Bugs Bunny

Bugs Bunny is a fictional rabbit appearing in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, and is one of the most recognizable characters, real or imaginary, in the world. According to his biography, he was "born" in 1940 in Brooklyn, New York and the product of many fathers: Ben "Bugs" Hardaway (who created a prototypical version of the character in 1938), Bob Clampett, Tex Avery (who developed Bugs' definitive personality in 1940), Robert McKimson (created the definitive Bugs Bunny character design), Chuck Jones, and Friz Freleng. According to Mel Blanc, his voice actor, his accent is an equal blend of someone from the Bronx and someone from Brooklyn.

History

A suggested early influence

A number of animation historians believe Bugs to have been influenced by an earlier Disney character called Max Hare. Max, designed by Charlie Thorsen, first appeared in the Silly Symphony The Tortoise and the Hare, directed by Wilfred Jackson. The story was based on a fable by Aesop and cast Max against Toby Tortoise, and won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film for 1934. Max also appeared in the sequel Toby Tortoise Returns and the Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey's Polo Team.

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The only solid connection between Max and Bugs however is Charlie Thorsen. He was also responsible for the redesign of Bugs from a white to a gray rabbit for his third appearance Hare-um Scare-um (see below), thus the similarity in design.

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Proto-typical rabbits

Bugs Bunny first appeared in the cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt, released on April 30, 1938. The short was co-directed by Cal Dalton and Ben Hardaway whose nickname was "Bugs". The cartoon had an almost identical theme to a 1937 cartoon, Porky's Duck Hunt, directed by Tex Avery and introducing Daffy Duck. Following the general plot of this earlier film, the short cast Porky Pig as a hunter against an equally nutty prey, who was more interested in driving his hunter insane than running away. But instead of a black duck, his current prey was a tiny, white rabbit. The rabbit introduces himself with the expression "Jiggers, fellers," and Mel Blanc gave the rabbit a voice and laugh that he would later use to voice Woody Woodpecker. In this cartoon, he also quoted Groucho Marx for the first time (from the movie Duck Soup): "Of course, you know, this means war!"

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His second appearance was in 1939's Prest-O Change-O, directed by Chuck Jones, where he serves as the pet rabbit of Sham-Fu the Magician, an unseen character. When two dogs enter the house of his absent master while seeking refuge from a storm, the rabbit starts harassing them, but is ultimately bested by the bigger of the two dogs.

Related Topics:
1939 - Prest-O Change-O - Unseen character

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His third appearance was in another 1939 cartoon, Hare-um Scare-um, directed by Dalton and Hardaway. Gil Turner, the animator for this short, was the first to give a name to the character. He had written "Bugs' Bunny" on his model sheet, meaning he considered the character to be Hardaway's. This short was also the first where Bugs was depicted as a gray bunny instead of a white one; the redesign having been done by Charlie Thorsen (see above). The short is notable as featuring Bugs' first singing role and also the first time where he dresses in drag to seduce his antagonist. Following this short he was given the name "Bugs" by the Termite Terrace animators in honor of his creator, Ben "Bugs" Hardaway. "Bugs" or "Bugsy" as a name also fit the Bunny's early characterization, as it was popular vernacular for "crazy".

Related Topics:
Hare-um Scare-um - Gil Turner - Charlie Thorsen - Drag - Termite Terrace

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His fourth appearance was in the 1940 short Elmer's Candid Camera by Chuck Jones. There, both Bugs and Elmer Fudd were redesigned to the appearances that would become familiar to audiences. It was also the first meeting of the two characters.

Related Topics:
1940 - Elmer's Candid Camera - Chuck Jones - Elmer Fudd

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Bugs emerges

Bugs' true personality would then emerge in Tex Avery's A Wild Hare, 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 is considered the first fully developed appearance of the character. Animation historian Joe Adamson counts A Wild Hare as the first Bugs Bunny short, with the previous shorts being different one-shot bunnies bearing only coincidental resemblance to Bugs.

Related Topics:
A Wild Hare - July 27 - 1940 - Rabbit - Joe Adamson

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Bugs then made a cameo in Robert Clampett's Patient Porky, first released on September 14, 1940 to announce the birth of 260 rabbits. His seventh appearance finally introduced the audience to the name Bugs Bunny, which up till then was only used among the Termite Terrace employees. It was Chuck Jones' Elmer's Pet Rabbit, released in January 1941. It was also the first short where he got top billing. 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.

Related Topics:
Robert Clampett - Patient Porky - September 14 - 1940 - Elmer's Pet Rabbit - January - 1941 - World War II

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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 Blackfaceesque stereotype of a Black man as Bugs' antagonist; The Heckling Hare, the final Bugs short Avery worked on before defecting to MGM; and Wabbit Twouble, the first Bugs short directed by Robert Clampett. Wabbit Twouble was also the first of four 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.

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Popularity during World War II

By 1942, Bugs had become the star of the Merrie Melodies series, which had originally been intended only for one-shot shorts. Among Bugs' 1942 shorts included Friz Freleng's The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, Robert Clampett's The Wacky Wabbit,and Clampett's Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (which introduced Beaky Buzzard). Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid also marks a slight redesign of Bugs, making less prominent his front teeth and making his head look rounder. The man responsible for this redesign was Robert McKimson at the time working as an animator under Robert Clampett. The redesign at first was only used in the shorts created by Clampett's production team but in time it would be adopted by the other directors and their units as well.

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Other 1942 Bugs shorts included Chuck Jones' Hold the Lion, Please, Freleng's Fresh Hare and The Hare-Brained Hypnotist (which restored Elmer Fudd to his previous size), and Jones' Case of the Missing Hare. He also made cameo appearances in Tex Avery's final Warner Bros. short Crazy Cruise, and starred in the two-minute United States war bonds commercial film Any Bonds Today.

