September 17, 1949: Warner Brothers releases the cartoon Fast and Furry-ous, introducing the characters of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
The Road Runner cartoons started out as a parody of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Tom & Jerry, because animator Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese thought Tom and Jerry were generic characters who just engaged in the slightest of variations on the same conflict over and over again.
But Fast and Furry-ous backfired: It turned out that nobody got the joke, they just loved it, probably because it was so much like Tom & Jerry. It turned out that people liked the mindless violence, and didn't care about story or dialogue. So Jones and Maltese decided to go with it, and make money. And they made a lot of it.
In his book Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, Jones claimed that he and the artists behind the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons adhered to some simple but strict rules:
- "The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote, except by going, 'Beep-Beep!'" (Which ended up sounding more like "Meep-Meep!" which is how the impression has usually been done.)
- "No outside force can harm the Coyote, only his own ineptitude, or the failure of the Acme products." (In other words, "cartoon physics.")
- "The Coyote could stop anytime, if he were not a fanatic. (Repeat: 'A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.' – George Santayana)."
- "No dialogue, ever, except 'Beep-Beep!'" (In cartoons not involving the Road Runner, the Coyote spoke. For example, telling Bugs Bunny that he was a genius. Which he was not.)
- "The Road Runner must stay on the road, otherwise, logically, he would not be called a Road Runner."
- "All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters, the Southwest American desert."
- "All materials tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation."
- "Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy." (Sometimes, something would fall on top of the Coyote. My father called that a "Coyote Sandwich.")
- "The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures."
One running gag involves the coyote trying, in vain, to shield himself with a little parasol against a great falling boulder that is about to crush him. Another involves him falling from high cliffs, after momentarily being suspended in midair, as if the fall is delayed until he realizes that there is nothing below him. (Again: Cartoon physics. This would later be used on The Flintstones.) The rest of the scene, shot from a bird’s-eye view, shows him falling into a canyon so deep that his figure is eventually lost to sight, with only a small puff of dust indicating his impact.
The Coyote is notably a brilliant artist, capable of quickly painting incredibly lifelike renderings of such things as tunnels and roadside scenes, in further (and equally futile) attempts to deceive the bird. However, the Road Runner would run into this fake tunnel, as if it were real. When the Coyote tried it himself, he would crash into it with a SPLAT! and end up flattened.
From the "My Entire Childhood Was a Lie" Department: In real life, coyotes are faster than roadrunners. The top speed of a coyote is 43 miles per hour; of a road runner, 26. – Also, "roadrunner" is always one word, not two like with the cartoon character.
From 1967 to 1974, the Western Hockey League had a team named the Phoenix Roadrunners. From 1974 to 1977, a team with that name played in the World Hockey Association. In 1997, the NHL gave Phoenix a team, which would eventually named the Arizona Coyotes. They moved to Salt Lake City in 2022.
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September 17, 1949 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at Yankee Stadium. Fred Sanford -- not to be confused with the Sanford and Son character -- was the winning pitcher. Charlie Keller hit a home run, and Joe DiMaggio went 1-for-4 with an RBI.
* The New York Giants lost to the Chicago Cubs, 4-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-2 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-3.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Browns, 3-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ted Williams went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 8-5 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 8-3 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Russ Meyer pitched a 3-hit shutout.
* And the Boston Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Stan Musial went 0-for-4.
Among the college football games played that day were these:
* The University of California beat Santa Clara, 21-7 at California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. Cal went on to win the Pacific Coast Conference title. Santa Clara, an independent, bounced back, and were invited to the Orange Bowl.
* Kentucky beat Mississippi Southern College (now the University of Southern Mississippi), 71-7 at McLean Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky. Kentucky finished 2nd in the Southeastern Conference, and were invited to the Orange Bowl, where Santa Clara beat them.
* Ohio State opened its season the next week. They went on to win the Big Nine Conference title. (The Big Ten was a Big Nine from 1940, when the University of Chicago left, until 1950, when Michigan State joined.) They beat Cal in the Rose Bowl.
* Louisiana State opened its season the next week. Despite finishing 5th in the SEC, they were 8-3 overall, and beat SEC Champions Tulane, then considered LSU's arch-rivals. So they were invited to the Sugar Bowl, back at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
* Oklahoma opened its season the next week. They went on to win the Big Seven Conference title. (It became the Big Eight when Oklahoma State joined in 1960.) Oklahoma beat LSU in the Sugar Bowl, to finish an undefeated season. They should have been awarded the National Championship, but weren't.
* Rice University opened its season the next week. They went on to win the Southwest Conference title.
* North Carolina opened its season the next week. They went on to win the Southern Conference title. Rice beat them in the Cotton Bowl.
* The service academies, Army and Navy, started their season the next week.
* Notre Dame started its season the next week. They went undefeated. They never accepted a bowl bid between the 1924 and 1969 seasons. Nevertheless, they were awarded the National Championship.
* Among New York City schools, Columbia and City College of New York (CCNY) started their seasons the next week; New York University (NYU) and Brooklyn College started their seasons 2 weeks later, on October 1; and Fordham started their season 3 weeks later, on October 8.
* And the New Jersey schools, Rutgers, Princeton, both started their seasons the next week.
And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to the Manchester area, and played Bolton Wanderers to a draw, 2-2 at Burnden Park in Bolton.
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