Henery Hawk
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| Henery Hawk | |
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| First appearance | The Squawkin' Hawk |
| Voiced by | Mel Blanc, Joe Alaskey (current) |
Henery Hawk (sometimes misspelled Henry) is a cartoon character from the American Looney Tunes series, who appeared in twelve cartoons. His first appearance was The Squawkin' Hawk, directed by Chuck Jones and produced by Leon Schlesinger. Henery's next appearance was Walky Talky Hawky which also featured Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dawg, directed by Robert McKimson. Henery's last appearance was Strangled Eggs. Though Henery has become one of the primary characters, like the Tasmanian Devil he did not appear in a lot of cartoons. In fact, Henery actually was more than twice as prolific as Taz: in terms of cartoons, the Devil only appeared in five.
Henery is a tiny, brown chicken hawk with a forelock of feathers. He's very small, even compared to other chicken hawks; his father is several times taller than Henery. From his size, and his eternal confusion as to what a chicken actually looks like, we can assume that he is meant to be very young, despite his boisterous gangster-style voice and attitude. He was played in the first short by Kent Rogers. The role was then assumed by Mel Blanc (and later by Joe Alaskey), with a different voice that sounds like a tough-guy version of Tweety Bird, minus speech impediment. He has a high-pitched voice and nigh-permanently angry temperament.
Henery's personality is that of a blustery loud-mouth with an oddball accent, which makes him a somewhat odd foil for Foghorn. (Many of the more "classic" protagonist/antagonist pairs feature characters that have opposing personalities, if not diametrically opposite ones.) In the typical Foghorn/Henery cartoon, Henery has struck out on his own for the first time, eager to capture (and presumably consume) a chicken. Having led a rather sheltered life, however, he doesn't know what a chicken looks like, only that chicken hawks eat them. Foghorn presumes that this diminutive, naïve troublemaker is no real threat to anyone; however, seeing the potential for annoyance, he points Henery in the direction of Barnyard Dawg. The remainder of the cartoon is usually consumed by Dawg and Leghorn alternately assuring Henery that the other is a chicken and encouraging him to attack the "chicken" mercilessly. (There was one cartoon, however, in which Foghorn actually wants Henery to believe he's a chicken: The Foghorn Leghorn, where Henery believes Foghorn merely to be a "loud-mouthed schnook," supposedly a separate kind of creature. Later, when Barnyard Dawg calls Foghorn a "good-for-nothing chicken," Henery finally wises up.)
Many cartoons ended with Henery capturing one (or both!) of his tormentors, pragmatically shrugging his shoulders over whether his prey may or may not be an actual fowl. Typically, he would decide that one of them had to be a real chicken and would therefore knock out and capture both. This demonstrates the fact that Henery is a very real threat to Foghorn; a threat Foghorn misses, unable to see past Henery's youthful age and small size. Henery was told by his father in The Foghorn Leghorn that chickens were big monsters, lived in caves, and could fight like demons; but in truth Henery seems well able to hold his own against them.
Henery Hawk is also a supporting character in the Looney Tunes comic books; in earlier years (pre-1970s), he often starred in stories of his own, typically played against Oliver Owl as well as Foghorn.
