Bugs Bunny is a fictional rabbit appearing in the
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of
cartoons, and is one of the most recognizable
characters, real or imaginary, in the world.
According to his biography, he was "born" in
1940 in Brooklyn, New York and the product of many
fathers: Ben "Bugs" Hardaway (who created a
prototypical version of the character in 1938),
Bob Clampett, Tex Avery (who developed Bugs'
definitive personality in 1940), Robert McKimson
(created the definitive Bugs Bunny character
design), Chuck Jones, and Friz Freleng. According
to Mel Blanc, his voice actor, his accent is an
equal blend of someone from the Bronx and someone
from Brooklyn.

He is noted for his signature line of "Eh,
what's up, doc?" and his feuds with Elmer Fudd,
Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian, Daffy Duck, and
even Wile E. Coyote, who usually takes on the Road
Runner. Almost invariably, Bugs comes out the
winner in these conflicts, because that is in his
nature. This is especially obvious in films
directed by Chuck Jones, who liked to pit
"winners" against "losers". Worrying that
audiences would lose sympathy for an aggressor who
always won, Jones found the perfect way to make
Bugs sympathetic in the films by having the
antagonist repeatedly bully, cheat or threaten
Bugs in some way. Thus offended, (usually three
times) Bugs would often state "Of course, you
realize this means war" (a line which Jones noted
was taken from Groucho Marx) and the audience
gives Bugs silent permission to inflict his havoc,
having earned his right to retaliate and/or defend
himself. Other directors like Friz Freleng had
Bugs go out of his way to help others in trouble,
again creating an acceptable circumstance for his
mischief. When Bugs meets other characters who are
also "winners", however, like Cecil the Turtle
in Tortoise Beats Hare, or, in World War II, the
Gremlin of Falling Hare, his record is rather
dismal; his overconfidence tends to work against
him.

Bugs Bunny is a modern equivalent of the
mythological trickster figure.

"Bugs" or "Bugsy" as a nickname means
"crazy".

Contents [hide]
1 History 
1.1 A suggested early influence 
1.2 Proto-typical rabbits 
1.3 Bugs emerges 
1.4 Popularity during World War II 
1.5 After the war 
1.6 Greatest cartoon character 
1.7 Ace Bunny 
2 Further reading 
3 See also 
4 External links 
 



History

A suggested early influence
A number of animation historians believe Bugs to
have been influenced by an earlier Disney
character called Max Hare. Max, designed by
Charlie Thorsen, first appeared in the Silly
Symphony The Tortoise and the Hare, directed by
Wilfred Jackson. The story was based on a fable by
Aesop and cast Max against Toby Tortoise, and won
the Academy Award for Animated Short Film for
1934. Max also appeared in the sequel Toby
Tortoise Returns and the Mickey Mouse cartoon
Mickey's Polo Team.

The only solid connection between Max and Bugs
however is Charlie Thorsen. He was also
responsible for the redesign of Bugs from a white
to a gray rabbit for his third appearance Hare-um
Scare-um (see below), thus the similarity in
design.


Proto-typical rabbits
 
A sketch of Bugs by artist Mark Farinas in the
style of director Robert Clampett.Bugs Bunny first
appeared in the cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt,
released on April 30, 1938. The short was
co-directed by Cal Dalton and Ben Hardaway whose
nickname was "Bugs". The cartoon had an almost
identical theme to a 1937 cartoon, Porky's Duck
Hunt, directed by Tex Avery and introducing Daffy
Duck. Following the general plot of this earlier
film, the short cast Porky Pig as a hunter against
an equally nutty prey, who was more interested in
driving his hunter insane than running away. But
instead of a black duck, his current prey was a
tiny, white rabbit. The rabbit introduces himself
with the expression "Jiggers, fellers," and Mel
Blanc gave the rabbit a voice and laugh that he
would later use to voice Woody Woodpecker. In this
cartoon, he also quoted Groucho Marx for the first
time (from the movie Duck Soup): "Of course, you
know, this means war!"

