The Three Bears (Looney Tunes)
| The Three Bears | |
|---|---|
| Looney Tunes character | |
 |
|
| First appearance | Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears |
| Created by | Chuck Jones |
| Voiced by |
Papa Bear: Mel Blanc (1944), Billy Bletcher (1948–1951), Frank Welker (1990), Will Ryan (2003), Maurice LaMarche (2013) Mama Bear: Bea Benaderet (1944–1951), Mel Blanc (1948), Tress MacNeille (1990), Joe Alaskey (2003), Grey DeLisle (2013) Baby Bear: Kent Rogers (1944), Stan Freberg (1948–2003), John DiMaggio (2013) |
| Information | |
| Species | Brown bears |
The Three Bears are animated cartoon characters in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. The family consists of Papa Bear (sometimes called Henry), Mama Bear, and Junior Bear (sometimes spelled Junyer or Joonyer).
Papa is a loud-mouthed, short tempered and often abusive dwarf bear, while Junior is an oversized, muscular, buffoon. The two are constantly at each other (usually Junior at Papa's wrath), leaving Mama Bear as the innocent (and deadpan) middle-bear, although she often resorts to thwacking one of them with a rolled-up newspaper to keep the peace.
Animator Chuck Jones introduced the trio in the 1944 cartoon Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears, in which Bugs Bunny invades the home of the three bears, and Mama Bear takes a fancy to him. In the short, Papa Bear tries to feed his starving family by having them act out their roles in the traditional fairy tale from which they derive their name. Unfortunately for them, when they were out of porridge, Mama substitutes carrot soup for it, and the "Goldilocks" they lure turns out to be none other than Bugs. Purcell and Liepien, in Parallel Curriculum Units for Social Studies, Grades 6-12 , recommended this film as part of the study of the sociological implications of humor; Steven Case, in Toons That Teach, also mines this work for pedogogic value.
In this initial entry in the series, Mel Blanc played Papa Bear, Kent Rogers played Junior, and Bea Benaderet played Mama. However, for the bulk of the remainder of the series, Billy Bletcher, played Papa, and Stan Freberg took over as Junior after Kent Rogers' death in a World War II training accident (Benaderet continued as Mama Bear). After the classic theatrically-released shorts, Will Ryan and Joe Alaskey played Papa and Mama.
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