Everything about Bugs Bunny totally explained
Bugs Bunny is an
animated rabbit/
hare who appears in the
Looney Tunes and
Merrie Melodies series of
animated films produced by
Warner Bros. Cartoons. Today, he's the corporate
mascot for
Warner Brothers, especially its
animated productions.
According to his
biography, he was "born" in 1938 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 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.
History
Early influences
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.
Tex Avery, one of Bugs' creators, did admit to have copied Bugs' design from Max, although Avery's design of Bugs was less cute and innocent looking than Thorson's design of Max, so that Bugs' appearance would fit better with his sarcastic demeanor. Avery has been quoted as saying: "I practically stole it. It’s a wonder I wasn’t sued. The construction was almost identical." This drawing came to be known around the "Termite Terrace" as Bugs' Bunny, when the possessive apostrophe was eventually dropped, the name stuck. Bugs himself would eventually appear in
three variations on The Tortoise and the Hare.
Bugs eventually evolved a personality of detachment, often quipping no matter how immediate the danger he was in was. The way Bugs used his carrot is also similar to the way
Groucho Marx used his cigar. One of Bugs' most popular catch-phrases, "Of course you realize (or 'know'), this means war!" was originally said by Groucho (and other cast members) in films such as
Duck Soup and
A Night at the Opera.
Development
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'd 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
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's no evidence that this name was ever used by anybody else.
Bugs emerges
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's 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 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.
World War II
By 1942, Bugs had become the number one star of the
Merrie Melodies series, which had originally been intended only for one-shot characters in shorts. 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 his front teeth less prominent and his head 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: It was mainly used in the Friz Freleng unit and, starting in 1949, Robert McKimson's as well; Jones would come up with his own slight modification, and the voice as well would vary mildly between the units.
In
1944, Bugs Bunny actually made a
cameo appearance in
Jasper Goes Hunting, a short produced by rival studio
Paramount. In this cameo (animated by
Robert McKimson with
Mel Blanc providing voice), Bugs pops out of a rabbit hole, saying his usual catchphrase; Bugs then says, "I must be in the wrong picture" and then goes back in the hole.
The carrot-chewing scenes are generally followed by Bugs Bunny's most well-known catchphrase, "What's up, Doc?". The phrase was written by director Tex Avery for his first Bugs Bunny short, 1940's
A Wild Hare. Avery explained later that it was a common expression in Texas, where he was from, and that he didn't think much of the phrase. When the short was first screened in theaters, the "What's up, Doc?" scene received a tremendously positive audience reaction. As a result, the scene became a recurring element in subsequent films and cartoons. The phrase was sometimes modified for a situation. For example, Bugs says "What's up, dogs?" to the antagonists in
A Hare Grows in Manhattan, and "What's up, prune-face?" to the aged Elmer in
The Old Grey Hare. He might also greet Daffy with "What's up, Duck?"
Several Chuck Jones shorts in the late 1940s and 1950s depict Bugs travelling via cross-country (and, in some cases, intercontinental) tunnel-digging, ending up in places as varied as
Mexico (
Bully For Bugs, 1953), the
Himalayas (
The Abominable Snow Rabbit, 1960) and
Antarctica (
Frigid Hare, 1949) all because he "should'a taken that left toin at
Albukoikee." He first utters that phrase in
Herr Meets Hare (1945), when he emerges in the
Black Forest, a cartoon seldom seen today due to its blatantly topical subject matter. When Goering says to Bugs, "There is no Las Vegas in 'Chermany'" and takes a potshot at Bugs, Bugs dives into his hole and says, "Joimany! Yipe!", as Bugs realizes he's behind enemy lines. The confused response to his "left toin" comment also followed a pattern. For example, when he tunnels into Scotland in 1948's
My Bunny Lies Over The Sea, while thinking he's heading for the
La Brea Tar Pits in
Los Angeles, California, it provides another chance for an ethnic stereotype: "Therrre's no La Brrrea Tarrr Pits in Scotland!" (to which Bugs responds, "Uh...what's up, Mac-doc?"). A couple of late-1950s shorts of this ilk also featured
Daffy Duck travelling with Bugs.
Bugs Bunny has some similarities to figures from
mythology and
folklore, such as
Br'er Rabbit,
Nanabozho, or
Anansi, and might be seen as a modern
trickster (for example, he repeatedly uses
cross-dressing mischievously). Unlike most cartoon characters, however, Bugs Bunny is rarely defeated in his own games of trickery. One exception to this is the short
Hare Brush, in which Elmer Fudd ultimately carries the day at the end; however, critics note that in this short Elmer and Bugs had assumed each other's personalities—through mental illness and hypnosis, respectively—and it's only by becoming Bugs that Elmer can win.
Although it was usually
Porky Pig who brought the WB cartoons to a close with his stuttering, "That's all, folks!", Bugs would occasionally appear, bursting through a drum just as Porky did, but munching a carrot and saying in his Bronx-Brooklyn accent, "And dat's de end!"
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")
Rabbit or hare?
The animators throughout Bugs' history have treated the terms rabbit and hare as synonymous. Taxonomically they're 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's also a synonym for
either hares or rabbits.
Voice actors
Following
Mel Blanc, who voiced the character for almost fifty years, other voice actors have portrayed Bugs Bunny:
Cameos
Bugs Bunny has had cameo appearances in several cartoons, including one
Private SNAFU short. For his appearance in
The Goofy Gophers his voice was sped up.
Crazy Cruise (1942)
Porky Pig's Feat (1943) This marks Bugs' only appearance in a black-and-white Looney Tune.
Jasper Goes Hunting (1944, for Paramount)
The Goofy Gophers (1947)
The Lion's Busy (1950)
Duck Amuck (1953)
(2008, as one of the forms of The Martian Manhunter )
Current popularity
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.
In a CNN broadcast on July 31, 2002, a TV Guide editor talked about the group that 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."
In Animal Planet's 50 Greatest Movie Animals (2004), Bugs was named #3, behind Mickey Mouse and Toto.
According to Time Warner, Bugs Bunny became the current official mascot for Six Flags theme parks since their 45th anniversary.
Awards
Academy Awards
Knighty Knight Bugs (1958)
Academy Award nominations
The Wild Hare (1940)
Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (1941)
Rhapsody Rabbit (1946)Further Information
Get more info on 'Bugs Bunny'.
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