Show Biz Bugs
 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
No issues specified. Please specify issues, or remove this template. |
| Show Biz Bugs | |
|---|---|
 Lobby card. | |
| Directed by | Friz Freleng |
| Animation by | Gerry Chiniquy Arthur Davis Virgil Ross |
| Layouts by | Hawley Pratt |
| Backgrounds by | Boris Gorelick |
| Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
Running time | 7:00 |
Show Biz Bugs is a Warner Bros. animated short originally released to theaters on November 2, 1957. It is billed as a Looney Tunes cartoon and stars Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as its main characters. Show Biz Bugs is notable for portraying the modern interpretation of Daffy in a more sympathetic light: In this film, Daffy is a jealous and arrogant competitor to Bugs, but his shabby treatment by the theater management and audience is depicted as being unfairly out of proportion to the genuine talent he possesses.
The basic setting and conflicts of this film were reprised for the linking footage for The Bugs Bunny Show television series.
Summary
Arriving at the theater where he and Bugs are appearing, Daffy is furious to discover that the rabbit's name on the marquee is above his in much larger letters. Rebuffed by the unseen manager's claim that he gives his performers billing "according to drawing power", Daffy is determined to prove that he's the star of the show.
That evening, Bugs and Daffy are performing an on-stage number to Tea for Two. Daffy, tired of Bugs hogging up all the cheering and applause (complete with top star billing) even though Daffy himself is genuinely talented, decides to try numerous numbers on his own in order to impress the audience. After tons of failed attempts, Daffy is willing to risk everything in order to upstage Bugs, including sabotage Bugs' own act, playing the xylophone by sticking TNT in it, which he fails to do. Finally, in order to impress the audience, Daffy performs a deadly stunt, by drinking some gasoline, some nitroglycerin, some gun powder, and some uranium 238, "shake well," and swallowing a lit match, causing him to explode. The audience loves the performance, but Daffy "can only do it once."
Censorship
- On the Fox version of The Merrie Melodies Show, the syndicated version of The Merrie Melodies Show, and the version shown on the now defunct WB, the entire part when Bugs saws Daffy in half, and Daffy jumps off his second half was cut.
- On ABC, [[Cartoon Network {United States)|Cartoon Network]], and the syndicated version of The Merrie Melodies Show, the entire booby-trapped xylophone scene was cut.
- On Cartoon Network and TNT, the entire ending with Daffy's deadly act was cut (while Cartoon Network ended the cartoon with a fake iris-out after Daffy gets sawed in half, TNT ended the cartoon with a fake iris-out after the booby-trapped xylophone blows up on Daffy).[1]
Previous Film References
The xylophone gag was previously used in the Private Snafu short Booby Traps and the Bugs/Yosemite Sam short Ballot Box Bunny, only in both cases the instrument used was a piano. The song used in each case, as in Show Biz Bugs, is Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms.
This final act has been used in an earlier Porky Pig cartoon called Curtain Razor in which a fox does the same act Daffy does attempting to show Porky he is a star, and, much like "Show Biz Bugs", the final act in Curtain Razor has been censored on Cartoon Network to remove him ingesting gasoline (the syndicated version of The Merrie Melodies show also cuts the gasoline-drinking and edits it even further by cutting out the fox swallowing a match).
Availability
- Show Biz Bugs is available (uncensored and uncut) on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, Disc 4.