Sylvester (Looney Tunes)

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Sylvester
Sylvester in Tweety and the Beanstalk
First appearance	Life With Feathers (1945)
Voiced by	Mel Blanc,
Background Information
Aliases	Thomas
Relatives	Sylvester Junior, son; {Mrs. Sylvester J Pussycat} at least once
Friends	Porky Pig, Benny the dumb cat, Furrball (student)
Rivals	Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, Hippety Hopper,
Catch phrases	"Sufferin’ succotash!", "AHHHHHH Shut Up!", "I'm a cat - I think....MEOW!....Yep! I'm a cat!"

Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr. is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic cat who appears in more than 90 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons made from 1945 to 1965, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper. The name "Sylvester" is a play on silvestris, the scientific name for the domestic cat species. The character debuted in Friz Freleng's Life With Feathers (1945). In Freleng's 1947 cartoon Tweetie Pie (which was the first pairing of Tweety with Sylvester as well as the first Warner Bros. cartoon to win an Academy Award), Sylvester was called Thomas; the character acquired his official name in the Chuck Jones-directed Scaredy Cat (1948).

Sylvester's trademark was his sloppy, stridulating lisp. In his autobiography, That's Not All Folks!, voice actor Mel Blanc stated that Sylvester's voice was based on that of Daffy Duck, plus the even-more-slobbery lisp, and minus the post-production speed-up that was done with Daffy's. Conventional wisdom is that Daffy's lisp, and hence also Sylvester's, were based on producer Leon Schlesinger's. However, Blanc made no such claim. He said that Daffy's lisp was based on him having a long beak, and that he borrowed the voice for Sylvester. He also pointed out that, minus the lisp, Sylvester's voice was fairly close to his own.

To emphasize the lisp, as with Daffy's catchphrase "You're desthpicable", Sylvester's trademark exclamation is "Sufferin’ succotash!", which is said to be a minced oath/euphemism of "Suffering Savior".

Sylvester is a tuxedo cat who shows much pride in himself, and never gives up. Despite (or perhaps because of) his pride and persistence, Sylvester was, with rare exceptions, placed squarely on the "loser" side of the Looney Tunes winner/loser hierarchy. His character was basically that of Wile E. Coyote while he was chasing mice or birds. (One cartoon episode The Wild Chase paired Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote against the Road Runner and Speedy Gonzales. In the end both Sylvester and Wile E. fail as usual.) He shows a different character when paired with Porky Pig in explorations of spooky places, in which he doesn't speak as a scaredy cat. (In these cartoons, he basically plays the terrified Costello to Porky's oblivious Abbott.) Perhaps Sylvester's most developed role is in a series of Robert McKimson-directed shorts, in which the character is a hapless mouse-catching instructor to his dubious son, Sylvester Junior, with the "mouse" being a powerful baby kangaroo. His alternately confident and bewildered episodes bring his son to shame, while Sylvester himself is reduced to nervous breakdowns.

According to his son Noel Blanc, out of the hundreds of characters Mel Blanc had voiced, Sylvester was the closest to his natural voice. Just without the lisp.

Sylvester also had atypical roles in a few cartoons:

• Kitty Kornered (1946), a Bob Clampett cartoon in which a black-nosed, yellow-eyed Sylvester was teamed with three other cats to oust homeowner Porky Pig.
• Back Alley Op-Roar (1948), a Friz Freleng cartoon (actually a remake of the 1941 short Notes To You) wherein Sylvester pesters the sleep-deprived Elmer Fudd by performing several amazing musical numbers in the alley.
• The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950), a Chuck Jones cartoon in which Sylvester plays the villain to Daffy Duck's hero.

In the television series Tiny Toon Adventures, Sylvester appeared as the mentor of Furrball. The character also starred in The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries.

In 1985, Sylvester could be heard in an episode of the game show Press Your Luck. Host Peter Tomarken had earlier incorrectly credited his catchphrase "Suffering Succotash!" to Daffy Duck. Even though all three contestants had correctly answered "Sylvester," they were ruled incorrect. In a segment produced later and edited into the broadcast, Sylvester phoned Tomarken and told him that "Daffy steals from me all the time!" All three participants returned to compete in future episodes.

Western Publications produced a comic book about Tweety and Sylvester entitled Tweety and Sylvester first in Dell Comics Four Color series #406, 489, and 524, then in their own title from Dell Comics (#4-37, 1954-62), then later from Gold Key Comics (#1-102, 1963-72).

[edit] Trivia

• A "Sylvester" like cat is on the badge of Marine Attack Squadron 311.
• Sylvester appears in the most Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies theatrical shorts after Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
• Even though he was Sylvester in later cartoon shorts, he was named "Thomas" in his first appearance with Tweety Bird in "Tweetie Pie". He was most likely called Thomas as a reference to Tom & Jerry, where Tom's unseen (from the head-up) owner Mammy Two-Shoes would always call him Thomas as well; thus, the name had to be changed. Like Mammy Two-Shoes, the woman who owned Thomas could not be seen from the head-up.
• Sylvester's name stems from the Latin scientific classification for domestic house cats: Felis Silvestris.
• Sylvester also appears in Baby Looney Tunes, a cartoon in which all the Looney Tunes characters are shown as babies
• When Olympia & York went into receivership (bankruptcy), their Canary Wharf project in the UK was taken over by the lending banks which then created "Sylvester Holdings" to "own" the project, as Sylvester tried to grab Tweety.

[edit] External links

• Sylvester's history at Warner Bros' official website (requires flash).
• Pictures and wallpapers of Sylvester on the Cartoon Spot web site.
• Sylvester the Cat Fanclub
• Free On-line Sylvester The Cat Cartoon - this and other Looney Tunes cartoons are free on this site.