|
A few weeks ago, GiGi and I had the good fortune to add Porky's Hare Hunt to our ever-growing videotape library of fine animation. This cartoon not only has the historical significance of featuring the first appearance of the embryonic Bugs Bunny -- it also has the personal significance of completing our collection of the early, formative Bugs. Checking Leonard Maltin's filmography, I find we now have all of the first nine Bugs appearances (counting his brief walk-on in Clampett's Patient Porky). For reasons that will become apparent, we will confine this survey to the first six cartoons. They begin with a tiny, rabbit-like character that one would be hard-put to identify by studio, let alone name, and progress to a Bugs that possibly a majority of the people on this planet would recognize.
There is little of the superstar in the character who first appears in Porky's Hare Hunt (1938). The cartoon itself is a transparent copy of Tex Avery's Porky's Duck Hunt, released a year earlier, in which that era's Warner Bros. luminary met the duck that quickly became Daffy. In fact, The Bunny himself was a transparent copy of that duck. He bounced around the same way, did the same screwball stunts, and even talked with the same voice. Other than his appearance -- a little white (not gray) rabbit as opposed to a little black duck -- the only superficial characteristic that distinguished him was a laugh that later became famous as that of Woody Woodpecker. (Not incidentally, director Ben "Bugs" Hardaway wrote not only Porky's Duck Hunt, but also Walter Lantz's Knock Knock (1940), where Woody made his debut -- and both characters were voiced by Mel Blanc.)
In more subtle ways, however, he was already exerting his Bugs-like personality. In the Duck cartoon, Porky is the point-of-view character, with Daffy entering the stage from the outside. Hare, however, opens in a milieu of rabbits, whose serene crop munching is interrupted by Porky's opening salvo. "Jiggers, fellers!" calls Bugs (his first words), and the chase is on. As the years went by, this subtle difference manifest itself over and over again. Daffy walks into an existing situation, and is subject to it. Bugs, however, is already there, and in control.
One gag common to both cartoons is putting the huntee under the gun of the hunter, have him hide his eyes in terror, and then feign sympathy when the gun won't shoot. But before undergoing this ordeal, Bugs had already stood under the gun and remained calm -- all he did was swallow a little hare remover, then pull himself out of a hat far from Porky.
Oh, and it's right here, in his first appearance, that Bugs utters the soon-to-be-immortal line, "Of course, you know, this means war." It's funny how fresh something like that can sound, even when you've heard it hundreds of times, when the one you're seeing is its first toon appearance. There's just something in the voice that indicates that the person speaking hasn't said it over and over (never mind that Groucho Marx, model for much of Bugs's character, had already used it).
Porky's Hare Hunt was released April 30, 1938 according to Maltin, and copyright 1937. Supervision: Ben "Bugs" Hardaway. Story: Howard Baldwin. Animation: Volney White. Musical Direction: Carl W. Stalling.
The Bunny's second appearance is in the somewhat enigmatic Prest-O Change-O. This one was released, according to Maltin, on March 25, 1939 and was directed by Chuck Jones. On our copy (an a.a.p. one), the copyright date is illegible and there are no credits.
This cartoon is perhaps unique in that Bugs, still the white rabbit from his first appearance, doesn't speak. The main characters are a pair of dogs, nameless as far as I know, who react silently to being thrust into strange situations in Dog Tired, Doggone Modern and several other Jones works of the time. Bugs responds to their muteness by refraining from making any sound himself, except a "psst" right at the beginning to catch the attention of his antagonist (the dogs are quickly separated, and the other one has adventures of his own elsewhere), and an occasional raucous guffaw.
Here, the dogs take refuge from the dog catcher in the house of Sham-Fu the Magician. Sham-Fu doesn't appear in the cartoon, but Bugs, immediately transcending his forest origins, plays his rabbit. Though his purpose in this cartoon is simply to be the source of annoying things happening to the brown dog, Bugs has already begun to develop in the directions Jones was to be instrumental in taking him in as the years rolled by: He kisses his antagonist...twice. Practically everybody who has done Bugs has played with his sexual identity to a greater or lesser extent, but over the years it's been Jones who camped it up most of all.
It's here, by the way, that Bugs meets his first defeat. The cartoon ends with the brown and white dogs reunited. The brown one, angrier than I recall ever seeing him elsewhere (and with Bugs Bunny playing tricks on him, who wouldn't be?), wallops Bugs across the room, leaving him sitting in the fishbowl, wearing a lampshade and nursing a shiner.
Next up is Hare-Um Scare-Um, first of many cartoons to occupy a very narrow range in an alphabetical list. Release date, says Maltin, is August 12, 1939. Creator "Bugs" Hardaway resumed the directorial reins, joined by Cal Dalton, his partner on many cartoons of the period. The story was by Melvin "Tubby" Millar, animation by Gil Turner and musical direction by Carl W. Stalling.
In this, the first appearance of a "wittle gway wabbit" much like the one we all know, Bugs receives his first starring role. By now, the person hunting him has been reduced to a set of mannerisms -- this particular one doesn't even have a name, and the stock motivation, which worked just fine in Porky's Duck Hunt, is the high price of meat. Bugs goes through the same series of hunter gags -- has a gun pointed at him, feigns helplessness, bounces around the screen... Oh, and the Woody Woodpecker laugh, absent in Prest-O Change-O, is back again.
His finest moment to date is in this cartoon. For a whole minute, he occupies the stage alone, singing a wonderful song about how "gooney, looney tuney, touched in the head" he is. But another moment, less spectacular when it first appeared, set the stage for a million variations over the years: It's in this cartoon that Bugs first appears in drag. He dresses up as a female dog to seduce the dog the hunter sets on him.
