Sylvester Cat and Tweety Bird

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Syl and Tweet, in an all too typical scene.

Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird are two of the most well known characters in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies stable. They had dozens of cartoons together, with Tweety encountering Sylvester at least 48 times during their heyday.

Obviously, these shorts have achieved much popularity, second only to the big three stars of Looney Tunes. One version of the classic series The Bugs Bunny Show even gave Tweety Bird top billing along with Bugs in "The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show". They were even popular enough to get their own TV Spin-Off, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries. Tweety also recieved his own Direct to Video movie, Tweety's High Flying Adventure.

Nowadays, the characters aren't quite as active, but are still a central part of the Looney Tunes cast, currently making appearances in The Looney Tunes Show.

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Filmography

1942

• A Tale of Two Kitties: Debut of Tweety Bird (although he was named "Orson" on the original model sheet).

1944

• Birdy and the Beast: Second appearance of Tweety Bird.

1945

• A Gruesome Twosome: Third appearance of Tweety.
• Life with Feathers: Debut of Sylvester (his prey is a suicidal love bird who wants Sylvester to eat him because his wife threw him out).
• Peck Up Your Troubles: In this short, Sylvester does battle with a woodpecker and doesn't speak at all.

1946

• Kitty Kornered: First time Sylvester and Porky appear in the same short. Runner-up on The 50 Greatest Cartoons list.

1947

• Tweetie Pie: First time Sylvester and Tweety appear in the same cartoon.
• Crowing Pains: Only cartoon to co-star Sylvester and Foghorn Leghorn
• Doggone Cats
• Catch as Cats Can

1948

• Back Alley Op-Roar: First cartoon to co-star Sylvester and Elmer. Semi-remake of an earlier short "Notes To You".
• I Taw a Putty Tat
• Hop, Look and Listen: First cartoon to have Sylvester and Hippety Hopper co-star.
• Kit for Cat: With Elmer.
• Scaredy Cat: First of three cartoons with Porky and Sylvester visiting strange places (the others are Claws for Alarm and Jumpin' Jupiter).

1949

• Mouse Mazurka
• Bad Ol' Putty Tat: Starring Tweety
• Hippety Hopper: Starring Tweety

1950

• Home Tweet Home: Starring Tweety
• The Scarlet Pumpernickel: With Porky and Daffy.
• All a Bir-r-r-rd: Starring Tweety.
• Canary Row: With Tweety.
• Stooge for a Mouse
• Pop 'Im Pop!: Starring Hippety. First appearance of Sylvester Jr.

1951

• Canned Feud
• Putty Tat Trouble: Starring Tweety.
• Room and Bird: Starring Tweety.
• Tweety's S.O.S.: Starring Tweety
• Tweet Tweet Tweety: Starring Tweety.

1952

• Who's Kitten Who?
• Gift Wrapped: With Tweety.
• Little Red Rodent Hood
• Ain't She Tweet
• Hoppy Go Lucky
• A Bird in a Guilty Cage
• Tree for Two

1953

• Snow Business
• A Mouse Divided: First appearance of Friz Freleng's drunken stork character (there was a drunk stork character in Bob Clampett's Baby Bottleneck, but he was a One-Scene Wonder that may or may not have inspired Freleng's version of the character)
• Fowl Weather
• Tom Tom Tomcat: Hardly seen on American television due to the Native American stereotyping
• A Street Cat Named Sylvester
• Catty Cornered
• Cats A-Weigh

1954

• Dog Pounded
• Bell Hoppy
• Dr. Jerkyl's Hide
• Claws For Alarm
• Muzzle Tough
• Satan's Waitin'
• By Word of Mouse

1955

• Lighthouse Mouse
• Sandy Claws
• Tweety's Circus
• Jumpin' Jupiter
• A Kiddies Kitty
• Speedy Gonzales
• Red Riding Hoodwinked
• Heir-Conditioned
• Pappy's Puppy

1956

• Too Hop to Handle
• Tweet and Sour
• Tree Cornered Tweety
• The Unexpected Pest
• Tugboat Granny
• The Slap-Hoppy Mouse
• Yankee Dood It

1957

• Tweet Zoo
• Tweety and the Beanstalk
• Birds Anonymous
• Greedy for Tweety
• Mouse-Taken Identity
• Gonzales Tamales

1958

• A Pizza Tweety Pie
• A Bird in a Bonnet

1959

• Trick or Tweet
• Tweet and Lovely
• The Cat's Paw
• Here Today, Gone Tamale
• Tweet Dreams

1960

• West of the Pesos
• Goldimouse and the Three Cats
• Hyde and Go Tweet
• Mouse and Garden
• Trip for Tat

1961

• Cannery Woe
• Hoppy Daze
• Birds of a Father
• D'Fightin Ones
• The Rebel Without Claws
• The Pied Piper of Guadalupe
• The Last Hungry Cat

1962

• Fish and Slips
• Mexican Boarders
• The Jet Cage

1963

• Mexican Cat Dance
• Chili Weather
• Claws in the Lease

1964

• A Message to Gracias
• Freudy Cat
• Nuts and Bolts
• Hawaiian Aye Aye: Final team up of Syl and Tweet.
• Road to Andalay

1965

• It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around The House
• Cats and Bruises
• The Wild Chase

1966

• A Taste of Catnip

1979

• Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol
• The Yolk's On You

1988

• Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: Tweety in his original design appears in the Toontown skyline (nesting on a flagpole), and inexplicably reverts back to his original design and appears along with Sylvester in the ending.

