Bugs Bunny
July 7th, 2008
According to his biography, he was "born" in 1940 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York and the product of many creators: Ben "Bugs" Hardaway (who created a prototypical version of Bugs Bunny known around Termite Terrace as Bugs' Bunny) Bob Clampett, Tex Avery (who directed A Wild Hare, considered Bugs' formal film debut), Robert McKimson (who created the definitive Bugs Bunny character design), Chuck Jones, and Friz Freleng.
According to Mel Blanc, the character's original voice actor, Bugs Bunny's accent is a Flatbush accent, an equal blend of the Bronx and Brooklyn dialects. However, Tex Avery claims that he asked Blanc to give the character not a New York accent per se, but a voice like that of actor Frank McHugh, who frequently appeared in supporting roles in the 1930s and whose voice might be described as New York Irish. Bugs Bunny is one of the most popular and recognizable cartoon characters in the world. In 2002, he was named by TV Guide as the greatest cartoon character of all time.
The prototype Bugs Bunny first appeared in the cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt, released on April 30, 1938. Co-directed by Cal Dalton and Ben Hardaway, this short had an almost identical theme to the 1937 cartoon, Porky's Duck Hunt (directed by Tex Avery), which had introduced Daffy Duck. Following the general plot of its earlier prototype, this short again cast Porky Pig the hunter athwart another nutty prey less interested in escape than in driving his hunter insane. Replacing the black duck was a tiny white rabbit. This character introduces himself with the odd expression "Jiggers, fellers," and Mel Blanc gave the rabbit nearly the voice and laugh that he would later use for Woody Woodpecker. This cartoon also features the famous Groucho Marx line that Bugs would use many times: "Of course, you know this means war!"
Bugs' second appearance came in 1939's Prest-O Change-O, directed by Chuck Jones, where he is the pet rabbit of unseen character Sham-Fu the Magician. Two dogs, fleeing the local dogcatcher, enter his absent master's house. The rabbit harasses them, but is ultimately bested by the bigger of the two dogs.
His third appearance was in another 1939 cartoon, Hare-um Scare-um, directed by Dalton and Hardaway. This short, the first where he was depicted as a gray bunny instead of a white one, is also notable both for the rabbit's first singing role, and his first time dressed in drag to seduce his antagonist. Charlie Thorson, lead animator on the short, was the first to give a name to the character. He had written "Bugs' Bunny" on the model sheet that he drew for Hardaway, implying that he considered the rabbit model sheet to be Hardaway's property. In promotional material for the short (such as a surviving 1939 presskit), the name on the model sheet was altered to become the rabbit's own name: "Bugs" Bunny (quotation marks only used at the very beginning), evidently named in honor of "Bugs" Hardaway.
In Jones' Elmer's Candid Camera the rabbit first encounters Elmer Fudd. In Robert Clampett's 1940 Patient Porky, a similar rabbit appears to trick the audience into thinking that 750 rabbits have been born (however the design is from the cartoon A Wild Hare).
In his later years Mel Blanc stated that a proposed name was "Happy Rabbit", but there is no evidence that this name was ever used by anybody else.
Bugs Bunny's first official appearance was in A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery and released on July 27,1940. It was in this cartoon that he first emerged from his rabbit hole to ask Elmer Fudd, now a hunter, "What's up, Doc?" It was also the first meeting of the two characters in their fully developed forms. It is considered the first fully developed appearance of the character. Animation historian Joe Adamson counts A Wild Hare as the first "official" Bugs Bunny short. It is also the first cartoon where Mel Blanc uses the version of Bugs' voice that would become the standard. Bugs' second appearance in Chuck Jones' Elmer's Pet Rabbit finally introduced the audience to the name Bugs Bunny, which up till then was only used among the Termite Terrace employees. However, the rabbit here is absolutely identical to the one in Jones' earlier Elmer's Candid Camera, both visually and vocally. It was also the first short where he received billing under his now-famous name, but the card, "with Bugs Bunny," was just slapped on the end of the completed short's opening titles when A Wild Hare proved an unexpected success. He would soon become the most prominent of the Looney Tunes characters as his calm, flippant insouciance endeared him to American audiences during and after World War II.
Bugs would appear in five more shorts during 1941: Tortoise Beats Hare, directed by Tex Avery and featuring the first appearance of Cecil Turtle; Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt, the first Bugs Bunny short to be directed by Friz Freleng; All This and Rabbit Stew, directed by Avery and featuring a young African-American hunter as Bugs' antagonist; The Heckling Hare, the final Bugs short Avery worked on before being fired and leaving for MGM; and Wabbit Twouble, the first Bugs short directed by Robert Clampett. Wabbit Twouble was also the first of five Bugs shorts to feature a chubbier remodel of Elmer Fudd, a short-lived attempt to have Fudd more closely resemble his voice actor, comedian Arthur Q. Bryan.
The name "Bugs" or "Bugsy" as an old-fashioned nickname means "crazy" (or "loopy"). Several famous people from the first half of the twentieth century had that nickname. It is now out of fashion as a nickname, but survives in 1950s-1960s expressions like "you're bugging me", as in "you're driving me crazy".
