How a Hare Heckles

Mike Maltese loved Bugs Bunny twisting situations around to his advantage without the other character realising it. Bugs did it to Daffy with the rabbit season/duck season routine in Rabbit Fire (1951).

Maltese did it in The Heckling Hare (1941) where the rabbit imitates what Willoughby the dog is doing then takes over and Willoughby is copying him. Bugs stops but Willoughby keeps going, then holds up a commentary sign to the audience. Bugs did the same thing with the wolf in The Little Red Riding Rabbit (1944).

All of them pretty funny. (All three were for different directors)

Here are some frames from The Heckling Hare.

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Now, Bugs takes over.



No need for Bugs to carry on. Dull Willoughby's on auto-pilot.



The commentary.



Maltese tops the gag by ending it with a baseball bat. The final two frames below are separated by red and white colour cards, each shot twice taking up a total of a fourth of a second.



This is the cartoon where director Tex Avery refused to chop 40 feet at the end, so producer Leon Schlesinger chopped it anyway and suspended Avery. He never worked on another Warner Bros. cartoon again.