Looney Tunes | Foghorn Leghorn on the Farm | Classic Cartoon Compilation

Origin
The character of Foghorn Leghorn was directly inspired by the popular character of Senator Claghorn, a blustery Southern politician played by Kenny Delmar who was a regular character on The Fred Allen Show, a popular radio show of the 1940s. The rooster adopted many of Claghorn's catchphrases, such as "That's a joke, ah say, that's a joke, son." Delmar had based the character of Claghorn upon a Texas rancher who was fond of saying this.[2]

A leghorn is a breed of chicken, and foghorn describes the character's loud, overbearing voice. At its most raucous, it sounds similar to that of another Blanc voice: Yosemite Sam (an almost exclusive Friz Freleng character). Both parts of the name suggest the association with "Senator Claghorn." According to Leonard Maltin, the character's voice was also patterned after a hard-of-hearing West Coast-only radio character from the 1930s, known simply as The Sheriff, on a radio program called Blue Monday Jamboree.[3] The voice has similarities to that of another Mel Blanc voice, Yosemite Sam, a strictly Friz Freleng character, and even more similar to a proto-Sam character in "Stage Door Cartoon".

Foghorn debuted on August 31, 1946 in the Henery Hawk short Walky Talky Hawky.