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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]

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.

Several Chuck Jones shorts in the late 1940s and 1950s depicted 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 have taken that left toin at Albuqoique." A couple late-1950s shorts of this ilk also featured Daffy Duck travelling with Bugs.

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

(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]

bugs bunny

Contents

Personality

A suggested early influence

Happy Rabbit

Bugs emerges

Popularity during World War II

After the war

Voices of Bugs

Greatest cartoon character

Ace Bunny

Further reading

See also

External links