"A Wild Hare" (1940)- Merrie Melody
Director: Tex Avery
Story: Rich Hogan
Animation: Virgil Ross
Layout And Backgrounds: No credit given
Musical Direction: Carl W. Stalling
Perhaps no animated cartoon in history has had such a great impact on one cartoon series. This one film, with a rabbit character designed by Charles Thorson and still officially unnamed (It was said that Tex Avery wanted to name him "Jack E. Rabbit") had an impact that would spark the golden age of Warner Bros. animation. The basic plot of this cartoon would be re-used and re-formulated and parodied and twisted dozens of times throughout the run of Bugs Bunny cartoons. Tex Avery paired his new rabbit with Chuck Jones' Elmer Fudd in a rabbit hunt cartoon, except this time he wanted the rabbit to be totally rude, irreverent, nutty but calm at the same time. Elmer goes hunting for "Wabbits", finds Bugs, gets repeatedly tricked and tormented, and runs away crying "wabbits! wabbits! wabbits! wahhhahahaha!" Several familiar routines originate here: the lines "Be Vewwy vewwy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits" and "What's Up, Doc?" the "does he have long furry ears and hop around like this?!" routine, the fake death scene, and the triumphant ending for Bugs (this time acting as a yankee doodle flute player on his carrot!) It was so popular with audiences that more rabbit cartoons were requested, and within the next three years (1941-42) Bugs Bunny was born and on his way to becoming perhaps history's most enduring cartoon character. Below: frames from the original titles version of this film: note that the only copies of this film shown on television today are "Blue Ribbon" re-issues, that is, when Warner Bros. re-released a number of films to theaters years later, they made the films look more recent by removing the original credits and titles and adding the "Blue Ribbon" Merrie Melodies logo with a new title card, in this case even mistitling it "THE Wild Hare". Also, in recent years, the Turner company owned and aired the pre-1948 Merrie Melodies, and coincidentally wore out their broadcasting prints, thus they made new transfers from the old negatives they had, creating what is known as a 'dubbed' version...the title given to these so-called 'remastered' monstrosities. This was to make the films appear newer so they could fit in better with the later films owned by Warner Bros. itself, then merging with Turner and thus re-uniting the two packages of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for the first time in years. the original end title card, which matched the opening card's rainbow colors, has now been replaced with an orange card, labelled "dubbed version, copyright 1995 Turner Entertainment co.".Therefore, the version seen on television today now has great colors again, but has no original credits and a fake end card. below are some screen captures I made from the original film, which has not been seen on TV since the early 1990's.
