Emma Webster, better known as Granny, is a recurring character and one of the few major characters who are human in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. In almost all her appearances, she is the owner of Tweety, Sylvester, or Hector the Bulldog.
Biology[]
A preliminary Granny who appears in "Little Red Walking Hood" in 1937
Granny is generally good-natured and is extremely protective of her beloved canary Tweety. Her over-protectiveness becomes apparent whenever Tweety is threatened (usually by Sylvester, a hungry "puddy tat" who prefers eating birds over cat food). Although having the appearance of a kindly old woman, she has demonstrated her cleverness.
The idea of a cartoon granny character pre-dates Granny's official debut. The earliest example appears in the 1937 cartoon "Little Red Walking Hood". Subsequent Granny characters later appear, such as in 1941's "The Cagey Canary", 1943's "Hiss and Make Up" and 1944's "Hare Force". Granny would make her official debut in the 1950 Tweety cartoon "Canary Row". She is usually the owner of Tweety and also serves as his protector. Sylvester often finds a way to break into her house for the sole purpose of finding a meal. In later cartoons, she appears to be the owner of both Tweety and Sylvester.
Granny also appears to be unmarried, or possibly a widow, since she lives by herself. This was notably exemplified in 1953's "Hare Trimmed", in which Yosemite Sam plans to marry her so he can gain access to her fortune. Granny's real name was also rarely acknowledged in most of her appearances, but was referred to by Sam as "Emma" and later "Emmy" in "Hare Trimmed". Her surname was also acknowledged in 1965's "Corn on the Cop" as "Webster" by Daffy and Porky's superior officer.
Later Appearances[]
In 1995, she starred in The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries series as a detective who investigates mysteries with Tweety, Sylvester and Hector the Bulldog. She always carries a magnifying glass around her neck for research. Later, she made appearances in Space Jam, Tweety's High-Flying Adventure (where she was once again the caretaker of the yellow canary), and Looney Tunes Back in Action.
She appeared in Webtoons, where she starred in a series of three shorts, Judge Granny. These shorts show another version of her as a Judge resolving cases of some Looney Tunes major characters.
She takes care of the Baby Looney Tunes, where she has a nephew named Floyd Minton, who started to make appearances later in the series to take the babies on trips. She also has a sister called Auntie.
She appears in Looney Tunes Back in Action as the neighbor of the hero, DJ Drake. Later, Mr. Chairman disguises himself as her.
An episode of Loonatics Unleashed contains a cameo of Granny herself, apparently still alive in the year 2772. Later, the show featured characters named Queen Grannicus (a possible descendant of Granny), the Royal Tweetums and Sylth Vester.
Emma fighting against Colonel Frankenheimer in World War II
She also appeared in the 1993 Sega Genesis video game Sylvester and Tweety in Cagey Capers in the first, second, third, and eighth levels as an enemy, and in the 2000 Game Boy Color video game Looney Tunes: Marvin Strikes Back!
She also appeared as a recurring character in The Looney Tunes Show as one of Bugs and Daffy's neighbors, voiced by June Foray. In "Eligible Bachelors", it is revealed that during World War II, Granny was a WAC spy and along with Tweety, "a carrier pigeon", she stopped Nazi Colonel Frankenheimer from stealing the Eiffel Tower and various paintings from the Louvre. During the flashback, she appears as an attractive red-headed young woman in WAC uniform. In "The Grand Old Duck of York", Granny teaches piano lessons too. Her students were Daffy and Winnie Yang.
She makes a few appearances in New Looney Tunes in her mid-1950s design. As June Foray, her second voice actress, passed away in 2017 before the character appeared in the show's second season, she would be voiced by Candi Milo who made the character's voice more replicant to her original high-pitched voice from the 1950s and 1960s cartoons by Bea Benaderet and June Foray, instead of the deeper voice used by June Foray after the classic era.
Her design in Looney Tunes Cartoons is a fusion of her early-1950s design and mid-1950s design.
She appeared in Space Jam A New Legacy as a member of the Tune Squad.
She appeared in King Tweety in her early-1950s design.
Granny has a cameo appearance in the Bugs Bunny Builders episode "Cousin Billy".
Granny is a dean in Tiny Toons Looniversity. This version of the character has five fingers rather than four fingers.
Filmography[]
"Canary Row" (1950) - "Room and Bird" (1951)
- "Tweety's S.O.S." (1951)
- "Gift Wrapped" (1952)
- "Ain't She Tweet" (1952)
- "Snow Business" (1953)
- "Fowl Weather" (1953)
- "Hare Trimmed" (1953)
- "Tom Tom Tomcat" (1953)
- "A Street Cat Named Sylvester" (1953)
- "Muzzle Tough" (1954)
- "Sandy Claws" (1955)
- "This Is a Life?" (1955)
- "Red Riding Hoodwinked" (1955)
- "Tweet and Sour" (1956)
- "Tugboat Granny" (1956)
- "Greedy for Tweety" (1957)
- "A Pizza Tweety-Pie" (1958)
- "A Bird in a Bonnet" (1958)
- "Trip for Tat" (1960)
- "The Last Hungry Cat" (1961)
- "The Jet Cage" (1962)
- "Hawaiian Aye Aye" (1964)
Voice Actresses[]
Granny was voiced first voiced by Bea Benaderet In 1950 before it was taken over by the late June Foray in 1955. Foray continued to voice Granny for the rest of her career. This makes her the only character to have the same voice actor for the original shorts and The Looney Tunes Show, as June Foray and Stan Freberg were the only two original voice-actors still alive at the time of production.
- Bea Benaderet (1950-1955)
- June Foray (1955-2013)
- GeGe Pearson ("It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House")
- Joan Gerber ("Corn on the Cop")
- Candi Milo (2017–present)
Notes[]
- Granny's voice has notably changed over the years. In the classic cartoons of the 1950s and 1960s, despite her age, she originally had a youthful high-pitched voice, which was provided by Bea Benaderet and later June Foray, GeGe Pearson, and Joan Gerber. After the classic shorts, June Foray's voice became noticeably deeper, sounding more like a realistic elderly woman. After June Foray's death in 2017, Candi Milo, who previously voiced her descendant Queen Grannicus from Loonatics Unleashed, took over as the voice of the character beginning with New Looney Tunes, using her high-pitched voice from the classic cartoons again.
Gallery[]
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