Bugs's fourth appearance gives Jones a second shot at him. Elmer's Candid Camera, released (according to Maltin) March 2, 1940, is the one that first pits him against his lifelong antagonist, the still somewhat Egghead-like Elmer Fudd. Supervision: Charles M. Jones. Story: Rich Hogan. Animation: Bob McKimson. Musical Direction: Carl W. Stalling.
Elmer is not yet the Mighty Hunter, loaded up to do Bugs in. All he wants to do is take a picture. But it's here that he first utters the famous line that provided this article with a title. Their relationship hasn't yet progressed to the point of kissing -- Elmer gets Bugs in an apparently compromising situation, prompting the latter to complain that he hardly knows the guy. Of course, they got to know each other very well in the years to come.
Bugs uses many devices to stay in control of all situations. One, which makes its first appearance here, is to play possum and put his opponent through a terrible guilt trip, usually undergoing a fabulous death scene beforehand. (This was carried to possibly its ultimate extreme in Clampett's The Old Gray Hare (1944), in which Bugs digs his own grave.) Here, all Elmer does is put a net over him, prompting him to gasp for air, strive desperately to retain his sanity, and finally collapse, limp and apparently lifeless. Elmer, of course, goes through the "Oh, what have I done?" woutine -- uh, routine -- for the first time.
After four cartoons, it's been established that Bugs is obnoxious, fairly unflappable, probably bisexual, and crazy (in the like-a-fox way). The appearance of the character, having changed sharply between the second and third, is similar but not identical to the Bugs we know. But... He's munching an apple...
The fourth cartoon closes with the final repetition of his Woody Woodpecker laugh, and the stage is set for Tex Avery's Oscar-nominated A Wild Hare. Avery, as we know, directed Porky's Duck Hunt. In it, Daffy appears nearly fully developed -- a little shorter and looking a tiny bit more like a real duck, but recognizably Daffy in form and character. Bugs also started out as Porky's prey, but not fully developed as was Avery's creation. After moving in a general Bugs-like direction through four cartoons, Bugs finally settled into his fully-recognizable self only after Avery got his hands on him.
Lots of firsts in this cartoon. In appearance, there's been a second sudden remodeling. Bugs still looks a tiny bit archaic, but you'd know him anywhere. He munches his first carrot. He says "What's Up, Doc?" for the first time. He kisses Elmer, dives into his hole, plays tug-of-war with Elmer's gun, does any number of soon-to-become hackneyed things for the first time. If there had never been a Bugs Bunny cartoon after this one, the character would be lacking only in a few minor refinements. Unfortunately, our copy of it doesn't have credits, so all we know is that Avery directed it, and Maltin gives its release date as July 27, 1940.
It's only now, after the character has been completely brought up to his modern state, that Bob Clampett does anything with Bugs. And even then, it's only in a cameo appearance. In Patient Porky (animation, Norman McCabe; story, Warren Foster; musical direction, Carl W. Stalling), a Bugs very much like the one in A Wild Hare and later cartoons dashes in to report another 260 rabbit births, then dashes off again, bouncing around like daffy. This has the distinction, by the way, of being Bugs's only appearance, other than his very first, in black and white. Clampett's next shot at the Rabbit that was to bring them all fame wasn't until Bugs's 10th cartoon, Wabbit Twouble (1941).
And now, we come to a milestone in Bugs's career. I said back there that after A Wild Hare the character was lacking only in refinements. Well, not quite -- and that one little lack is why the survey extends to six cartoons instead of stopping after five. After proclaiming that the cartoon was supervised by Charles M. Jones, with a story by Rich Hogan, animation by Rudy Larriva and musical direction by Carl W. Stalling, a second title card announced that it starred Bugs Bunny.
This is important not merely because it's Bugs's first billing as the star he'd become -- it's also the very first time his name was revealed to the public. Prior to that, it was only inside the industry that he was known as "Bugs's Bunny" -- note possessive -- i.e., the Bunny created by "Bugs" Hardaway.
Jones continues to develop the Bugs/Elmer relationship by putting them through a dance scene, revives the "Of course, you know, this means war" line from the first cartoon, has Bugs put Elmer through the guilt trip again... This one is just a typical Bugs Bunny cartoon, of the type that had been done before and would be done again. But it's the first one where Bugs is really "Bugs".
And there you have it. If it were possible to obtain complete credits to those six cartoons, then perhaps we could unravel the mystery of Who Created Bugs Bunny. A few years ago, I was in the right place at the right time to hear Chuck Jones personally credit Tex Avery with Bugs's creation. But many of the Bugs-like schticks that contribute to his persona first appear in Jones's own early cartoons. Avery first used the modern, fully developed Bugs, but he used a character that had been created and developed by Hardaway, Jones, Dalton, McKimson, and many others with and without screen credit.
Bugs's main antagonist, of course, remained Elmer Fudd, who shared the spotlight in the last three of these six. But against Yosemite Sam, Wile E. Coyote, Witch Hazel...against Daffy Duck, a Gremlin from the Kremlin, Smith-Brothers hillbillies, Cecil Turtle...against Martians, Blacque Jacque Shellacque, Tasmanian Devils, rampaging bulls...against mad scientists, monsters, shipwrecked sailors, gorillas...wherever he went and whatever he did, he remained the same Bugs Bunny who starred in Elmer's Pet Rabbit.
Which leaves me with nothing left to say but That's All, Folks.
BACK to Home Page.
|
|