Hubie and Bertie

Hubie and Bertie are mouse characters in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Though largely forgotten today, Hubie and Bertie represent some of director Chuck Jones' earliest work that was intended to be funny.
== First Cartoon ==
 
Chuck debuted Hubie and Bertie in the short "The Aristo-cat", first released 19 June 1943. The storyline of the cartoon would serve as the template for most future Hubie/Bertie outings: A character with some mental illness or degree of naivete, here, a cat who doesn't know what a mouse looks like, is psychologically tormented by the pair. In this cartoon, they well the mouse-hungry cat that a bulldog is a mouse, leading to several painful encounters for the cat.
Hubie was voiced by Tedd Pierce and Bertie was voiced by Michael Maltese; both men were screenwriters for Chuck at the time. Bertie and Hubie as designed by Chuck are nearly identical mice with long snouts, large ears, and big, black noses. The two are somewhat anthropomorphic, walking on their stubby hind legs and using their forelimbs as arms. The characters are distinguished by their color; one is brown with a lighter-colored belly and face, while the other is gray (which mouse is which color changes from film to film). Hubie has a pronounced Brooklyn street-accent. Bertie has large buck teeth, and a habit of responding to Hubie with: "Yeah-yeah, sure-sure!" or sniggering "Riot!" if Hubie has just proposed some scheme with great comedic potential. 
Beginning with "The Aristo-Cat", Jones quickly established differing personalities for his mice. Hubie, usually grayish-blue, is the thinker. He comes up with the plans, and he is the mouse with the chutzpah to fast-talk anyone into doing almost anything. Bertie, on the other hand, brown in this cartoon, is the doer. He performs the grunt work to accomplish Hubie's schemes. Hubie makes it clear who is subservient to whom, slapping the simpler Bertie around whenever his natural goofiness interferes with the task at hand.
== Later Shorts ==
"Trap Happy Porky" (24 February 1945) was their second appearance. Nameless, indistinguishable except for color, they appear only in the first act, stealing food from Porky Pig. They are silent except for a single "I'm only three and a half years old", and retreat when a cat shows up.
Chuck would repeat the theme of mind-games several more times in his Hubie & Bertie shorts, as in their second cartoon, "Roughly Squeaking" (23 November 1946). This time, Jones has the mice exploit a cat's stupidity by convincing him that he's a lion and that a dog is a moose he wants to eat. By the short's end, the cat thinks he's a lion, the dog believes he's a pelican, and a bystanding bird has pulled his feathers out and imagines himself a Thanksgiving turkey. The mice are here voiced by Dick Nelson (Hubie) and Stan Freberg (Bertie). In addition, this cartoon is the first time both Hubie and Bertie receive their final redesigns to look more anthropomorphic and cartoony with bigger eyes, larger noses, longer upper jaws and with visible buck teeth on one of them in later appearances, though their respective fur colors would occasionally swap between appearances. 
The short was followed by "House Hunting Mice" on 6 September 1947, where Hubie and Bertie run afoul of a housekeeping robot. In this cartoon and the next entry, "Mouse Wreckers", Stan Freberg voices Hubie and Mel Blanc voiced Bertie; the actors would swap roles for the final two shorts. After the classic cartoons, Joe Alaskey would usually voice Bertie.
== Cat and Mouse ==
Jones created a permanent "villain" of sorts for the mice in "Mouse Wreckers". The short was released on April 23, 1949 and was the first in which they are officially called "Hubie" and "Bertie." In the cartoon, the duo moves into a new home, only to discover that it is protected by champion mouser Claude Cat (the character's debut). The mice, of course, torment the poor pussycat. The short was nominated for an Academy Award. 
The mice would go on to antagonize Claude in two more films. "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat" (25 April 1950), features Hubie and Bertie making Claude think he's fallen ill with various ailments and, make him think that he's dead. In "Cheese Chasers" (25 August 1951), Hubie and Bertie inadvertently torment Claude when, after going overboard on a cheese raid and getting ill of their favorite food, they decide to commit suicide by trying to get Claude to eat them. 
