How was Yosemite Sam born: A chat with his creator Michael Maltese

-CONTAINS A SOURCE OF QUOTATION-

"The only two things a pirate'll run fer is money and public office," says Sam in Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island.

In a move to counteract the insipidity of Elmer Fudd, to find a character explosive enough to engage in combat with the unfazable rabbit, Michael Maltese, Friz Freleng, and Hawley Pratt designed Yosemite Sam with an eye to making him as SMALL a character with as BIG a voice as one could imagine, all noise and a yard high.

Maltese remembered, "I was going to call him Texas Tiny... Wyoming Willie... Denver Dan... We were deliberately going for a location to make it Western. So I called him 'Yosemite Sam'. I had never been to Yosemite, but 'Yosemite Sam' sounded right. He could almost steal the picture from Bugs. His temper was larger than he was"



(This passage is taken from the book "Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare" by Joe Adamson, 1990. pg:108)