Weblog updated. December 12, 2024.


Freelance writer, photographer, videographer, and dapper voyageur with nearsighted, grey-blue eyes, and brown and slightly wavy hair with somewhat darker sideburns, shown here at Lake Louise in the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada in July, 1995.

Kevin McCorry's Home Page



For 58 years thus far lived on this Earth, I, Kevin McCorry, have been fascinated by human imagination at its extremes. This Website is dedicated to twentieth century entertainment of this type: animated cartoons, heroes human, super-human, and canine of television series and movies, and conceptual science fiction (or science fantasy).

All of this Website's Web pages, including this one, are formatted to the 4:3 computer monitor screen dimensions. All of my Web pages should be viewed at the aspect ratio of 4:3. Such was the standard aspect ratio of Web pages in 1997, the year of origin of this Website.

Bugs Bunny wishes to be at once virtuous and carefree and must repel antagonists (e.g. Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, et al.) intending his demise or the usurping or undermining of his property or principles. Wile E. Coyote and Sylvester Cat have carnivorous desires for, respectively, the rapid Road Runner and the clever Tweety Bird. Rooster Foghorn Leghorn enjoys his fun and his bachelorhood, an existence complicated by a tiny chicken hawk, a barnyard dog that wants revenge for Foghorn's playfully violent attacks on his posterior, and a lovelorn hen. Daffy Duck vainly aims for fame and fortune. Pepe Le Pew seeks romance, despite his skunk's stench. Speedy Gonzales strives to provide nourishment for himself and his fellow Mexican mice, often in conflict with a mice-craving or cheese-defending Sylvester. Et cetera.

I have admired Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated cartoon shorts (to which I will refer on this Website as cartoons) since pre-school. Vibrant, variable colour, impressionistic design of characters and settings, and showy slapstick coinciding with subtly sophisticated humour endeared the Warner Brothers cartoons to me through my formative years- and they are therefore nostalgically cherished, plus appreciated on an increasingly mature level. I watched these cartoons on television and retained remarkably precise memories of their broadcast order in various compilation television series, having been intrigued by the combinations of particular cartoons with similar themes, motifs, et cetera, and I have chosen to share my factual knowledge of these television shows and impressions of the cartoons with the world.

Available here are information articles and episode guides for the television series by which Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies and their anthropomorphised animal characters have been seen and enjoyed by several generations of people by the millions.

       

Televised Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies

The Bugs Bunny Show
(1960-2; 1971-5) Page

The Road Runner Show
(1966-8; 1971-2) Page

The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour
(1968-71; 1975-85) Page

The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show
(1986-2000) Page

The Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends
(1990-4) Page

The Other Television Shows Starring the Warner Brothers
Cartoon Characters


And this is not all. There is also a supplementary image gallery to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (1968-71; 1975-85) Page.

Of course, Warner Brothers does not have a monopoly on vividly imaginative animation, and I am not limited to Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies in my cartoon fancies. Kindred spirits are rare for many of my preferences, such as for the mind-bending weirdness and desolate visuals of latter seasons of some of the television series listed below. Necessary, introspective, and often solitary journeys into extraordinary or alien locales happen frequently in my favoured entertainments.

As with the Warner Brothers cartoon compilation television series, format of treatment here consists of articles and episode guides. The episode guides in a few cases do acknowledge some of oft-stated criticisms of certain aspects of production or story-writing and do express my quibbles with some occasionally less imaginative story premises, but are on the whole reverent and, if I may say so myself, quite intelligently proffered.

                Other Animated Cartoon Television Programmes                

The Flintstones
(1960-6) Page

The Rocket Robin Hood
(1966-9) Page

The Spiderman
(1967-70) Page

The Pink Panther Show
(1969-81) Page

The Star Blazers
(1979-80) Page


Further, I have an evident affinity for the notion in live-action film and television of the travelling or wandering hero, such as a suave, womanising, death-defying secret agent, a Moon colony adrift in vast, unknown space, or a dog with extraordinary intellect and helpful tendencies. I can therefore also appreciate the plight of the hero who is restricted from moving, like a man trapped in a bizarre village from which escape is ostensibly impossible or a scientist who must confine himself to his home to prevent his out-of-control alter-ego from violently emerging from him against his will.

Polar explorers, especially the ill-fated Scott of the Antarctic, a real-life man who ventured fatally into inhospitable territory, have fascinated me too. I am mystified and awed by the frontiers of the Earth and of the universe and the dangers and unknown elements that exist beyond our everyday lives. So, conceptual science fiction (or science fantasy) has been a love of mine since age 10, and classic films and television series of the genre have been most stimulating.