A common gag in some of the shorts is the rabbit's ability to "multiply". (In this case, the mathematical term, "multiplication")
The animators throughout Bugs' history have treated the terms rabbit and hare as synonymous. Taxonomically they are not synonymous, being somewhat similar but observably different types of lagomorphs. Hares have much longer ears than do rabbits, so Bugs might seem to be of the hare family, and many more of the cartoon titles include the word "hare" rather than "rabbit". It is probably easier to make a pun from "hare" than from "rabbit". Within the cartoons, although the term "hare" comes up sometimes (for example, Bugs drinking "hare tonic" to "stop falling hare"), Bugs as well as his antagonists most often refer to the bunny as a "rabbit". The word "bunny" is of no help in answering this question, as it is also a synonym for either hares or rabbits.
Looney Tunes
June 7th, 2008
The name Looney Tunes is a variation on Silly Symphonies, the name of Walt Disney's concurrent series of music-based cartoon shorts. Looney Tunes originally showcased Warner-owned musical compositions through the adventures of cartoon characters such as Bosko and Buddy. Later Looney Tunes shorts featured popular characters such as Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Tweety, Marvin the Martian, Taz, Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzalez, and many others.
Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Looney Tunes were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944, and the newly renamed Warner Bros. Cartoons continued production until 1963. Looney Tunes were outsourced to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises from 1964 to 1967, and Warner Bros. Cartoons re-assumed production for the series' final two years. From 1942 to 1969, Looney Tunes was the most popular cartoon series in theaters.
In the beginning, both Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies drew their storylines from Warner's vast music library. However, eventually the two series distinguished themselves by Looney Tunes becoming the umbrella for the studio's various recurring characters, while Merrie Melodies continued with the use of one-shot characters. Also, from 1934 to 1943 Merrie Melodies were produced in color and Looney Tunes in black and white; after 1943, however, both series were produced in color; the only real difference between the two series was in the variation between the opening theme music and titles. Both series also made use of the various Warner Bros. cartoon characters. By 1937, the theme music for Looney Tunes was "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin; the theme music for Merrie Melodies was an adaptation of "Merrily We Roll Along" by Charles Tobias, Murray Mencher and Eddie Cantor.
In 1930, Warner Bros. became interested in developing a series of musical animated shorts in order to promote their music. They had recently acquired the ownership of Brunswick Records along with four music publishers for US $28 million. Consequently, they were eager to start promoting this material in order to cash in on the sales of sheet music and phonograph records. Warners made a deal with Leon Schlesinger to produce cartoons for Warner Bros. Schlesinger hired Rudolph Ising and Hugh Harman to produce their first series of cartoons. Bosko was Looney Tunes first major star, debuting in the short Sinkin' in the Bathtub in 1930. When Harman and Ising left the Warner Bros. in 1933 over a budget dispute with Schlesinger, they took with them all the rights of the characters and cartoons which they had created. Schlesinger had to negotiate with them in order to keep the rights to the name Looney Tunes as well as for the right to use the slogan That's All Folks! at the end of the cartoons.
A bland white-washed version of Bosko called Buddy became the star of the Looney Tunes series for the next few years. With the animators working in the Termite Terrace studio, they debuted of the first truly major Looney Tunes star, Porky Pig, who was introduced in 1935 along with Beans the Cat in the Merrie Melodie cartoon I Haven't Got a Hat directed by Friz Freleng. Beans was the star of the next Porky/Beans cartoon Golddiggers of '49, but it was Porky who emerged as the star instead of Beans. This was followed by the debuts of other memorable Looney Tunes stars such as Daffy Duck (in 1937) and the most famous of the Looney Tunes cast, Bugs Bunny (in 1940). Bugs appeared mostly in the color Merrie Melodies and formally joined the Looney Tunes crew with the release of Buckaroo Bugs. Schlesinger began to phase in the production of color Looney Tunes with the 1942 cartoon The Hep Cat. The final black-and-white Looney Tune was Puss n' Booty in 1943. The inspiration for the changeover was Warners' decision to re-release only the color cartoons in the Blue Ribbon Classics series of Merrie Melodies. Bugs Bunny made a cameo appearance in 1942 in the Avery/Clampett cartoon Crazy Cruise and also at the end of the Frank Tashlin 1943 cartoon Porky Pig's Feat. Schlesinger sold his interest in the cartoon studio in 1944 to Warner Bros.
In 1967, the Warner Bros.-Seven Arts company reissued all the black-and-white Looney Tunes in a primitive colorization process. The original prints were sent to South Korea where artists re-traced each cartoon frame-by-frame in color.
These cartoons continued to be seen over the decades, and even some of the hand-colored cartoons ended up on low-budget bargain-bin home video labels (the hand-colored versions were copyrighted, but it has been suggested they too have fallen into the public domain).
Then, in 1990, 1992 and 1995, Warner Bros. released the classic black-and-white shorts again in color, but this time using a digital colorization process rather than re-coloring them frame-by-frame as in 1967. The digital color versions have aired on the Turner networks (Cartoon Network and Boomerang except on the programming block Late Night Black And White). Incidentally, the 1967 hand-drawn color versions continued to be seen on the Turner networks until Looney Tunes were pulled from the airwaves in 2007.
