Sunday, 1 January 2012

Happy New Year

One of my favourite Bugs Bunny scenes ever since I was a kid is when he dupes Elmer Fudd into thinking it’s midnight on January 1st in “The Wabbit Who Came to Supper.” The gag comes out of nowhere and the confetti comes out of nowhere. It builds nicely and lasts just long before before Elmer realises it’s July and he’s been conned.






Bugs is beautifully expressive here. Dick Bickenbach gets the only animation credit. Manny Perez, Gerry Chiniquy and (as far as I know) Gil Turner were animators in the Freleng unit at the time.

4 comments:

  1. Happy new year to you, Yowp.
    This would be a Bick scene. He draws funny eyelids on Elmer, and he twirls Bugs' ears liberally.

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  2. Happy New Year to you both asd eveyrone else.

    That was JUST the scene I was thinking of, and I won't spoil it for ANYBODY as to how ELmer found out he'd been conned.

    The cartoon's plot itself is odd, kind of like MGM's "Mouse who came to Supper" and WB/Freleng's own 1960 "From Hare to Heir", one of the last truly hilarious WB shorts, but then after Elmer, who in keeping with the story is due for big megabucks now has trouble getting them, again not spoiling, and the story turns to a stand man/rabbit chase, and the money angel is totally thrown away.

    This is also the cartoon with the stupid urban myth about Bugs being explicit when he gets out of the bathtub.

    This is one of the fat Elmer Fudd shorts, due to his voice performer, network radio actor Arthur Q.Bryan being built the same way. The surprise ending is also a sight to behold.

    Steve C. 1/1/12!!!!!

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  3. The animators on that short were Bickenbach, Perez, Chiniquy, Turner and also Cal Dalton. Dalton did those really hideous drawings of Bugs Bunny with his inner ears and face, he did scenes of Elmer begging Bugs "Please go back into the forest where you belong", or when he rock-a-byes Bugs thinking he's dead. That's Dalton.

    Hope you have a Happy New Year, Yowp.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the info on Dalton...I haven't been able to identify his Tashlin style, but this does make sense.

      Hey, you might know this, but there's a style in these Freleng shorts that I simply can't identify.

      The character will kinda pop up and down, bringing their legs to contact the ground as fast as they can. In 'Came to Supper,' he does the scene of Bugs barking with the dogs beneath the tree; in 'Pigs in a Polka,' he does the little musical skipping interludes set to the 7th Hungarian dance?
      He also seems to have a very distinct way of drawing Bugs' face - the scene in Fresh Hare where Bugs corkscrews himself into the snow, Hare Trigger's final closeup and the exchange of 'Oh, you must be Jesse James!'

      This could be Manny Perez, but it's both similar to the way that Chiniquy drew the faces and similar to both Perez's 'New York Pop' and Chiniquy's pose-to-pose jerks.
      I gather that it's either Chiniquy or Perez, but it's confusing as hell, and if you know anything about it, the world would appreciate! ^^

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