     

Live-Action Fanciful Entertainments

The Prisoner
(1967-8) Page

The Space: 1999
(1975-7) Page

The Littlest Hobo
(1979-85) Page

The Last Place On Earth
(1985) Page

Dr. Jekyll's Many Hydes:
    The Film and Television Versions of the Horror Tale
   

The James Bond
Films


From Big Screen to Small Screen: Earthquake and
Superman

Sci-Fi Soap: Dallas' "Dream Season"
or Pamela Ewing: "Sleeper of the Year"

Examining
Movie Trilogies

The Dream That Died:
      The Late 1980s Television Show Reunion Movies
     


Again, this is not all. There is also a supplementary image gallery to The Space: 1999 (1975-7) Page.

And here are my often controversial master writings of study and interpretation of certain productions.

   

Articles of Observation and Interpretation

"Hyde and Hare": An Overlooked Masterpiece

    "Deconstructing" Bugs: The Bugs Bunny Cartoons of 1955    

    Nuance and Suggestion in the Tweety and Sylvester Series    

Taz

The Alien Saviour: Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still

Dystopic Future: The Set Design of Alien


In my work on constructing this Website, I have had the opportunity, privilege, and pleasure of interviewing people of considerable importance in the production of some of my favourite entertainments.

Exclusive Interview With John Klawitter
Exclusive Interview With Fred Freiberger
Exclusive Interview With Simon Christopher Dew

And I have written personal tributes to the three directors of the Warner Brothers cartoons that have entertained and impressed me very much in the many eras of my life.

Remembering Robert McKimson
A Tribute to Friz Freleng
In Appreciation of Chuck Jones

What life experiences could incline a person to so enthusiastically embrace all of these productions? My aspired television channel is indicative of the broadcast schedules on television during my childhood. However, I prefer to be thorough. To this end, I have written my own biography.

My biography is not a mere itemised listing of my life's most significant events, transitions, accomplishments, et cetera. It is a comprehensive telling of how I came to be interested in opuses of imagination shown on television and in the cinema. And it elaborates upon the significance of those opuses and their broadcasts or screenings, together with my social life and its rises and falls, in development of my particular outlooks. The biography is without any doubt this Website's most comprehensive undertaking. It is brimming with memories of experiencing all of the entertainments that I have fancied and that I now venerate, and with a profusion of images of the productions themselves, merchandise (books, magazines, toys, commercial videotape and videodisc) based on them, places of import for my seminal viewings of and cognitive responses to the productions, and me and my family.

   

McCorry's Memoirs

McCorry's Memoirs Era 1:
A Pre-Schooler in a Sheltered Cage (1966-72)

McCorry's Memoirs Era 2:
    Where am I? In the Village of My Childhood (1972-7)
   

Space: 1976-8: Boy Meets Alpha
(supplementary memoirs from the time period
(1976-8) of CBC Television's full-network
Space: 1999 broadcasts)

McCorry's Memoirs Era 3:
  Massive Family Move...
 
  Boy Removed From His Roots...  
  Hurled into Suburban Maze (1977-82)  

McCorry's Memoirs Era 4:
    He's a Pitcher and a Scholar and a Sci-Fi Fan (1982-7)
   

McCorry's Memoirs Era 5:
Blasts From the Past (1987-92)

McCorry's Memoirs Era 6:
    The Era My Life Stood Still (1992-7)
   

McCorry's Memoirs Era 7:
    Spins a Website, Any Size (1997-2009)
   


And a McCorry's Memoirs Addendum is followed by an adjunct to my autobiography, Kevin McCorry's Weblog.


All images involving Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies and Superman image (c) Warner Bros.
Spiderman and Rocket Robin Hood images (c) Krantz Films
Flintstones image (c) Hanna-Barbera
Pink Panther Show image (c) United Artists/DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
Star Blazers image (c) Jupiter Films/Sunwagon Productions/Voyager Entertainment Inc.
Space: 1999 and The Prisoner images (c) ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
The Littlest Hobo images (c) Glen-Warren Productions
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde images (c) Paramount Publix Corp. and Warner Bros.
James Bond movie and montage images (c) United Artists
The Last Place On Earth image (c) Central Productions/Renegade Films
Dallas image (c) Lorimar Pictures
The Empire Strikes Back image (c) Lucasfilm Ltd.
Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman image (c) Universal Television
The Day the Earth Stood Still and Alien images (c) Twentieth Century Fox
Text on this Website and on all of its component Web pages may not be reproduced in full and then altered in any way without my permission
All images are the copyright of the respective production or distribution companies, and their use on my Website is in accordance with fair use provisions