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Bugs Bunny was popular during the World War II years because of his bombastic attitude, and began receiving special star billing in his cartoons by 1943. Like Disney and Famous Studios had been doing, Warners put Bugs in opposition to the time's biggest enemies: Adolf Hitler, Herman Goering, and the Japanese. The 1944 short Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, features Bugs at odds with a group of Japanese soldiers. This cartoon has since been pulled from distribution due to its extreme stereotypes.

Related Topics:
World War II - 1943 - Famous Studios - Adolf Hitler - Herman Goering - Japanese - 1944 - Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips

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Among his most notable civilian shorts during this period are Bob Clampett's Tortoise Wins by a Hare (the sequel to Tortoise Beats Hare from 1941), A Corny Concerto, Falling Hare, and What's Cookin' Doc?; and Chuck Jones' Superman parody Super-Rabbit, and Friz Freleng's Little Red Riding Rabbit. The 1944 short Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears introduced Chuck Jones' The Three Bears characters.

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After the war

Since then, Bugs has appeared in numerous cartoon shorts in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, making his last appearance in the theatrical cartoons in 1964. Considered an ideal actor, he was directed by Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones and starred in feature films, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which featured the first-ever meeting between Bugs and his box-office rival Mickey Mouse), Space Jam (which co-starred Michael Jordan), and the 2003 movie .

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The Bugs Bunny short Knighty Knight Bugs (1958), in which a medieval Bugs Bunny traded blows with Yosemite Sam and his fire-breathing dragon, won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons of 1958. Three of Chuck Jones' Bugs Bunny shorts--Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck, Rabbit, Duck! comprise what is often referred to as the "Duck Season/Rabbit Season" trilogy, and are considered among the director's best works. Jones' 1957 classic, What's Opera, Doc? (1957), features Bugs and Elmer parodying Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, and has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was the first cartoon short to have achieved this honor. It is also remembered for Elmer's unique take on "Ride of the Valkyries:" "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit...!"

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In the fall of 1960, The Bugs Bunny Show, a television program which packaged many of the post-1948 Warners shorts with newly animated wraparounds, debuted on ABC. The show was originally aired in prime-time, and after two seasons it was moved to reruns on Saturday mornings. The Bugs Bunny Show changed formats frequently, but it remained on network television for 40 full years.

Related Topics:
1960 - The Bugs Bunny Show - Television - 1948 - ABC - Saturday

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When Mel Blanc died in 1989, Joe Alaskey and Billy West became the new "voices" to Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes, taking turns doing the voices at various times.

Related Topics:
1989 - Joe Alaskey - Billy West

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Bugs has also made appearances in animated holiday specials including 1980's Bugs Bunny Busting Out All Over which featured the first new Bugs Bunny cartoons in 16 years with "Portrait Of The Artist As a Young Bunny", which features a flashback of Bugs as a child thwarting a young Elmer Fudd, and "Spaced Out Bunny", with Bugs being kidnapped by Marvin the Martian to be a playmate for Hugo the Abominable Snowman. Also, there have been various compilation films made by Warner Bros., including Bugs Bunny, Superstar, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island, Bugs Bunny's Third Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters. He also made guest appearances in episodes of the 1990s television program Tiny Toon Adventures as the principal of Acme Looniversity and the mentor of Babs and Buster Bunny.

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Like Mickey Mouse for the Walt Disney Company, Bugs has served as the mascot for Warner Bros. Studios and its various divisions.

Related Topics:
Mickey Mouse - The Walt Disney Company - Mascot - Warner Bros. Studios

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Bugs made an appearance in the 1990 drug prevention video Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.

Related Topics:
1990 - Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue

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In 1997, Bugs appeared on a U.S. postage stamp. The stamp is number seven on the list of the ten most popular U.S. stamps, as calculated by the number of stamps purchased but not used. A younger version of Bugs is the main character of Baby Looney Tunes, which debuted on Cartoon Network in 2002.

Related Topics:
1997 - U.S. postage stamp - Baby Looney Tunes - Cartoon Network - 2002

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Also, Bugs has appeared in numerous video games, including Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle, ', Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time, and its sequel, Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters.

Related Topics:
Video games - Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle

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Greatest cartoon character

In 2002, TV Guide compiled a list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time as part of the magazine's 50th anniversary. Bugs Bunny was given the honor of number 1. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/30/cartoon.characters http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/30/cartoon.characters.list/index.html

Related Topics:
2002 - TV Guide

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In a CNN broadcast on July 31, 2002, a TV Guide editor talked about how they went about creating the list. The editor also talked about Bugs being named the greatest toon character. As the editor explained: "his stock...has never gone down...Bugs is the best example...of the smart-alec American comic. He not only is a great cartoon character, he's a great comedian. He was written well. He was drawn beautifully. He has thrilled and made many generations laugh. He is tops." http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0207/31/lt.20.html

Related Topics:
CNN - July 31 - 2002

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Ace Bunny

Warner Bros and the developers of the 2005 animated series Loonatics Unleashed developed the character of Ace Bunny as a a modernized, superhero successor to Bugs Bunny in the series. The character was originally going to be called Buzz Bunny but this was changed due to a pre-existing trademark. The design of Ace Bunny was modified and made less menacing than in his earlier preproduction model appearance, partially in response to an Internet petition started by a 11 year old Bugs Bunny fan.

Related Topics:
2005 - Loonatics Unleashed

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◄ Bugs Bunny: Introduction

Bugs Bunny: Further reading ►

~ Table of Content ~

►	Introduction
►	History
►	Further reading
►	See also
►	External links

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