Two Looney guys who made a wabbit a wiseguy

DURING animation’s golden age, Michael Maltese and Tex Avery were two wild and crazy guys who created some of the era’s wackiest cartoon shorts.

Maltese wrote and story-boarded such classics as “One Froggy Evening” (starring Michigan J. Frog), “For Scent-imental Reasons” (Pepe Le Pew), “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 th Century” (Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Marvin the Martian) and “What’s Opera, Doc?” (Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, who sings the Wagnerian “Kill the Wabbit” song).

Animation director Avery began his career at Walter Lantz’s Universal cartoon studio before moving to Warner Bros. in 1935 -- where he’s credited for giving Daffy Duck his first big break and helped shape Bugs Bunny’s acerbic personality -- and MGM in 1941, where he introduced audiences to the less memorable Screwy Squirrel and Droopy Dog.

The two men, who worked briefly together at Warner Bros. in the 1930s and remained good friends, were both born in 1908 -- which is why the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is presenting a double centennial tribute, “Putting Looney in the Toons,” on Monday at the Linwood Dunn Theater.

“We’re showing about a dozen cartoons in their entirety that will reflect their individual accomplishments,” programmer Randy Haberkamp says. “And we’re running sound clips and a couple of other pieces that will serve to give them a little bit of voice as far as them talking about their own work.” (Avery died in 1980; Maltese, in 1981.)

Maltese’s daughter, Brenda, is also scheduled to talk about her dad. “He was always funny . . . he had charisma,” she says. “He would walk in a room and take over.”

Her father, she says, used his home environment for his art. “He took a lot of [his ideas] from our animals. We had dogs and cats, and he would pick up on anything.”

And Brenda Maltese even was the inspiration for his version of “Little Red Riding Hood”: “I was that obnoxious girl,” she says.

Academy historian Joe Adamson, who has written extensively about the Looney Tunes cartoons, says Maltese’s work is “the funniest stuff . . . the pictures he did with [director] Chuck Jones, especially from 1948 on.

“Chuck thought Mike was a great gag man. Some of the other guys were better on structure and story,” Adamson says. “Chuck worked with Mike’s stories. ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ -- that was Mike’s idea to set it to Wagner. He would come in with something and Chuck would say, ‘We can do stuff with that.’ It was comic fireworks when Chuck and Mike got in a room together. You didn’t know what was going to happen.”

And the same was true for Avery.

“He was the ultimate gag man,” Adamson says. Even in real life.

“He started [as an animator] at Walter Lantz, and in the middle of the morning while everyone was hard at work on their scenes, he would stand up singing the national anthem with his hand over his heart. Everyone would stand up and join in!”

--

-- Susan.King@latimes.com

--

‘PUTTING LOONEY IN THE TOONS’

WHERE: Linwood Dunn Theater, 1313 Vine St., Hollywood

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Mon.

PRICE: $3-$5

INFO: (310) 247-3600; www.oscars.org