On the Love Skunk

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A Warner Brothers, Looney Tunes, and Merrie Melodies cartoon character

A French skunk who is constantly seeking love

Storylines typically involve Pepé in pursuit of what appears to be a female skunk (“la belle femme skunk fatale”)

Has two big turnoff: his odor and his inability to take “no” for an answer

Created by Chuck Jones (1945)

A short video with Chuck Jones on Pepé

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17 shorts; first – Odor-able Kitty, last – Louvre Come Back to Me (1962)

1949 Academy Award winner: For Scent-imental Reasons

First voiced by Mel Blanc, who based the voiced on Charles Boyer’s Pepé le Moko (Algiers, 1938)

In first short he was named Stinky, but revealed to by a philandering American skunk named Henry with wife and children

Odor of the Day (1948) is the only cartoon in which Pepé is not a “lovebird” nor does he have a French accent; but not directly by Chuck Jones (but Arthur Davis)

Memorable Lines

• Do not come wiz me to ze Casbah – we shall make beautiful musicks togezzer right here!
• I am ze locksmith of love, no?
• I am the broken heart of love. I am the disillusioned. I wish to enlist in the Foreign Legion so I may forget. Take me!
• I like it! Come back! Ze corned beef does not run away from ze cabbage!
• How is it that she can sleep when I am so near? We must stoke the furnace of love, must we not?

Links with Pepé sound clips
From Soundboard
From Megawavs

Enjoy this episode: The Cats Bah