Oblivious to his malodorous scent, Pepe Le Pew was a French skunk created at Warner Brothers’ Studios in 1945. Quite naturally, he strolled around the city of Paris in the springtime, looking for adventures of romance.
Typically, Pepe is chasing what he thought was a beautiful female skunk when, in reality, she was a black cat with an accidental white stripe painted down her back. In the various episodes, the stripe was situational, caused by crawling under a freshly painted fence or other unlikely happenstances. This enchanting feline was retroactively named Penelope Pussycat.
He was very aggressive, and he stunk, making it difficult to know exactly why his chosen “mates” ran as fast as they could. Penelope had much practice in making her escape.
Pepe’s accent sounded like Charles Boyer or Maurice Chevalier, making him romantic enough that some of his “girlfriends” tried to eliminate his odor. In one case Penelope, his most frequent attraction, locked him up in a perfume shop trying to alter the aroma.
A few even took up odors of their own, for example, one tried limburger cheese. Pepe ran from her, proving he could give, but was not interested in receiving.
Toonopedia has an interesting and informative website on Pepe Le Pew.
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