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Bugs Bunny is a fictional street-smart
anthropomorphic gray rabbit who appears in the Looney Tunes and Merrie
Melodies series of animated films produced by Warner Bros., 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 called Happy Rabbit in 1938's
"Porky's Hare Hunt"), 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 original voice actor, his accent is an equal blend of
someone from the Bronx and someone from Brooklyn.
****
First appearance A Wild Hare 1940
Created by Tex Avery
Voiced by Mel Blanc (1940 until his death
in 1989)
Jeff Bergman
Dee Baker (Tiny Toon Adventures)
Billy West (Space Jam)
Joe Alaskey (Looney Tunes: Back in Action)
Background Information
Aliases "The Wabbit"
Rivals Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the
Martian, Tasmanian Devil, Daffy Duck, Witch Hazel, Rocky and Mugsy, Wile
E. Coyote, Count Blood Count, Cecil Turtle, Pete Puma, The Crusher,
Giovanni Jones', Porky Pig.
Catchphrases "Eh... what's up, doc?"
"Of course you realize, this means war."
"I knew I should have taken that left toin
at Albuqoique."
"Ain't I a stinker?"
"What a maroon."
"He don't know me vewy well, do he?"
"What's cookin doc?"
****
Personality
He is noted for his catchphrase of "Eh,
(carrot chewing sounds) ... what's up, doc?" and his feuds with Elmer
Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian, Daffy Duck, Witch Hazel, Rocky
and Mugsy, Wile E. Coyote and a whole score of others. Almost invariably
Bugs comes out the winner in these conflicts because that is in his
nature. This is especially obvious in films directed by Chuck Jones, who
liked to pit "winners" against "losers". Worrying that audiences would
lose sympathy for an aggressor who always won, Jones found the perfect
way to make Bugs sympathetic in the films by having the antagonist
repeatedly bully, cheat or threaten Bugs in some way. Thus offended,
Bugs would often drawl "Of course you realize, 'DIS means war!" (a line
which Jones noted was taken from Groucho Marx) and the audience gives
Bugs silent permission to inflict his havoc, having earned his right to
retaliate and/or defend himself. Other directors like Friz Freleng had
Bugs go out of his way to help others in trouble, again creating an
acceptable circumstance for his mischief. When Bugs meets other
characters who are also "winners", however, like Cecil the Turtle in
Tortoise Beats Hare, or, in World War II, the Gremlin of Falling Hare,
his record is rather dismal; his overconfidence tends to work against
him.
Bugs Bunny has some similarities to figures
from mythology and folklore, such as Br'er Rabbit or Anansi, and might
be seen as sort of modern trickster. From this perspective, his repeated
deceptive cross-dressing as a female may make sense, as it is clearly
intended to dupe his hapless victims into indiscretions or conduct that
would not otherwise occur. [1]
"Bugs" or "Bugsy" as a nickname means
"crazy".
A suggested early influence
A number of animation historians believe
Bugs Bunny to have been influenced by an earlier Disney character called
Max Hare. Max, designed by Charlie Thorson, 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.
The only solid connection between Max and
Bugs however is Charlie Thorson. He was also responsible for the
redesign of Bugs from a white to a gray rabbit for his third appearance
in Hare-um Scare-um (see below); thus the similarity in design.
Happy Rabbit
Happy Rabbit 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. 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 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!"
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 the local dog catcher,
the rabbit starts harassing 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. 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 he was depicted as a gray bunny instead of a white one; the
redesign having been done by Charlie Thorson (see above). The short is
notable as featuring Bugs' first singing role and also the first time 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".
His fourth appearance was in the 1940 short
Elmer's Candid Camera by Chuck Jones. There, both Happy Rabbit and Elmer
Fudd were redesigned to the appearances that are similar to those that
would become familiar to audiences. It was also the first meeting of the
two characters. In Robert Clampett's Patient Porky (September 14, 1940),
Happy Rabbit appears one more time in a cameo to announce the birth of
260 rabbits (however the design is from the cartoon Hare-um Scare-um).
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.
Bugs' second appearance in Chuck Jones'
Elmer's Pet Rabbit (January 4, 1941) finally introduced the audience to
the name Bugs Bunny, which up till then was only used among the Termite
Terrace employees. It was also the first short where he received 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.
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.
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 characters in 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.
