Pepé Le Pew voice for the character closely resembles the one he used for "Professor Le Blanc", the harried violin instructor on "The Jack Benny Program". Pepé Le Pew's cartoons were dubbed in French; in the French version ("Pépé le putois"), Pepé speaks with a heavy Italian accent. His voice is a parody of Yves Montand. Chuck Jones first introduced the character (originally named Stinky) in the 1945 short "Odor-able Kitty" (see "Variations"), in which he was revealed to be a married American skunk named Henry who had been faking his French accent. For the remaining cartoons Jones directed, Pepé retained his accent,
What a Cartoon! company to pay for the whole program. In addition to the eventual spin-offs, the "What a Cartoon!" short "Larry and Steve" by Seth MacFarlane featured prototypes of characters that would later go on to become MacFarlane's massively successful "Family Guy". The "What a Cartoon!" project and its assorted spin-offs brought Cartoon Network more commercial and critical success, and the network became an animation industry leader as the 1990s drew to a close. In 2001, coinciding with the death of William Hanna, Hanna-Barbera Productions merged with Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network opened its own production arm, Cartoon Network Studios, in