A Wild Hare

A Wild Hare (rereleased as The Wild Hare) is a Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies animated short film. It was produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, directed by Tex Avery, and written by Rich Hogan. It was originally released on July 27, 1940. A Wild Hare is considered by many film historians as the first "official" Bugs Bunny cartoon. The title is a play on "wild hair", the first of many puns between "hare" and "hair" that would appear in Bugs Bunny titles.

Various directors at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio had been experimenting with cartoons focused on a hunter pursuing a rabbit since 1938, with varied approaches to the characters of both rabbit and hunter. A Wild Hare is noteworthy as the Bugs Bunny's true cartoon, as well as for settling on the classic voice and appearance of the hunter, Elmer Fudd. The design and character of Bugs Bunny would continue to be refined over the subsequent years, but the general appearance, voice, and personality of the character were established in this cartoon. The rabbit is unnamed in this film, but would be christened "Bugs Bunny" in his very next short, Elmer's Pet Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones. The opening lines of both characters&mdash;"Be vewy, vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits" for Elmer, and "Eh, what's up Doc?" for the rabbit&mdash;would become catchphrases throughout their subsequent films. The basic plot of A Wild Hare, which centers on Elmer Fudd's hopeless pursuit of the much smarter Bugs, would serve as a template for many subsequent cartoons. In addition, many of the specific gags and plot devices in this cartoon became part of the template for later Bugs/Elmer confrontations, with subsequent shorts repeating them or varying them for comic effect. Examples include Elmer failing to recognise Bugs as a rabbit, Bugs kissing Elmer, and Bugs feigning death.

Virgil Ross is credited with the animation, and Carl Stalling with the musical score. Uncredited talent on A Wild Hare include animator Robert McKimson, layout man Robert Givens (who redesigned Elmer and the rabbit for this film), and voice artists Mel Blanc (as Bugs Bunny) and Arthur Q. Bryan (as Elmer Fudd).

The short was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons in 1941. Another contestant was Puss Gets the Boot, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer short, directed by Joseph Barbera, William Hanna and produced by Rudolph Ising, notable for introducing Tom and Jerry. Both nominations lost to The Milky Way, another Rudolph Ising short which featured three nameless kittens.

Trivia

 * In the original version, when Bugs plays "Guess Who" with Elmer, Elmer's second answer was Carole Lombard. In the reissue prints, Carole Lombard was changed to Barbara Stanwyck because Lombard had died in a plane crash.
 * The "insulting kiss", which Bugs plants on Elmer in this cartoon and many others, and which may seem strange to 21st Century viewers, backreferences a schtick sometimes done by early film comedians, including Charlie Chaplin.

What's up, Doc?

 * Bugsy's nonchalant carrot-chewing stance, as explained many years later by Chuck Jones, and again by Friz Freleng, comes from the movie, It Happened One Night, from a scene where the Clark Gable character is leaning against a fence eating carrots more quickly than he is swallowing (as Bugs would later often do), giving instructions with his mouth full to the Claudette Colbert character, during the hitch-hiking sequence. This scene was so famous at the time that most people immediately got the connection, that Bugs was doing a spoof on Clark Gable.
 * The line, "What's up, Doc?", was added by director Tex Avery for this short. Avery explained later that it was a common expression in Texas where he was from, and he didn't think much of the phrase. But when this short was screened in theaters, the scene of calm carrot chewing, followed by "What's Up, Doc?", then going against any expectation of a rabbit's reaction to a hunter, caused complete pandemonium in the audience, bringing down the house in every theater. Because of the overwhelming reaction, Bugs eats a carrot and utters some version of the phrase in almost every one of his cartoons after that, sometimes out of any context as compared to this original use.
 * Cartoon Network once ran an all-day Bugs Bunny marathon. In each cartoon, when he said, "What's up, Doc?" a bell would ring and a banner would pop up for a couple of seconds.
 * Working the phrase or its variants into some cartoons could require some invention. In Rhapsody Rabbit, Bugs was onstage alone, playing the piano a mostly-mime sketch. He used the phrase when he had to answer the phone at one point. In Hair-Raising Hare, he used it as a gag, speaking to a supposed audience member who was a doctor. In The Old Grey Hare, the octogenarian Bugs asked the octogenarian Elmer, "What's up, Prune-Face?"
 * In one cartoon, the phrase was expanded into a song.
 * He usually uses the prase (or a variant) only once per cartoon. There are few exceptions to this.
 * Variants of the phrase appear in many cartoons. They range from things as simple as "What's up dogs?" when facing down a canine street gang, to "What's cooking, Lolly?" to his press agent when he was a movie star, and "What's all the hubub (gulps), bub?"

Availability
The short occurs (unrestored) in its entirety in two documentaries available as bonus material in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection series. One documentary is ''What's Up, Doc? A Salute to Bugs Bunny Part 1'', which is available as a special feature on Discs 2 and 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, with the original title cards. The other documentary is Bugs Bunny: Superstar Part 1, which is available as a special feature on Discs 1 and 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4 with the Blue Ribbon reissue titles and 'dubbed version' end title, although it has not been refurbished or released independently in that series yet.

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