Cecil Turtle is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of films. Cecil Turtle is remarkable in that he is one of the very few characters who was actually able to defeat Bugs Bunny in all of his theatrical appearances.
History[]
Golden Age[]
Director Tex Avery debuted Cecil in the cartoon "Tortoise Beats Hare", released in 1941. Even from the cartoon's opening titles, Avery lets on that Bugs Bunny is about to meet his match. Cecil uses several relatives that looks similar to him in order to cheat. "Tortoise Beats Hare" is a take off of the Aesop fable The Tortoise and The Hare, but even more directly, it is Avery's parody of the 1935 Disney Silly Symphony, The Tortoise & The Hare. When Avery left Warner Bros. the same year and moved to MGM, he would create Droopy, who would share characteristics of Cecil.
Bob Clampett would take over Avery's unit and inherit the character; he would create a follow-up called "Tortoise Wins by a Hare", released in 1943. In this cartoon, Cecil tricks Bugs into a false ploy that he uses to win the previous race, which leads to a role reversal with Bugs as the tortoise and Cecil as the rabbit. However, Bugs' hired gangsters ends up socking Bugs by mistake, netting Bugs another loss.
Cecil and Bugs would have one final match up in Friz Freleng's "Rabbit Transit", released in 1947. Unlike "Tortoise Wins by a Hare", this cartoon presumes that Bugs and Cecil have never met before. Alongside, Cecil now uses a jet-propelled shell to cheat, although Bugs manages to cross the finish line first, winning the race. However, this also marks one of Bugs' first Pyrrhic victories, as Cecil gets the last laugh when he rooks the rabbit into confessing to speeding, getting Bugs arrested as a result.
The Warners directors retired Cecil after his third showdown with Bugs. However, several turtles that resembles Cecil appears in later cartoons, such as "The Shell Shocked Egg", "Odor of the Day", "Curtain Razor" (where he is a Mel Blanc caricature), and "Devil May Hare".
Post-Golden Age[]
The Looney Tunes Show
Cecil is seen briefly in the 1996 film Space Jam and the 2003 DVD Looney Tunes: Reality Check, his voice was provided by Joe Alaskey. He also features in some issues of the Looney Tunes comic book series. He also made a non-speaking cameo in Animaniacs and a speaking cameo in The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries.
Cecil with his Goons in Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run
His biggest later role however is in The Looney Tunes Show. He first appears in the Season 2 episode Customer Service, voiced by Jim Rash, as a customer service representative for a television company. He shuts down Bugs' cable and mispronounces the rabbit's name, until Bugs confronts him and tricks Cecil into restoring his cable. Then in a later episode called The Shell Game, it is revealed he tricked people into thinking they cracked his shell to earn money. Bugs gets tricked as well, and so does Porky. After Porky gets tricked, Bugs goes to Cecil's apartment and finds out he bought Daffy's recliner. As Cecil is about to shoot them and tells them about his flashback, Bugs asks him to recline. Since the recliner is broken, Cecil is thrown at the wall and Porky gets the gun. Bugs successfully beats Cecil again and Cecil is arrested, vowing revenge after the closing credits. He also appears in Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run as a manipulative FBI agent secretly working for Marvin the Martian in search of the Invisibility Flower.
Cecil made appearances in seasons 2 and 3 of New Looney Tunes. He is voiced by series producer Matt Craig.[1] In this series, he and Bugs butt heads quite a few times and usually always end in a tie like in "Regatta de Rabbit" when he and Bugs compete in a boat race, and "Cruise Control" where the two compete to have the best cruise vacation.
He makes subsequent appearances in the Looney Tunes Cartoons shorts "Happy Birthday Bugs Bunny!" and "Shell Shocked". He is voiced by Keith Ferguson.
Cecil appears in Bugs Bunny Builders in the episodes "Race Track Race" and "Beach Battle". He is voiced by Bob Bergen.
Filmography[]
Cartoons[]
"Tortoise Beats Hare" (1941)- "Tortoise Wins by a Hare" (1943)
- "Rabbit Transit" (1947)
Other Media[]
- Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island (1983, archive footage)
- Animaniacs
- Space Jam (1996, cameo)
- The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries
- S03E09B: "The Shell Game" (1998)
- Webtoons
- "The Junkyard Run" (2001)
- "Parallel Porked" (2004)
- "Fast Feud" (2005, cameo)
- "Grand Master Rabbit" (2005)
- Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas (2006, cameo)
- The Looney Tunes Show
- S02E07: "Customer Service" (2012)
- S02E20: "The Shell Game" (2013)
- Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run (2015)
- New Looney Tunes
- S02E27A: "Top Bugs" (2018)
- S02E32A: "Bugs Baked" (2018)
- S02E35: "Hip Hop Hare" (2018)
- S03E15A: "Regatta de Rabbit" (2018)
- S03E33B: "Cruise Control" (2018)
- S03E39A: "Brothers in Harms" (2018)
- S03E46A: "Formula One Bunny" (2018)
- Looney Tunes Cartoons
- "Happy Birthday Bugs Bunny!" (2020, cameo)
- 033: "Shell Shocked" (2021)
- Bugs Bunny Builders
- S01E03: "Race Track Race" (2022)
- S01E06: "Tweety-Go-Round" (2022, cameo)
- S01E16: "Beach Battle" (2022)
- S01E17: "Game Time" (2022, cameo)
- S01E19/20: "Looneyburg Lights" (2022)
- S01E21: "Blast Off" (2023)
Notes[]
- Despite his last name, Cecil is actually a tortoise, since turtles are primarily water-dwellers with webbed feet while tortoises are land-dwellers with shorter legs with non-webbed feet.
- Throughout the franchise, it is heavily implied (though not specifically confirmed) that Cecil is Bugs' most heavily-despised adversary, especially given the fact that the rabbit often loses unfairly to Cecil in the end, such as in the original cartoons. This is in contrast to the rabbit's other adversaries, such as Yosemite Sam, where Bugs at least still remains calm unless being provoked enough by them. In recent years, Bugs has successfully defeated Cecil, like in The Looney Tunes Show. In New Looney Tunes, however, they would always draw.
Gallery[]
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