Character Biography
Henery is a tiny, brown chicken hawk with a forelock of feathers. The young bird lives at home with his parents, and speaks with tough-guy bravado. He was played in the first short by Kent Rogers. The role was then assumed by Mel Blanc (and later by Joe Alaskey). Henery has a high-pitched voice with a New York accent (a la Bugs Bunny) and perpetually angry temperament.
In a typical Foghorn/Henery cartoon, Henery strikes out on his own for the first time, eager to capture (and presumably consume) a chicken. Having led a sheltered life, however, he does not know what a chicken looks like, only that chicken hawks eat them. Foghorn presumes that this diminutive, naïve troublemaker is no real threat; however, seeing the potential for annoyance, he points & manipulates 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. In a reversal, the cartoon The Foghorn Leghorn has Foghorn wanting Henery to believe Foghorn is a chicken, where Henery believes Foghorn is merely a "loud-mouthed shnook," 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 must be a real chicken and would therefore knock out and capture both.
Henery Hawk is also a supporting character in the Looney Tunes comic books; in pre-1970s stories, he often starred in features of his own, typically played against Oliver Owl as well as Foghorn.
Henery Hawk made a brief cameo appearance in the bleacher scenes of the 1996 film, Space Jam.
Henery Hawk first appeared in The Looney Tunes Show episode "Fish and Visitors" in the Merrie Melodies segment "Chickenhawk" (sung by Barnyard Dawg) where he tries to eat Foghorn Leghorn while Foghorn tries to break him of his craving. In "Father Figure," Porky Pig becomes the father of Henery Hawk who wants Porky to get him chicken.
In 2011, Henery Hawk appeared in a commercial for GEICO along with Foghorn Leghorn. In the commercial, Foghorn was serving as a reader for a "book on tape" version of the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities when Henery—sick and tired of Foghorn's ad-libbing—takes a club and hits Foghorn with it off-camera.
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