The Fox and the Crow

The Fox and the Crow
The Fox and the Crow #1 (Jan. 1952). Cover artist unknown.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
Publication date	Dec. 1951/Jan. 1952 - February-March 1968
Number of issues	108
Main character(s)	The Fox and the Crow Stanley and His Monster
Creative team
Writer(s)	Cecil Beard and Alpine Harper
Artist(s)	Jim Davis

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, and were Screen Gems' most popular characters.

Tashlin directed the first film in the series, the 1941 Color Rhapsody short The Fox and the Grapes, based on the Aesop fable of that name. Warner Bros. animation 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, Screen Gems continued producing Fox and the Crow shorts, many of them directed by Bob Wickersham, until the studio closed in 1946. Screen Gems had acquired enough of a backlog of completed films that the "Fox and Crow" series continued through 1949.

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 DeLeon (1950). All three UPA Fox and the Crow cartoons were directed by John Hubley. Robin Hoodlum and The Magic Fluke received Academy Award nominations for Animated Short Subject.

An unrelated, six-minute, silent animated short titled The Fox and the Crow, produced by Fables Studio, was released in 1921.