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Tex Avery biography

Quick Facts

  • NAME: Tex Avery
  • OCCUPATION: Illustrator
  • BIRTH DATE: February 26, 1908
  • DEATH DATE: August 26, 1980
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Taylor, Texas
  • PLACE OF DEATH: Burbank, California
  • Originally: Fred Avery
  • Full Name: Frederick Bean Avery

Best Known For

Tex Avery was an American cartoonist best known for creating characters such as Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Droopy and Chilly Willy.

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Avery and his co-workers largely abandoned the children's market, which was already dominated by Disney. They focused instead on making cartoons that could also appeal to adults, transforming the whole idea of what a cartoon would be. Avery was the first director to work from the premise that his characters could do anything since they were, in fact, cartoons. They could get squished by an anvil,

pushed off a cliff or chopped into pieces and still emerge intact at the end of the feature (or at least in next week's episode). There were also no saccharine-sweet romantic stories. Avery's cartoons were full of winking, sarcastic humor and sight gags that made adults and kids laugh for different reasons.

Following a conflict with his boss, Avery left Warner Brothers for MGM in 1941. He remained wildly prolific, cranking out animated films at a rate of five per year for 13 years. Avery was such a workaholic that he sometimes refused to leave his office even to go to the bathroom, which at one point forced him to have emergency bladder surgery. His MGM characters included Droopy Dog and "Red Hot Riding Hood," a cartoon so risqué (the storybook heroine performs a striptease) that it was banned from television.

Later Life

Avery left MGM in 1954, having spent most of his creative energy. After a brief return to the Lantz studio (where he created the penguin Chilly Willy) he turned to a new line of work making commercials. In this phase of his career, Avery created a memorable series of Raid pesticide ads (where the cartoon termites scream "RAAAID!" and die) and the Frito Bandito.

His personal life, however, was never as sunny as his cartoons. Avery acknowledged ignoring his family for his work, and weathered a string of personal tragedies that included a son's fatal drug overdose and the subsequent breakup of his marriage. On August 26, 1980, Avery died of lung cancer at the age of 72. After his death, his one-time Warner Brothers co-worker Chuck Jones said, "I was as ignorant of his genius as I suppose Michelangelo's apprentices were oblivious to the fact that they, too, were working with a genius."

© 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.

© 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.

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