Cartoons

Chuck Jones breathed life into creatures great but small. You can hardly turn on the TV set without seeing them: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Tweety Pie, the Road Runner, Pepe Le Pew and the other stars of the great Warner Bros. cartoons on which Jones worked. Jones and his pal Friz Freleng are the only surviving directors from the playful heyday of Warner cartoons. "Friz is too mean to die," Jones jokes, "and I haven't had any practice. " The cartoons were made from the '30s to the '60s, as short subjects for theaters, but they've turned out to have more than nine lives.

Students at Cairo University chose their weapons carefully as they prepared to vent anger yesterday over the now-notorious drawings of Muhammad. After weeks of watching the violent - even deadly - reactions of Muslims in other countries, the Egyptian students were determined that their protest would be different. They assembled an arsenal of black markers, skinny red pens, and packs of colored pencils. Then, with broad strokes and dainty curlicues, they filled reams of paper with the fury, sadness and disgust they felt over the lampooning of Islam's messenger.

Children watching Saturday morning cartoons see Smurf cartoons and commercials for Smurf toys, Transformer cartoons and ads for Transformer toys, and JEM cartoons with ads that promote JEM dolls. Now Video Shopping Mall, a Jenkintown video sales firm, has signed a joint venture with Video Shopping Productions of Colorado to produce television sales shows for adults that apply the same concept: thematic programming. The idea is that a specially produced game show or "magazine" program, shown on airtime purchased from the cable TV operator, will promote products to be featured in ads on the show.

Disney's new animated short feature, "Tummy Trouble," marking the further adventures of Roger Rabbit, probably does not signal a return to the days when such cartoons were as much a part of the moviegoing experience as popcorn. The 7 1/2-minute cartoon, which co-stars Baby Herman and Jessica Rabbit, will be shown in tandem with the new Disney picture "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," opening tomorrow in Philadelphia. Many theater operators believe short features are too expensive to rent, says Irv Lomis, advertising coordinator for the local United Artists theater chain.

The Addams Family is coming. So are those fuzzy, beak-faced semi-sapiens from the hand of Koren. And the nervous gaggle of geeks and dunderheads who compose the universe of Chast. Not to mention the arrival of scantily clad chorus girls and betuxed gents mixing it up in the high-society Manhattan niteries of Arno. Addams, Charles. Koren, Edward. Chast, Roz. Arno, Peter. These four names, along with those of 59 other artists and illustrators, can be found affixed to original cartoons and covers in "The Art of the New Yorker" - a 60-year retrospective of the illustrious weekly's illustrations, opening today at the Central Branch of the Free Library.

Fan mail from some flounder? Yes, folks, there is life after Bullwinkle. Buena Vista Home Video is pulling a rabbit out of its hat by purchasing the rights to the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. Jay Ward, the creator of the most sophisticated cartoon series of the TV era, has signed a deal with Buena Vista that will bring the animated adventures of Rocky and friends to your neighborhood video store sometime next year. No release date has been set. Ward, who is hiding more than 158 hours of cartoons in his Los Angeles home, up to now had avoided the lure of video.

Glen Foerd on the Delaware will premiere its new children's programming Sunday with a cartoon festival. The special event, designed to introduce youngsters to the 18-acre historic estate overlooking the Delaware River in the Northeast, will include screenings of animated classics starring such characters as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Dick Tracy, Popeye, Precious Pup, Road Runner, Woody Woodpecker, and Tom and Jerry. The festival will open at 1 p.m. with a tour, tailored for children, of the estate's 25-room mansion.

The Muslim cleric seen as instigating protests over a dozen cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad said yesterday that he never intended for rioters to attack Danish embassies and businesses in the Middle East and that he was crying for Denmark. But Ahmed Abu-Laban, who leads a mosque in Copenhagen, also said that Danish officials had brought their problems on themselves by failing to respond to initial protests after the cartoons had appeared in a Danish newspaper. He said he did not feel responsible for the way the dispute had developed.

Cartoonist Robert F. "Bo" Brown got his nickname by accident. "When I was an undergraduate student at (the University of Pennsylvania) back in the '20s, I did cartoons for the humor magazine, and I signed them B.o.B.," he said. "One day, the editor called me Bo and I didn't say anything. "When someone is going to print your work," the 88-year-old Brown said, chuckling, "you don't say, 'Oh no, my name is Bob.' So I've been Bo ever since. " In 1930, while a student at Penn's law school, Brown sold his first cartoon to the Saturday Evening Post.

Here's how Lee Trevino prepared for the pressure-packed final round of yesterday's Bell Atlantic Classic: He woke at 7 a.m., watched cartoons until noon, and played with his two youngest children, tossing and catching his 19- month-old son on demand. Trevino then went out and toyed with an older bunch, the grizzled veterans of the Senior PGA tour, and strolled to a 2-shot victory in the $700,000 tournament at Chester Valley Golf Club. Trevino, 54, carded a 2-under-par 68 on a gorgeous day in Malvern to finish at 4-under 206, winning for the fourth time on the Senior tour this year.