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.
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.
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 (a spoof of
Disney's Fantasia), 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.
In the cartoon Super-Rabbit, Bugs was seen
in the end wearing a USMC dress uniform. As a result, the United States
Marine Corps gave Bugs an honorary Marine commission.
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 with False Hare.
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 Looney Tunes: Back in
Action.
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?, 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...!"
Bugs appeared in the 1957 short Show Biz
Bugs with Daffy Duck, and it features a controversial finish in which
Daffy Duck did a dangerous magicial act in which he drinks gasoline and
swallowed a match. That incident caused some TV stations, and in the
1990s the cable network TNT, to edit out that dangerous act for fearing
that young kids may try to imitate it.
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.
When Mel Blanc died in 1989, Jeff Bergman,
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.
Bugs has also made appearances in animated
holiday specials including 1980s 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.
Bugs had several comic book series over the
years. Western Publishing had the license for all the Warner Brothers
cartoons, and produced Bugs Bunny comics first for Dell Comics, then
later for their own Gold Key Comics. Dell published 58 issues, and
several specials from 1952 to 1962. Gold Key continued for another 133
issues. DC Comics, the sister/subsidiary company of Warner Bros., has
been publishing several comics since 1990.
Like Mickey Mouse for The Walt Disney
Company, Bugs has served as the mascot for Warner Bros. Studios and its
various divisions. He and Mickey are the first cartoon characters to
have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In the 1988 animated/live action movie Who
Framed Roger Rabbit, Bugs is shown as one of the inhabitants of Toon
Town. However, since the movie was being made by Disney, Warner Brothers
would only allow the use of their biggest toon star if he got an equal
amount of screen time as Disney's biggest star, Mickey Mouse. Because of
this, both characters are always together in frame when on the screen.
Bugs made an appearance in the 1990 drug
prevention video Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.
In 1997, Bugs appeared on a U.S. postage
stamp, the first toon to be honored, beating even the iconic Mickey
Mouse. 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.
Also, Bugs has appeared in numerous video
games, including the Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle series, Bugs Bunny's
Birthday Blow Out, Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rampage and the simular Bugs Bunny
In Double Trouble, Looney Tunes B-Ball, Space Jam, Looney Tunes Racing,
Looney Tunes: Space Race, Bugs Bunny Lost in Time, and its sequel, Bugs
Bunny and Taz Time Busters, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Bugs has
also appeared online on the Warner Bros. website in several short
Macromedia Flash animations.
Voices of Bugs
Bugs Bunny has been voiced by:
Mel Blanc (1940-1989)
Jeff Bergman (1990-1993)
Greg Burson (1993-1996)
Billy West (1996-2000)
Joe Alaskey (2000-)
(Many other voice actors have done Bugs for
various one-off projects when the above were not available)
In Spanish language dubs of his shorts,
Bugs is known as "El Conejo de la Suerte" (Lucky Rabbit)
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. [2] [3]
In a CNN broadcast on July 31, 2002, a TV
Guide editor talked about how they created the list. The editor also
explained why Bugs pulled top billing: "His stock...has never gone
down...Bugs is the best example...of the smart-aleck 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." [4]
However, in the Animal Planet special, The
50 Greatest Movie Animals, Bugs fell short on the list at #3, and was
surpassed by Mickey Mouse (#2), and Toto (The Wizard of Oz) (#1).
Ace Bunny
Warner Bros and the developers of the 2005
animated series Loonatics Unleashed developed the character of Ace Bunny
as 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 an
11 year old Bugs Bunny fan.[5]
Further reading
Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey
Hare, by Joe Adamson (1990), Henry Holt, ISBN 0-8050-1855-7
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, by Jerry
Beck and Will Friedwald (1989), Henry Holt, ISBN 0-8050-0894-2
Chuck Amuck : The Life and Times of an
Animated Cartoonist by Chuck Jones, published by Farrar Straus & Giroux,
ISBN 0-374-12348-9
That's Not All, Folks! by Mel Blanc, Philip
Bashe. Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-39089-5 (Softcover) ISBN 0-446-51244-3
(Hardcover)
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American
Animated Cartoons, Leonard Maltin, Revised Edition 1987, Plume ISBN
0-452-25993-2 (Softcover) ISBN 0-613-64753-X (Hardcover)
****
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