After these seven cartoons, Chuck retired Hubie and Bertie. He was moving on to other characters, such as Pepé Le Pew/Penelope Pussycat, Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner, Marvin the Martian, and Marc Anthony and Pussyfoot. Jones would, however, continue to use the characters (or mice designed just like them) in cameo roles in other shorts whenever he needed a typical mouse for a gag (for instance, the unnamed mouse in "Chow Hound" or the "killer" mice in "Scaredy Cat").
== Later Appearances ==
In recent years, Hubie and Bertie have made several cameos in Warner Bros. productions. For example, they're the sports announcers in the 1996 movie Space Jam. They also appear in The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, and Duck Dodgers.
They had cameo appearances in the New Looney Tunes episodes "Appropriate Technology" and "Daffy the Stowaway". They are also among the captured mice in "Tweet Team".
They appear in Looney Tunes Cartoons voiced by Sean Kenin. Their designs are a hybrid of their earlier designs from their debut cartoon "The Aristo-cat" and their current designs seen from "Roughly Squeaking" up until "Cheese Chasers".
== Impact on Jones ==
Despite their short run of films, Hubie and Bertie are significant in that they symbolize Chuck Jones as he had reinvented himself in the late 1940s. Before then, his films were mostly sweet, Disney-esque fluff starring ultra-cute characters such as Sniffles (who coincidentally, was also a mouse). The Hubie & Bertie shorts, in contrast, are intensely humor-driven and full of over-the-top gags and jokes, and the creation of these characters marked Jones' departure from creating Disney-esque cutesy characters, eventually leading to the creation of more comedic characters such as The Three Bears, Charlie Dog, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, and many more.
In addition, Hubie and Bertie's penchant for playing to their foes' neuroses hints at Jones' later work with Looney Tunes characters such as Daffy Duck. Jones is the one largely responsible for turning Daffy from a bouncing screwball to a neurotic narcissist, and it is Jones who introduced several characters who are driven by believable impulses rather than just revenge, such as Charlie Dog with his needy obsession to get himself a master, Wile E. Coyote with his obsessive pursuit of Road Runner, Pepé Le Pew with his outsized libido, and Penelope Pussycat with her lacking self-control when she falls in love. Chuck's Hubie & Bertie shorts prove that the director was already thinking about characters in terms of their personalities.
== Filmography ==
=== Cartoons ===
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=== In other media ===
*Space Jam (1996)
*The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries
*Tweety's High-Flying Adventure (2000)
*Duck Dodgers
*New Looney Tunes
*Looney Tunes Cartoons
== Voice Actors ==
=== Hubie ===
*Tedd Pierce: "The Aristo-cat"
*Dick Nelson: "Roughly Squeaking"https://www.newsfromme.com/pov/col295/
*Stan Freberg: "House Hunting Mice" and "Mouse Wreckers"
*Mel Blanc: "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat" and "Cheese Chasers"
*Jim Cummings: The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, Tweety's High-Flying Adventure
*Bob Bergen: Space Jam
*Joe Alaskey: Duck Dodgers
*Jeff Bennett: New Looney Tunes
*Eric Bauza: New Looney Tunes
*Sean Kenin: Looney Tunes Cartoons
=== Bertie ===
*Michael Maltese: "The Aristo-cat"
*Mel Blanc: "Trap Happy Porky" and "Mouse Wreckers"
*Stan Freberg: "Roughly Squeaking", "House Hunting Mice", "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat" and "Cheese Chasers"
*Jeff Bennett: The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, New Looney Tunes
*Bob Bergen: Space Jam
*Steve Kehela: Space Jam
*Joe Alaskey: Duck Dodgers
*Eric Bauza: New Looney Tunes
*Sean Kenin: Looney Tunes Cartoons
== Notes ==
* All seven of their cartoons were given Blue Ribbon reissues.
* Two unnamed mice that resembles Bertie and Hubie appears in "From Hand to Mouse" and "Odor-able Kitty" respectively; their designs would later be used for the duo by "Roughly Squeaking".
* Hubie and Bertie were mentioned by Speedy Gonzales in the book The Looney Tunes Treasury. Their names appear at the end of Speedy's biography, although they don't have pictures of themselves.
* The Mouse Sisters Ruthie and Gertie, characters similar to Hubie and Bertie, appeared in Bugs Bunny Builders voiced by Kari Wahlgren and Candi Milo.
== Gallery ==
== References ==
es:Hubie y Bertie
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