A Wild Hare

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A Wild Hare
Merrie Melodies (Bugs Bunny) series

Screen title of A Wild Hare.
Directed by Fred Avery
Produced by Leon Schlesinger
Story by Rich Hogan
Voices by Mel Blanc (uncredited)
Arthur Q. Bryan (uncredited)
Music by Carl Stalling
Animation by Virgil Ross
Robert McKimson (uncredited)
Rod Scribner (uncredited)
Charles McKimson (uncredited)
Backgrounds by John Didrik Johnsen
Studio Leon Schlesinger Productions
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s) July 27, 1940
Color process Technicolor
Running time 8 minutes 15 seconds
Language English

A Wild Hare (re-released as The Wild Hare) is a 1940 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated short film. It was produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, directed by Tex Avery, and written by Rich Hogan. It was originally released on July 27, 1940. A Wild Hare is considered by many film historians to be the first "official" Bugs Bunny cartoon.[1][2] The title is a play on "wild hair", the first of many puns between "hare" and "hair" that would appear in Bugs Bunny titles. The pun is carried further by a bar of I'm Just Wild About Harry playing in the underscore of the opening credits. Various directors at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio had been experimenting with cartoons focused on a hunter pursuing a rabbit since 1939, with varied approaches to the characters of both rabbit and hunter.[3] A Wild Hare is noteworthy as the first true Bugs Bunny cartoon, as well as for settling on the classic voice and appearance of the hunter, Elmer Fudd.[2] Although the animators continued to experiment with Elmer's design for a few more years, his look here proved the basis for his finalized design.[4] The design and character of Bugs Bunny would continue to be refined over the subsequent years, but the general appearance, voice, and personality of the character were established in this cartoon. The animator of this cartoon, Virgil Ross, gives his first-person account of the creation of the character's name and personality in an interview published in Animato! Magazine, #19, copyright 1989 Pixar. [5] Bugs is unnamed in this film, but would be named for the first time in his next short, Elmer's Pet Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones. The opening lines of both characters—"Be vewy, vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits" for Elmer, and "Eh, what's up Doc?" for the rabbit—would become catchphrases throughout their subsequent films.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The first on-screen appearance of Bugs Bunny.

The basic plot of A Wild Hare, which centers on Elmer Fudd's hopeless pursuit of the much smarter Bugs, would serve as a template for many subsequent cartoons. Elmer first walks over to Bugs' hole and puts down a carrot, then running behind a tree. Bugs takes the carrot twice, the second time where Elmer threatens him with his gun. After sticking his gun into the hole, Bugs ties it into several knots, which angers Elmer enough to dig in search for him.

Bugs then pops out of his hole exclaiming "What's up doc?". Elmer shushes Bugs and says says that there's a rabbit down in the hole and he's "twying to catch him". After describing what a rabbit looks like to Bugs, Elmer gets a clue that he's a rabbit ("I think this fewwa is an R-A-B-B-I-T!", one of the few times viewers ever hear Elmer correctly pronounce an R). Bugs then yells in his ear that he's one. Then disappears behind a tree and goads Elmer to come near it. Bugs exclaims "Guess Who." After 4 guesses, Elmer finally guesses that it's him. Bugs then kisses him and dives back into his hole.

Elmer decides now to set a rabbit trap by placing carrots under a box. After the trap goes off, Elmer pulls out a skunk and realizes that he has been tricked by Bugs. Bugs then decides to let him have a free shot at him. After Elmer shoots Bugs, Bugs fakes a death scene and collapses, which leaves Elmer sobbing. Bugs then wakes and kicks Elmer hard in his rear (making him lift in the air and bang his head on a branch). Bugs gives Elmer a cigar and tiptoes away, ballet-style.

Finally, the frustrated Elmer, driven to distraction by the rabbit's antics, walks away sobbing about "wabbits, cawwots, guns", etc. Bugs asides to the audience, "Can ye imagine anyone acting like that? Ya know, I think the poor guy's screwy!" Bugs then begins to play his carrot like a fife, playing the tune The Girl I Left Behind Me, and marches with one stiff leg towards his rabbit hole, as with the fifer in the painting, The Spirit of '76.

[edit] Cast

Credit:

Uncredited crew:

[edit] Acedemy Award Nomination

The short was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. Another contestant was Puss Gets the Boot, directed by William Hanna and produced by Rudolf Ising. Both nominations lost to The Milky Way, another MGM Rudolph Ising production.

[edit] 1944 Blue Ribbon reissue

Blue Ribbon reissue

On August 12, 1944, Warner Bros re-released this cartoon as a Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodie. Many other cartoons were also reissued.

[edit] Changes in the Blue Ribbon

  • In the original version, when Bugs plays "Guess Who" with Elmer, Elmer's second answer was Carole Lombard. In the reissue prints that were released following Lombard's death in a plane crash, Elmer's second answer was redubbed with Barbara Stanwyck. Both names involve letters (L and R) that Elmer has difficulty enunciating.