His second appearance was in 1939's Prest-O
Change-O, directed by Chuck Jones, where he serves
as the pet rabbit of Sham-Fu the Magician, an
unseen character. When two dogs enter the house of
his absent master while seeking refuge from a
storm, the rabbit starts harassing them, but is
ultimately bested by the bigger of the two dogs.

His third appearance was in another 1939 cartoon,
Hare-um Scare-um, directed by Dalton and Hardaway.
Gil Turner, the animator for this short, was the
first to give a name to the character. He had
written "Bugs' Bunny" on his model sheet,
meaning he considered the character to be
Hardaway's. This short was also the first where
Bugs was depicted as a gray bunny instead of a
white one; the redesign having been done by
Charlie Thorsen (see above). The short is notable
as featuring Bugs' first singing role and also
the first time where he dresses in drag to seduce
his antagonist. Following this short he was given
the name "Bugs" by the Termite Terrace animators
in honor of his creator, Ben "Bugs" Hardaway.
"Bugs" or "Bugsy" as a name also fit the
Bunny's early characterization, as it was popular
vernacular for "crazy".

His fourth appearance was in the 1940 short
Elmer's Candid Camera by Chuck Jones. There, both
Bugs and Elmer Fudd were redesigned to the
appearances that would become familiar to
audiences. It was also the first meeting of the
two characters.


Bugs emerges
Bugs' true personality would then emerge in Tex
Avery's A Wild Hare, released on July 27, 1940.
It was in this cartoon that he first emerged from
his rabbit hole to ask Elmer Fudd, now a hunter,
“What's up, Doc?" It is considered the first
fully developed appearance of the character.
Animation historian Joe Adamson counts A Wild Hare
as the first Bugs Bunny short, with the previous
shorts being different one-shot bunnies bearing
only coincidental resemblance to Bugs.

Bugs then made a cameo in Robert Clampett's
Patient Porky, first released on September 14,
1940 to announce the birth of 260 rabbits. His
seventh appearance finally introduced the audience
to the name Bugs Bunny, which up till then was
only used among the Termite Terrace employees. It
was Chuck Jones' Elmer's Pet Rabbit, released in
January 1941. It was also the first short where he
got top billing. He would soon become the most
prominent of the Looney Tunes characters as his
calm, flippant insouciance endeared him to
American audiences during and after World War II.

Bugs would appear in five more shorts during 1941:
Tortoise Beats Hare, directed by Tex Avery and
featuring the first appearance of Cecil Turtle;
Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt, the first Bugs Bunny
short to be directed by Friz Freleng; All This and
Rabbit Stew, directed by Avery and featuring a
Blackfaceesque stereotype of a Black man as Bugs'
antagonist; The Heckling Hare, the final Bugs
short Avery worked on before defecting to MGM; and
Wabbit Twouble, the first Bugs short directed by
Robert Clampett. Wabbit Twouble was also the first
of four Bugs shorts to feature a chubbier remodel
of Elmer Fudd, a short-lived attempt to have Fudd
more closely resemble his voice actor, comedian
Arthur Q. Bryan.


Popularity during World War II
By 1942, Bugs had become the star of the Merrie
Melodies series, which had originally been
intended only for one-shot shorts. Among Bugs'
1942 shorts included Friz Freleng's The Wabbit
Who Came to Supper, Robert Clampett's The Wacky
Wabbit,and Clampett's Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid
(which introduced Beaky Buzzard). Bugs Bunny Gets
the Boid also marks a slight redesign of Bugs,
making less prominent his front teeth and making
his head look rounder. The man responsible for
this redesign was Robert McKimson at the time
working as an animator under Robert Clampett. The
redesign at first was only used in the shorts
created by Clampett's production team but in time
it would be adopted by the other directors and
their units as well.

Other 1942 Bugs shorts included Chuck Jones' Hold
the Lion, Please, Freleng's Fresh Hare and The
Hare-Brained Hypnotist (which restored Elmer Fudd
to his previous size), and Jones' Case of the
Missing Hare. He also made cameo appearances in
Tex Avery's final Warner Bros. short Crazy
Cruise, and starred in the two-minute United
States war bonds commercial film Any Bonds Today.

