The Super Chief

Cartoons give their creator plenty of latitude in coming up with characters and situations that could never be real. Dream sequences expand that even more.

Much of Bob Clampett’s final release for Warner Bros., The Big Snooze, takes place in one of Elmer Fudd’s dreams that Bugs Bunny invades to turn into a nightmare. In one scene, he sets up a pop culture pun.

Here are consecutive frames. Clampett has some jarring edits in this short. Dialogue is cut off at least twice and the scene changes abruptly. Here, the background changes and the same drawing of Bugs moves closer to the camera. There’s no logical reason to shoot the scene this way.



Bugs ties Elmer Fudd, Pearl White-style, onto the railroad tracks. There’s a train whistle. Being a Clampett cartoon, Bugs reacts. Good gravy! Here it comes! The Super Chief!” Eventually, Bugs partly out of frame view.



The Super Chief, as everyone knew at the time of this cartoon, was a streamlined diesel passenger train running between Los Angeles and Chicago on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line. Here’s the pun. The Super Chief is really Bugs in an Indian headdress.



Despite some odd cuts and animation with no dialogue (and vice versa), there are some terrific visuals in this we’re featured here before—the “multiplying” rabbit outlines stomping on Elmer, Elmer in drag doing a Russian dance, the “nightmare paint.” There’s re-use of the log/cliff routine from All This and Rabbit Stew (Tex Avery, 1941). And some Avery-like wolves at Hollywood and Vine chase after Elmer.

Clampett never got a director’s credit and there is no story credit. The animators are Manny Gould, Rod Scribner, Izzy Ellis and Bill Melendez, with Tom McKimson handling layouts and Phil De Guard responsible for the backgrounds. While this was Clampett’s last release, on Oct. 5, 1946, he had one more cartoon that went into production afterwards, Bacall to Arms, but was released before The Big Snooze, on Aug. 3, 1946. Art Davis told researcher Milt Grey “Bacall to Arms was the only one I had a hand in finishing. Any of the other pictures that had already been animated, I didn’t have much to do with.”

The cartoon’s name is inspired by the Warners feature The Big Sleep with Bogart and Bacall. I wondered if the two films were shown together and, sure enough, The Film Daily reported on Nov. 25, 1926 the Interstate circuit booked the two to be shown on the same bill.