Pepe Le Pew Valentine's Day Special

Everyone's favorite French skunk will be the focus of a television marathon sure to excite fans of the classic Looney Tunes animation. Certainly an object of desire in his own right, Pepe Le Pew is indeed the Champion of Love and happens to be the undisputed lover of lovers. This Valentine's Day, spend some time with someone you love, and maybe, just maybe, take some time to appreciate those whom devote their entire lives to love, such as the wonderful Pepe.

Cartoon Network's sister network, Boomerang, is a commercial-free channel dedicated to showing classic cartoons around the clock twenty-four hours, seven days a week. This coming Valentine's Day, nationally recognized day of love, Boomerang will show every single Pepe Le Pew cartoon made. Each cartoon will air in chronological order, which will in time be including the Pepe Le Pew 1949 Academy Award-winning short, "For Scent-Imental Reasons."

French accent, Pepe Le Pew, in a 24-hour marathon beginning at 6 a.m. (ET). Looney Tunes' ardently amorous skunk will appear in his first-ever solo tribute on Boomerang, fittingly (or sadly, as the case may be) upon the most romantic day of the year. Although his earnest efforts to win the tender affections of unwitting females never quite succeed, he remains love's greatest champion through his enduring optimism and never-say-die commitment to the pursuit of l'amore. Boomerang will present all 17 Pepe Le Pew animated shorts (including cameo appearances) in chronological order, which will then repeat throughout the day.

"I think viewers of all ages at one time or another have experienced the more common heartache of unrequited love, when fragile affections have been spurned and trampled or, at best, ignored. That's why we decided to give Pepe Le Pew center stage this Valentine's Day-to serve as a beacon of hope to all who've loved and lost, that they too might never give up in their pursuit of romance," Marc Buhaj, vice president of programming and scheduling for Boomerang and Cartoon Network said.

After a small test-run as "Stinky" in the 1945 animated short The Odor-Able Kitty, Pepe Le Pew burst onto movie screens around the world in 1947 (Scent-Imental Over You) when Warner Bros. story-man Michael Maltese created and refined the French skunk into a Looney Tunes superstar. Pepe's unctuous accent (provided by Looney Tunes' master-voice Mel Blanc) and irresistible personality were based on famed French actors of the period-Charles Boyer, Maurice Chevalier and others. In just two short years, he won an Academy Award* for his starring role in For Scent-Imental Reasons, directed by the legendary animator Chuck Jones.

"Pepe was everything I wanted to be romantically. Not only was he quite sure of himself, but it never occurred to him that anything was wrong with him," Jones once said in an interview explaining why he could so easily identify with the character. "I always felt there must be great areas of me that were repugnant to girls, and Pepe was quite the opposite of that."

Pepe remained a popular Warner Bros. entry through 1962, when his final cartoon, "Louvre Come Back to Me," was released to theatres. Pepe returned to the screen briefly in the 1990s, first in the Bugs Bunny 1995 animated parody of the 1942 classic Casablanca entitled Carrotblanca, then in the 1996 live-action/animation hit feature, Space Jam, starring Michael Jordan.