Foghorn Leghorn Original and Limited Edition Art

Foghorn Leghorn is a cartoon character who appears in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons and films from Warner Bros. Animation. He was created by Robert McKimson and writer Warren Foster, and starred in 29 cartoons from 1946 to 1964 in the Golden Age of American Animation. All 29 of these cartoons were directed by McKimson. Foghorn Leghorn's first appearance was in the 1946 Henery Hawk short Walky Talky Hawky. With the Tasmanian Devil, Foghorn ranks as the two most popular McKimson-created characters. Foghorn's voice was created and originally performed by Mel Blanc and was later performed by Jeff Bergman, Joe Alaskey, Bill Farmer, Greg Burson, Jeff Bennett, and Frank Gorshin. Foghorn Leghorn was directly inspired by the character of Senator Claghorn, a blustery Southern politician played by Kenny Delmar on Fred Allen's popular 1940s radio show. Foghorn adopted many of Claghorn's catchphrases, such as "That's a joke, son!" Delmar's inspiration for Claghorn was a Texas rancher who was fond of saying this.^[1] According to Leonard Maltin, the character's voice was also patterned after a hard-of-hearing West Coast-only radio character from the 1930s, known simply as The Sheriff, on a radio program called Blue Monday Jamboree. The accent has similarities to that of another Mel Blanc voice: Yosemite Sam (a strictly Friz Freleng character); and even more similar to a proto-Sam character in Stage Door Cartoon.