on Claudette Dupri.

Pepe made a cameo Appearance in the Looney Tunes Cartoons short "Happy Birthday Bugs Bunny!" The character was removed when the short was released as Warner Bros. - 60th Anniversary on the Annecy Festival's YouTube channel.

Pep appeared in the Animaniacs segment "Yakko Amakko", being placed on top of Yakko Warner's ice cream cone by an offscreen animator In A Duck Amuck Homage And then promptly erased,

In 2021, controversy arose over Pep's sexually aggressive antics that have been compared to sexual harassment ever since New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow accused the character of promoting rape culture. This led to the 7 March announcement that Pep Le Pew had been removed from the 2021 film Space Jam A New Legacy.[3] Articles report that Warner Bros. plans no future appearances of the character in subsequent Looney Tunes media.[4][5]. Pep was planned to appear in Space Jam A New Legacy during the Casablanca world scene when Terence Nance was directing in 2019. He originally was planned to appear alongside Jane the Virgin actress Greice Santo in a scene where LeBron James tells Pep about consent. As Terence Nance was replaced by Malcolm D. Lee weeks into filming, the scene was cut out of the film due to creative differences. The scene was rewritten to feature Yosemite Sam in Casablanca world.

Linda Jones-Clough, daughter of Pep's creator Chuck Jones, was unhappy about this claim that the Pep Le Pew character glamorized rape culture[6] . She defended against those claims, claiming that Pep did not rape any female character in the show, nor did he inspire rape and sexual harassment cases in real life.[7] In fact, when Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese created Pep Le Pew back in the 1940s, it wasn't intended to glorify bad behavior or to cause outrage, but to poke fun as screenwriter Tedd Pierce's "ladies' man" status and his then-lack of success with romancing women at the time. "Pierce's attitude toward sex 'was direct and uncompromising'," Jones wrote in his 1989 memoir, Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, adding, "It was only logical, of course, that Tedd would be in on the beginnings of Pep Le Pew. His devotion to women was at times pathetic, at times psychological, but always enthusiastic. Tedd could not really believe that any woman could honestly refuse his honestly stated need for her."[8]

Despite this, Pep made His cameo in the Animaniacs segment "Yakko Amakko" which Made the report of him being removed from future Warner Bros. projects.

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In October 2010, it was reported that Mike Myers would voice Pep Le Pew in a feature-length live action film based on the character, although no information about this project has surfaced since. In July 2016, it was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that Max Landis was penning a Pep Le Pew feature film for Warner Bros.[9] There has been no new information since then due to sexual assault allegations against Max Landis in 2017. On 8 March 2021, the film was confirmed to be scrapped because of the development of Space Jam A New Legacy.[10]

(Directed by Chuck Jones unless otherwise indicated)

(From the Pep Le Pew Shorts)

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