Happy Rabbit is the name sometimes used for an early rabbit character from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series who eventually became the Warner Bros. cartoon studio's most famous character, Bugs Bunny. Created by Ben Hardaway in 1938, the rabbit first appeared in the short "Porky's Hare Hunt".
Like most of the other Looney Tunes characters, this character was voiced by Mel Blanc.
History[]
The rabbit made his debut in the 1938 Looney Tunes short "Porky's Hare Hunt", directed by Ben Hardaway. Similar in tone and execution to the previous year's "Porky's Duck Hunt", which introduced Daffy Duck, "Porky's Hare Hunt" involves Porky hunting a white rabbit whose wild antics drive him mad. Mel Blanc would later use a similar sounding voice characterization as the voice of Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker. The rabbit character was popular enough with audiences that the Termite Terrace staff decided to use it again. [1]
Chuck Jones used the rabbit as a foil in his 1939 short, "Prest-O Change-O", the rabbit's second appearance. In this short, he antagonizes The Two Curious Puppies.
The rabbit was the focal point of his third short, "Hare-um Scare-um" (1939), for which he was redesigned as a gray rabbit with large buck teeth, apricot-colored gloves and mouth, black nose, black-tipped ears, and the same voice that he had in "Porky's Hare Hunt" and in "Prest-O Change-O". In this cartoon, a hunter goes after him for food upon learning about high meat prices. Charlie Thorson, lead animator and character designer on the film, gave the character a name. He had written "Bug's Bunny" on the model sheet that he drew for Hardaway. In promotional material for the cartoon, including a surviving 1939 press kit, the name on the model sheet was altered to become the rabbit's own name: "Bugs" Bunny (quotation marks only used, on and off, until 1944). [2] In his autobiography, Blanc claimed that another proposed name for the character was "Happy Rabbit."[3] In the actual cartoons and publicity, however, the name "Happy" only seems to have been used in reference to Bugs Hardaway. In Hare-um Scare-um, a newspaper headline reads, "Happy Hardaway."[4] Animation historian David Gerstein disputes that "Happy Rabbit" was ever used as an official name, arguing that the only usage of the term came from Mel Blanc himself in humorous and fanciful tales he told about the character's development in the 1970s and 1980s; the name "Bugs Bunny" was used as early as August 1939, in the Motion Picture Herald, in a review for the short Hare-um Scare-um. [5]
Thorson had been approached by Tedd Pierce, head of the story department, and asked to design a better rabbit. The decision was influenced by Thorson's experience in designing hares. He had designed Max Hare in Toby Tortoise Returns (Disney, 1936). For Hardaway, Thorson created the model sheet previously mentioned, with six different rabbit poses. Thorson's model sheet is "a comic rendition of the stereotypical fuzzy bunny". He had a pear-shaped body with a protruding rear end. His face was flat and had large expressive eyes. He had an exaggerated long neck, gloved hands with three fingers, oversized feet, and a "smart aleck" grin. The end result was influenced by Walt Disney Animation Studios' tendency to draw animals in the style of cute infants.[6] He had an obvious Disney influence, but looked like an awkward merger of the lean and streamlined Max Hare from The Tortoise and the Hare (1935) and the round, soft bunnies from Little Hiawatha (1937).[7]
The prototype of Bugs made his fourth appearance in "Elmer's Candid Camera" (1940), a short which marked the first appearance of the "official" version of Tex Avery's character, Elmer Fudd. The cartoon set into play the antagonistic relationship that would develop between Elmer and Bugs Bunny over the years. By this time, the appearance and personality of the rabbit had become very like the classic Bugs, though the rabbit is portrayed as more malicious than would become the standard for Bugs.
The rabbit appeared in a cameo role in 1940's "Patient Porky".
That same year, Tex Avery directed "A Wild Hare", a short featuring Elmer Fudd hunting a rabbit, he had Ben Hardaway's rabbit redesigned and revised with a new personality and even a different voice. The resulting rabbit character was given a new name - Bugs Bunny - in Chuck Jones' 1941 follow-up to "A Wild Hare", "Elmer's Pet Rabbit".
In recent years, many animation historians have identified these 4 prototype Bugs Bunny cartoons as Bugs Bunny's early cartoons before he reached his fame in "A Wild Hare", as evident in documentaries such as The Wabbit Turns 50 from WWOR in 1990.[8] Even Cartoon Network's June Bugs marathons over the years acknowledges this by airing the Happy Rabbit cartoons alongside all the other Bugs Bunny cartoons, and in some interviews with a character designer, Robert "Bob" Givens indicating that both Bugs Bunny and Ben Hardaway's Rabbit are one of the same rabbits.[9][10][11]
In the deleted scenes of the 2003 film Looney Tunes Back in Action, Bugs is zapped by the Blue Monkey diamond, which regresses its targets to more primitive forms. Bugs briefly appears as his prototype form of himself. In a scene in the New Looney Tunes episode "One Carroter in Search of an Artist", Bugs is given a makeover by an offscreen animator (which was later revealed to be Daffy at the end). In this brief sequence, Bugs looked like his third prototype in "Hare-um Scare-um". In addition, this sequence was produced in black-and-white as a homage to the earliest appearances. Bugs dismisses it as "too retro".
Gallery[]
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- ↑ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bugs-Bunny%7C Encyclopædia Britannica. Britannica.com. Retrieved September 20, 2009.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20081216141745/http://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/rare-1938-looney-tunes-book-found%7C Cartoon Brew. April 3, 2008. Archived from the original on December 16, 2008. Retrieved September 20, 2009.
- ↑ Blanc, Mel; Bashe, Philip (1989). "That's Not All, Folks!". Clayton South, VIC, Australia: Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-51244-3
- ↑ https://gregbrian.tripod.com/hidden/hid04.html%7C Gregbrian.tripod.com. Retrieved September 20, 2009.
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/motionpictureher136unse/page/n725/mode/2up?q=Bugs%7C "...With gun and determination, he takes to the field and tracks his prey in the zany person of "Bugs" Bunny, a true lineal descendant of the original Mad Hatter if there ever was one...", from Page 51 of Motion Picture Herald (Jul-Aug 1939)
- ↑ Walz (1998), p. 49-67
- ↑ Barrier (2003), p. 359-362
- ↑ http://mfoxweb-001-site22.mysitepanel.net/viewtopic.php?t=2673 |"The Wabbit Turns 50" TV Special discussions on the GAC Forums Archives website
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/junebugs632001/4.+June+Bugs+(6-3-2001%2C+3%3B00AM).mp4 | VHS Tape: Bugs Bunny June Bugs Marathon on Cartoon Network (2001) on https:///archive.org
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/june-bugs-marathon-06-21-1998-part-2 |June Bugs marathon from 1998 on https:///archive.org
- ↑ http://chomikuj.pl/bartnicki2/Dla+dzieci/Kr*c3*b3lik+Bugs+*5bBugs+Bunny*5d/1939/Bugs+Bunny+-+Prest-O+Change-O,373008129.mpg(video)