Monday 16 June 2014

A Familiar Gag

You know the joke. A musical instrument is rigged to blow up whenever Bugs Bunny hits the right note on the old song “Endearing Young Charms.” Bugs always plays the wrong note and the frustrated Sam or Daffy or whoever shoves him out of the way to show him how to play the song correctly and—well, you know the gag.

Here’s the end result from “Show Biz Bugs.”



The gag was also used in “Ballot Box Bunny” (with Yosemite Sam), “Rushing Roulette” (a Format Films Roadrunner-Coyote short) and “Booby Traps” (a 1944 Snafu cartoon). It may have been in others; it sure seems like it. The musical gag was probably concocted by Warren Foster. He wrote “Ballot Box Bunny” and “Show Biz Bugs” and likely “Booby Traps” (it was animated by the Clampett unit and Foster had been writing for Bob Clampett). Foster had run a music studio in New York City before he got into animation.

4 comments:

  1. Actually, "Rushing Roulette" was done at DePatie-Freleng by Robert McKimson.

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  2. One thing I have noted, it's always the second time the booby-trapped note is hit before the explosion. in all except the windup gag in the Snafu cartoon Booby Traps, where Snafu plays the same note on his harp four times before he is blown up again.

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  3. Wasn’t this gag also used in the Top Cat episode “The Missing Heir”, where the creepy butler and his dog try to eliminate Benny? Though, I’m sure it was with a piano

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    Replies
    1. Yes, although in that Benny plays 'While Strolling Through The Park One Day.'

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