This and Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt were the only Bugs Bunny cartoons that ended up in the a.a.p. package to be reissued as Blue Ribbons. This is because WB started making theaters pay more to show Bugs Bunny cartoons (excluding reissues) than other WB cartoons. As a result, it would be more than another decade before another Bugs Bunny cartoon was reissued - by that point, the original credits remained on reissues.

[edit] What's up, Doc?

  • Bug's nonchalant carrot-chewing stance, as explained many years later by Chuck Jones, and again by Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett, comes from the movie, It Happened One Night, from a scene where the Clark Gable character is leaning against a fence eating carrots more quickly than he is swallowing (as Bugs would later often do), giving instructions with his mouth full to the Claudette Colbert character, during the hitch-hiking sequence. This scene was so famous at the time that most people immediately got the connection.[4][6]
  • The line, "What's up, Doc?", was added by director Tex Avery for this short. Avery explained later that it was a common expression in Texas where he was from, and he didn't think much of the phrase. But when this short was screened in theaters, the scene of Bugs calmly chewing a carrot, followed by the nonchalant "What's Up, Doc?", went against any 1940s audience's expectation of how a rabbit might react to a hunter and caused complete pandemonium in the audience, bringing down the house in every theater. Because of the overwhelming reaction, Bugs eats a carrot and utters some version of the phrase in almost every one of his cartoons after that, sometimes entirely out of context as compared to this original use.[7]
    • Cartoon Network once ran an all-day Bugs Bunny marathon. In each cartoon, when he said, "What's up, Doc?" a bell would ring and a banner would pop up for a couple of seconds.
    • Working the phrase or its variants into some cartoons could require some invention. In Rhapsody Rabbit, Bugs was onstage alone, playing the piano a mostly mime sketch. He uses the phrase when he has to answer the phone at one point. In Hair-Raising Hare, borrowing a joke from Horse Feathers, he uses it as a gag, speaking to a supposed audience member who was a doctor. In The Old Grey Hare, the octogenarian Bugs asks the octogenarian Elmer, "What's up, Prune-Face?"
    • In the cartoon What's Up Doc?, the phrase was expanded into a song.
    • He usually uses the phrase (or a variant) only once per cartoon. There are a few exceptions to this axiom.
    • Variants of the phrase appear in many cartoons. They range from things as simple as "What's up dogs?" when facing down a canine street gang, to "What's cooking, Lolly?" to his press agent when he was a movie star, and "What's all the hubub (gulps), bub?" In Ali-Baba Bunny, when Daffy Duck buries him in his rabbit hole to keep the treasure for himself, Bugs Bunny says, "What's up, duck?" In Knight-mare Hare, after being introduced to "Sir O of K, Earl of Watercress, Sir Osis of the Liver, Knight of the Garter, and Baron of Wooster-cester-shister-shyster-schuster-shister-sister-shire...sher.", he says, "What's up, duke?"
    • When his antagonist is Yosemite Sam, the short-fused Sam often takes the question literally, firing back with, "I ain't no 'Doc'!" and then telling Bugs (and the audience) who he is.

[edit] Availability

The short occurs (unrestored) in its entirety in two documentaries available as bonus material in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection series. One documentary is What's Up, Doc? A Salute to Bugs Bunny Part 1, which is available as a special feature on Discs 3 and 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, with the original title cards. The other documentary is Bugs Bunny: Superstar Part 1, which is available as a special feature on Discs 1 and 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4 with the Blue Ribbon reissue titles and 'dubbed version' end title, although it has not been refurbished or released independently in that series. The most noticeable effect of this is that the backgrounds appear to be in muted, autumn-like tones (visible in the picture of Elmer and Bugs above), rather than the vibrant springtime colors the backgrounds were painted in (although this is mainly due to the age of the prints). An uncut, restored version appears on the Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection - 15 Winners, 26 Nominees DVD set, but did not surface on the Golden Collection series, despite it being a debut cartoon for a major character; ironically, that character is Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros.' most popular cartoon star.

[edit] Notes

Question book-new.svg
 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)
  1. ^ Barrier, Michael (2003), Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195167290
  2. ^ a b Adamson, Joe (1990). Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-1190-6
  3. ^ Blanc, Mel; Bashe, Philip (1988). That's Not All, Folks!. Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-39089-5 (Softcover), ISBN 0-446-51244-3 (Hardcover)
  4. ^ a b A Wild Hare trivia at the Internet Movie Database.
  5. ^ "Termite Terrace Tenancy: Virgil Ross remembers".
  6. ^ It Happened One Night film review by Tim Dirks, Filmsite.org.
  7. ^ Adamson, Joe (1975). Tex Avery: King of Cartoons, New York: De Capo Press. OCLC 59807115

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Elmer's Candid Camera (as Happy Rabbit)		 Bugs Bunny Cartoons
1940		 Succeeded by
Patient Porky (as Happy Rabbit)
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