1995

• Carrotblanca
• The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries

1996

• Space Jam

1998

• Father of the Bird

2000

• Tweety's High-Flying Adventure

2004

• Museum Scream

2005

• Looney Tunes: Back in Action

2006

• Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas.

2011

• Big Bushy Mustace
• The Looney Tunes Show

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Tropes used in Sylvester Cat and Tweety Bird include:

• Art Evolution: Tweety originally was a pink, featherless baby bird, but the Hays Office insisted that he don a yellow feather coat, due to objections of Tweety being "naked" — and yet they had no problems with Porky Pig not wearing pants!
  • In his initial appearances Sylvester was intended to resemble a baggy-pants comedian with a round belly, a low sagging pair of hips and an overly large red nose. This was toned down later, as the early design was hard to animate.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: One short in which Sylvester and Tweety are Snowed In features a mouse who hasn't eaten in so long he "forgot what food looks like." He takes one look at Sylvester and decides to have him for dinner.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Tweety. Space Jam even demonstrated that he can still slip into this time and time again.
• Black Comedy: Used unabashadly in "Satan's Waitin'".
• Breakout Character: Both Granny and the bulldog character (later coined as Hector) made occasional appearances in initial shorts, and gradually became as much mainstream as the main duo. They are near equally prominant in Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries.
• The Cameo: Tweety cameos twice in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Granny is seemlingly harmless, but is much smarter and stronger than she looks.
• Demoted to Extra: Tweety became less active in later shorts, the main bulk of which revolved more around a bodyguard or alternate adversary guarding him from Sylvester (usually Granny or Hector).
• Early Installment Weirdness: Tweety in his earliest appearances was a sadistic trickster who actively fought back against his aggressors. Once Freleng took over direction of the character, Tweety became a genuinely innocent, very passive character.
  • the Proto-Tweety never had a name in the cartoons he appeared in, but on some of Clampett's model sheets his name was given as "Orson" a reference to Orson Welles.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: As seen in "Satan's Waitin'".
• Harmless Villain: Sylvester, at least in the shorts with Tweety.
• Hidden Depths: Despite Tweety becoming softer, fans still speculate that he's still a sadistic being on the inside who takes pleasure in seeing Sylvester get hurt.
• Invincible Hero: Tweety. Though he had a slightly more vulnerable streak than most other Looney Tunes protagonists, he was one of very few to come out the victor in every appearance he made.
• Light Flicker Teleportation: "Greedy For Tweety" did this: Sylvester is in a hospital bed and can't move, having been given sleeping pills. Every time he opens and closes his eyes, the dog appears closer and closer, wielding a club. It's prime Nightmare Fuel.
• Long Runner
• Never Mess with Granny: Might very well be the Trope Codifier.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Babbit and Catsello from "A Tale of Two Kitties" are shameless parodies of Abbott and Costello.
• Ping-Pong Naivete: Just how innocent Tweety is in his dealings with Sylvester is part of the gag. Granny's awareness of Sylvester antagonising Tweety also varies from short to short.
• Samus Is a Girl: Given Tweety's falsetto voice, many are the people who still don't know he's a boy. Despite that he's been seen swooning over women.
  • It doesn't help in almost every foreign-language dubbed version, Tweety is voiced by women who sometimes don't bother to make him sound remotely male.
  • Thanks to Tweety's notorious history of this, The Looney Tunes Show decided to make a gag out of giving him an Ambiguous Gender. Sylvester doesn't even know what gender Tweety is until he's told in a whisper, at which point he exclaims, "I was wrong!"
  • In an episode of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries Tweety flies into a bird house restroom labeled, "Men". Tweety sticks his head out briefly to explain, "See, folks! I am a boy!"
• Satan: A bulldog version of him appears in "Satan's Waitin".
• The Golden Age of Animation
  • The Dark Age of Animation
  • The Renaissance Age of Animation
  • The Millennium Age of Animation
• Villain Protagonist: Sylvester, in his shorts with Tweety.
• Wartime Cartoon: A Tale of Two Kitties has a Victory Garden appear, Tweety sicks Anti-Aircraft cannons on Catsello in the ending, and tells the duo to TURN OFF THAT LIGHT.
• Word of God: Mel Blanc described the difference between Sylvester and Daffy Duck's voices by saying "Daffy is an impression of a Jewish comedian, while Sylvester is more gentile."
• Write Who You Know: Bob Clampett apparently based Tweety's original design off of his own baby picture.