Blacque Jacque Shellacque
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Blacque Jacque Shellacque is a fictional cartoon character in the Looney Tunes cartoons. He was created by Robert McKimson and first appeared in the 1959 short Bonanza Bunny.
While similar in many ways to Yosemite Sam—both are short in stature and temper—Blacque Jacque possesses his own unique characteristics, not the least of which is his comically thick French Canadian accent, performed by Mel Blanc.
[edit] Appearances
Blacque Jacque first appeared in Bonanza Bunny, which takes place in the middle of the Klondike gold rush. Blacque Jacque attempts to seize Bugs' bag of gold (actually "a bunch of rocks and some yellow paint," according to Bugs) through card cheating, trickery, and out-and-out threats, but Bugs outwits him as always.
Blacque Jacque later clashed with Bugs in 1962's Wet Hare, in which his illegal damming of a river ("Me feel like pezky little beav-aire!") brings him into conflict with the rabbit—not only because he is committing a crime, but because he has blocked off the waterfall that Bugs uses as a shower. After demolishing several of Blacque Jacque's dams, Bugs turns the tables by damming the river upstream of Jacque's dam. Jacque, unsurprisingly, is enraged and wheels a small cannon along the riverbed to destroy Bugs' dam—but when he does he only reveals another dam further upstream. Jacque blows up several of Bugs' dams in succession and finally follows Bugs all the way to the "Grand Cooler Dam" (a pun on the name of the Grand Coulee Dam). Jacque ends up arrested when he tries to blow it up (Bugs says that he expects Jacque to be back--in about twenty years!).
[edit] Legacy
Blacque Jacque is one of the more obscure Looney Tunes characters, but he has his share of fans. Canadian television networks in particular put his shorts in regular rotation (on shows such as The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show), and the cartoons have an unusual amount of Canadian references for the time period in which they were made (for example, Bugs claims that he received a call from Jacque's girlfriend, "Fifi from Montreal"). Although Blacque Jacque did not appear in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he was featured in the film's video game adaptation stealing paintings from the Louvre and being defeated by Bugs Bunny.
