Penelope Pussycat is an animated cartoon character, featured in the Warner Bros. classic Looney Tunes animated shorts as the protagonist of the Pepé Le Pew shorts. Although she is typically a non-speaker, her "meows" and "purrs" (or "le mews" and "le purrs") were most often provided by Mel Blanc using a feminine voice. The character did not originally have a permanent name; she was alternately referred to as Penelope, Fifi and Fabrette, and animator Chuck Jones' 1960 model sheet simply calls her "Le Cat".[1] The name "Penelope Pussycat" was created retroactively for Warner Bros. marketing.
The character first appeared in the 1949 short For Scent-imental Reasons, which won an Academy Award.[2] While the skunk had been used in several earlier cartoons since Odor-able Kitty (1945), the addition of his female pussycat paramour in For Scent-imental Reasons solidified his characterization and the structure of all further Pepé films.[3]
As the unfortunate target of unwanted physical attention, the character has been examined in feminist film criticism as an example of a "rape-revenge narrative"; however, this reading is complicated by the ending of some of the cartoons, which flip the dynamic and leave Pepé as the unwilling recipient of the cat's affections.[4]
In the 1959 short Really Scent, she was voiced by June Foray, in the 1962 short Louvre Come Back to Me!, she was voiced by Julie Bennett, and in the 2000 film, Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, she was voiced by Frank Welker. Her first speaking role was in the 1995 short Carrotblanca, where she was voiced by Tress MacNeille.
Penelope Pussycat has been suggested to play 89 roles. Click below to see other actors suggested for each role, and vote for who you think would play the role best.
