For Scent-imental Reasons

Like just about every Pepe Le Pew cartoon, there's a female cat who's mistaken for a skunk because of white paint that conveniently forms a straight line on the cat's back. As a result, Pepe falls madly in love with her while she is repelled and tries to escape with her running frantically and he just hopping along without a care in the world. That's the premise of the nearly whole series in a nutshell but this one has a twist at the end that makes For Scent-imental Reasons somewhat worthy of the Oscar it eventually won. In fact, I was pretty amused throughout most of the cartoon. And I always wonder how much of the French was real and how much of it was gibberish! Ah well, Say la vie!

Chuck Jones's 'For Scent-imental Reasons' is a brilliantly witty cartoon for which Pepe Le Pew won a well earned Academy Award on only his fourth outing. As a child I hated the Pepe Le Pew cartoons for several reasons. Of course, I thought love was yucky but also the pseudo-French gags and more verbal approach to comedy went completely over my head. Bearing in mind that these sexually charged cartoons were never meant for young eyes, it's hardly surprising that I have come round to loving Pepe and his straight-to-camera witticisms. Having said all that, even as a Pepe-hating child I still enjoyed 'For Scent-imental Reasons'. There was something about it that made it stand out over the other Le Pew shorts and clearly the Academy agreed.

Set in and around a perfume shop, 'For Scent-imental Reasons' finds Penelope the cat locked in with the amorous skunk after a bottle of white hair-dye bestows the obligatory deceptive markings down her spine. There follows a series of great gags, two of which involve aborted suicides! The best gag in the whole cartoon is when Penelope locks herself in a glass case causing Pepe to go absolutely insane with frustration until finally he pulls out a gun, puts it to his temple and walks out of sight. Hearing the shot, the guilt-ridden cat unlocks the case and leaps out straight into Pepe's arms. "I meesed" he tells her! 'For Scent-imental Reasons' is a lovely piece of work and undoubtedly one of the best Pepe Le Pew cartoons. From its familiar setup through to the table-turning ending, it's a classy and classic short.

This was the cartoon that formed Pepe Le Pew as we know and love him. It was this cartoon that Chuck Jones found the correct formula to make Pepe a true winner.

Earlier, producer Eddie Seltzer thought that no one would believe that a French-speaking skunk was funny. Jones and Seltzer really battled on that. But when this cartoon won an Academy Award in 1949, he was proven wrong, and stepped up to receive the award anyway!

According to Chuck, Pepe, like Bugs Bunny, is one of his aspirations. He held a place in Chuck Jones' heart. He claimed that he never had much luck with 'les femmes' when in school, and Pepe is a character with so much security in his own sexuality that he contained much will power. So Pepe's a very personal character to Mr. Jones.

In the past, the humorous 'talking-through-the-glass' scene was cut due to the suicide reference. However-Pepe: I meesed...fortunately for you!"

His name was a spoof of Charles Boyer's character in the French film Algiers, a character named Pepe Le Moko.

A truly great for the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes collection.

BTW: I am saddened by the fact that Mr. Charles M. Jones, the last of the original Looney Tunes directors and creator of such a great Looney Tune, passed away just recently.

*sniff* Goodbye, Chuck Jones... >_<

I'll be totally honest. I was never a big fan of Pepe Le Pew. Every one of his cartoons is the same. For some silly reason a cat will end up a white stripe on it's back and Pepe, a smelly skunk, falls in love with her. His foul scent is so strong that when he grabs her and unleashes an endless barrage of kisses, she can only become like butter in his arms with a dazed look on her face. Occasionally she will try to escape and Pepe will fob it off with something like 'You are play-eeng hard-to-geet'. Blah, blah, blah, they are all the same.

Grant, this one was the first and it won an Oscar. But that was probably the reason they made so many more. This one does have a funny twist at the end when Pepe's love falls into a barrel of water and emerges like crack-addicted rat and the tables are turned. But it's still not really THAT funny. Pepe was only ever a supporting character and never strong enough to carry a whole cartoon.

He IS very cute though.

This cartoon won an Oscar for Pepe Le Pew almost ten years before Bugs Bunny won for Knighty Knight Bugs. Pepe is one of my favorite characters and this is one of the better cartoons in the series, although not my personal favorite (that's Touche and Go). Pepe discovers wht it's like to have the shoe on the other foot in this one. Great fun in this one. It should be in-print. It has been in the past, most notably on the tape A Salute to Chuck Jones from the Golden Jubilee series. Cartoon Network shows it fairly often. Recommended.