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In 1938, Chuck Jones assumed the position of director at the Warner Brothers studio and began making color Merrie Melodies. During this time he created several new characters such as the "Two Curious Puppies" and "Sniffles the Mouse". The cartoons were beautifully animated, but they lacked the great comedy found in other Warner brothers cartoons at the time. The often featured small or innocent characters trying to deal with a frightening, intimidating, or frustrating world. The cartoons do have their moments of comedy, but they are usually along the lines of disneyesque. This all changed in 1942 when Jones opened his eyes and made his first truly funny cartoon, "The Draft Horse" about a horse who wants to join the armed forces. The cartoons that followed are wildly different than those before them, Jones began experimenting with characters, animation, and how backgrounds can enhance the emotion in a cartoon. In 1943 one of these cartoons introduced the world to Jones's first consistently funny characters, Hubie and Bertie, This cartoon was entitled "The Aristo-cat" and has wonderful character animation and revolutionary background stylings.
Hubie, the gray mouse, was the brains of the operation and the one who thought up all the schemes. He is very persuasive, and can talk other characters into almost anything, but he usually needs the help of Bertie to pull it off. Bertie, the buck toothed brown mouse, was the sillier, more playful mouse who was often times tickled by Hubie's ideas. Bertie was also a sort of henchmen for Hubie, and would take care of the visual aspects of his plans. Hubie often gets frustrated with Bertie's silliness, and he would correct such behavior with multiple slaps to the head. The duo's distinct voices were mainly provided by Mel Blanc (Hubie) and Stan Freberg (Bertie), though their first two appearances use the voices of Michael Maltese, Tedd Pierce, and Dick Nelson.
One distinct thing about the two characters would be that they never really changed or "evolved", for nearly a decade they retained the same personality traits and the same appearance (though their colors were switched around for a short time). Chuck Jones obviously liked the way the two mice looked, he used the same Hubie and Bertie like mice for several cartoons whenever a stock mouse was needed. The consistency in character and style of the cartoons could be due to Michael Maltese writing/cowriting all but one, "The Aristo-cat".
Most of the cartoons Hubie and Bertie appear in have the two tormenting a neurotic cat, who obviously suffers from some sort of mental illness ("The Hypo-chondri-cat"), has no clue as to what a mouse looks like ("The Aristo-cat"), what animal they happen to be ("Roughly Squeaking"), or what what the hooey is going on around them ("Mouse Wreckers"). Jones seemed to use the duo for the purpose of playing mind games on others and neither mouse seemed to care what happened to the cat, just as long as they got what they wanted. Jones seemed to like injecting psychology into his cartoons, themes involving mind games, hate, jealousy, and egotism are somewhat common in Jones's cartoons of the 1940s, if not most of them in general. Several of the cartoon feature very clever sequences that deal with panic (The Aristo-cat), pain ("Mouse Wreckers"), and fears ("The Hypo-condri-cat"). The unfortunate cats, dogs, robots, or birds who encounter Hubie and Bertie never seem to come out of the experience with their sanity.
After six Hubie and Bertie cartoons were made, Chuck Jones retired the characters for some unknown reason. Their last starring role was in 1951's "Cheese Chasers". My belief is that Jones just became tired or bored with the characters and decided to turn his attention towards his new and more popular stars, Roadrunner, Coyote and Pepe Le Pew. He also put more focus on Claude Cat, Marc Anthony the dog, and Pussyfoot. It really is a shame that Hubie and Bertie did not star in more cartoons, I personally would have loved to see a few more.
Check out Matthew Hunter's Unofficial Looney Tunes Page for some information about Claude Cat and also visit Thad Komorowski's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Page for another new Hubie and Bertie Page!