Marc Antony
"Marc Anthony is your basic big bulldog, but in Feed the Kitty he falls in parental love with a little kitten, in the way any of us might fall for a cat or another small animal. We all have visual patterns and expectations of things, and cartoon bulldogs are almost invariably big, powerful bullies. Marc Anthony is behaving true to this stereotype when we first see him.
He is chasing a kitten, who is supposed to run away, but this one walks right across his gaping mouth and teeth in the middle of a growl--the most dangerous place of all, it would seem--and climbs blithely up on his back, curls up, and purrs himself to sleep, provoking Marc Anthony’s surprise and, curiously, tenderness. This smitten dog sweetly accepts the unusual role of the defenseless kitten’s protector. He is so touching in that role that I fell in love with him. Toward the end of the picture he believes that his kitten has been baked as a cookie and almost collapses with grief. His mistress, misunderstanding his sorrow, hands him a cookie to cheer him up.
Marc Anthony takes it and puts it carefully on his back where the kitten used to sleep. We knew the kitten wasn’t gone, but the dog didn’t, and that was what the scene--and the direction--were all about. Fool that I am, I feel tears slipping into my eyes every time I see that scene, or even just think about it. I didn’t intend the scene to work that way at all: I thought the situation was comic, but I found that I shared a true sense of sorrow with the dog." --Chuck Jones, "Chuck Reducks"
Marc Antony appears in:
- Feed the Kitty
- Kiss Me Cat
- Feline Frame-up
- Go Fly a Kit
- Cat Feud
