Fresh Hare

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Fresh Hare
A screenshot of Fresh Hare
Directed byI. Freleng
Story byMichael Maltese
Produced byLeon Schlesinger
Starring
Music byMusical direction:
Carl W. Stalling
Orchestra:
Milt Franklyn (uncredited)
Animation by
Layouts byOwen Fitzgerald (uncredited)
Backgrounds byLenard Kester (uncredited)
Color process
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date
  • August 22, 1942 (1942-08-22)
Running time
8 minutes (one reel)
LanguageEnglish

Fresh Hare is a Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng, written by Michael Maltese, and produced by Leon Schlesinger.[1] It was released to theatres on August 22, 1942.[2]

Plot

In this short, the rotund early-1940s version of

rounded-l-and-r speech
) are as follows:

"

traffic violations, going through a boulevard stop, jaywalking, triple parking, conduct unbecoming to a rabbit
", and (again) "violating traffic regulations."

As Elmer reads, Bugs takes his Mountie hat and impersonates a superior officer: "Attention! Why, look at you! You call yourself a Mountie! You're a disgrace to the regiment! I'm gonna drum you out of the service!" He then tears off Elmer's uniform, revealing a tightened corset and polka-dot undershorts.

When Elmer realizes he's been tricked, he begins to give chase - after pausing to put his miraculously refurbished uniform back on. The chase eventually involves a path beneath the snow, which ends abruptly when Elmer runs into a pine tree. The impact causes all the snow to fall off the tree, which reveals Christmas decorations, and Elmer emerges from underneath with snow on his face that gives him a Santa Claus appearance. The song Jingle Bells plays in the background, and Bugs says to the astonished Elmer, "Merry Christmas, Santy!" and burrows his way out of Elmer's path.

Elmer rediscovers Bugs's footprints and follows them; he finds Bugs taunting a snow effigy of Elmer the Mountie. Bugs announces he is going to punch it square in the nose, saying Elmer can't catch him, let alone catch a cold. Elmer has crept up behind Bugs and is tapping his foot, waiting to catch the rabbit by surprise. However, as Bugs finishes his wind-up for the punch, he turns around at the last moment and slugs the real Elmer square in the nose, propelling him backward into an ice-wall and revealing a heart with an arrow through it. Bugs again burrows away.

After some more hijinks and another failed chase, a weeping Elmer gives up and labels himself as a "disgwace to the wegiment" for failing to catch the rabbit since he is a disgrace to the regiment (alluding to Bugs' earlier statement), at which point Bugs willingly turns himself in. At headquarters, Bugs is

firing squad (despite the fact that most of his alleged crimes were essentially misdemeanors). As the firing squad prepares to execute Bugs, Elmer tells him that he can make one last wish, which prompts Bugs to say, "I wish, I wish," and to break into the song "Dixie". The scene then, in a non sequitur, transitions into a minstrel show in the south (a commonly censored scene on televised airings of this short), where Elmer, Bugs and the firing squad, now all in blackface, perform the chorus of "Camptown Races", with Bugs on banjo and Elmer on tambourine
, to which Bugs asks the audience, "Fantastic, isn't it?"

Edited prints

The last scene of the short was edited on multiple channels in multiple ways. On Cartoon Network and TNT, a fade-iris goes out fast enough after Bugs begins singing Dixie. On TBS, the ending audio of the short stays intact but, while it plays, it repeatedly keeps playing Bugs breaking into Dixie multiple times until the soundtrack ends as the iris fades out.

In 2003,

Milwaukee, Wisconsin aired the short unedited during a public domain cartoon program, without any advance warning.[3]

Home media

References

  1. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7
    . Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  2. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2
    .
  3. ^ "YouTube: Fresh Hare ending uncensored on TV (2003)". www.youtube.com.
  4. ^ "The CENSORED Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Guide". The Ultimate Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Website. Archived from the original on December 2, 2010. Retrieved September 19, 2015.
  5. ^ "Useful Notes: Looney Tunes in the Forties". TV Tropes. Retrieved September 19, 2015.
  6. ^ "The Censored Eleven". MetaFilter Community Weblog. Retrieved September 19, 2015.

External links

Preceded by Bugs Bunny Cartoons
1942 		Succeeded by
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