Friday 29 December 2017

I'm Here! I'm Here!

One of the funniest entrances in a Warner Bros. cartoon has to be when the Genie appears in the Bugs Bunny cartoon A-Lad-in His Lamp (released in 1948). Bugs Bunny rubs a lamp, it shakes, and poof! There’s the Genie. Since this is before Bob McKimson “calmed” his animators into a state of inertia, the Genie waves around his arms (even flapping his fingers together when he says the word “fly”). Bugs’ expression changes from wonder to annoyance.



Manny Gould, John Carey, Chuck McKimson and Phil De Lara receive the screen animation credits.

Writer Warren Foster borrowed Jim Backus’ routine as Hubert Updyke III from The Alan Young Show for the Genie and Backus voiced the part magnificently.

4 comments:

  1. This is Manny Gould's animation, Yowp. Very few animators, except maybe Milt Kahl and Gerard Baldwin, do hands and hand gestures better than Manny. The senator in "Rebel Rabbit", who declaims, "That Good For Nothin' Hare Must DIE!" with exaggerated foreshortening on his hands and arms, it another good example of Manny's approach to animated acting.

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  2. Never really understood or appreciated the short, stubby, squatty design of Bugs in these late '40s McKimsons.

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  3. It always sounded to me that the first few lines spoken by the wolf character in "The Wind Blown Hare" ("I'll blow your house down" as he reads from the book) was Backus, but the rest of the lines were Blanc...this could just be me, of course.

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