Bugs Bunny was popular during the World War II
years because of his bombastic attitude, and began
receiving special star billing in his cartoons by
1943. Like Disney and Famous Studios had been
doing, Warners put Bugs in opposition to the
time's biggest enemies: Adolf Hitler, Herman
Goering, and the Japanese. The 1944 short Bugs
Bunny Nips the Nips, features Bugs at odds with a
group of Japanese soldiers. This cartoon has since
been pulled from distribution due to its extreme
stereotypes.

Among his most notable civilian shorts during this
period are Bob Clampett's Tortoise Wins by a Hare
(the sequel to Tortoise Beats Hare from 1941), A
Corny Concerto, Falling Hare, and What's Cookin'
Doc?; and Chuck Jones' Superman parody
Super-Rabbit, and Friz Freleng's Little Red
Riding Rabbit. The 1944 short Bugs Bunny and the
Three Bears introduced Chuck Jones' The Three
Bears characters.


After the war
 
Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan in Space Jam. 
Bugs Bunny and Jenna Elfman in Looney Tunes: Back
In Action.Since then, Bugs has appeared in
numerous cartoon shorts in the Looney Tunes and
Merrie Melodies series, making his last appearance
in the theatrical cartoons in 1964. Considered an
ideal actor, he was directed by Friz Freleng,
Robert McKimson, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones and
starred in feature films, including Who Framed
Roger Rabbit (which featured the first-ever
meeting between Bugs and his box-office rival
Mickey Mouse), Space Jam (which co-starred Michael
Jordan), and the 2003 movie Looney Tunes: Back In
Action.

The Bugs Bunny short Knighty Knight Bugs (1958),
in which a medieval Bugs Bunny traded blows with
Yosemite Sam and his fire-breathing dragon, won
the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons
of 1958. Three of Chuck Jones' Bugs Bunny
shorts--Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck,
Rabbit, Duck! comprise what is often referred to
as the "Duck Season/Rabbit Season" trilogy, and
are considered among the director's best works.
Jones' 1957 classic, What's Opera, Doc? (1957),
features Bugs and Elmer parodying Wagner's Der
Ring des Nibelungen, and has been deemed
"culturally significant" by the United States
Library of Congress and selected for preservation
in the National Film Registry. It was the first
cartoon short to have achieved this honor. It is
also remembered for Elmer's unique take on "Ride
of the Valkyries:" "Kill the wabbit, kill the
wabbit, kill the wabbit...!"

In the fall of 1960, The Bugs Bunny Show, a
television program which packaged many of the
post-1948 Warners shorts with newly animated
wraparounds, debuted on ABC. The show was
originally aired in prime-time, and after two
seasons it was moved to reruns on Saturday
mornings. The Bugs Bunny Show changed formats
frequently, but it remained on network television
for 40 full years.

When Mel Blanc died in 1989, Joe Alaskey and Billy
West became the new "voices" to Bugs Bunny and
the rest of the Looney Tunes, taking turns doing
the voices at various times.

Bugs has also made appearances in animated holiday
specials including 1980's Bugs Bunny Busting Out
All Over which featured the first new Bugs Bunny
cartoons in 16 years with "Portrait Of The Artist
As a Young Bunny", which features a flashback of
Bugs as a child thwarting a young Elmer Fudd, and
"Spaced Out Bunny", with Bugs being kidnapped by
Marvin the Martian to be a playmate for Hugo the
Abominable Snowman. Also, there have been various
compilation films made by Warner Bros., including
Bugs Bunny, Superstar, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner
Movie, The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie,
Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island, Bugs Bunny's
Third Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales and Daffy Duck's
Quackbusters. He also made guest appearances in
episodes of the 1990s television program Tiny Toon
Adventures as the principal of Acme Looniversity
and the mentor of Babs and Buster Bunny.

Like Mickey Mouse for the Walt Disney Company,
Bugs has served as the mascot for Warner Bros.
Studios and its various divisions.

Bugs made an appearance in the 1990 drug
prevention video Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.

In 1997, Bugs appeared on a U.S. postage stamp.
The stamp is number seven on the list of the ten
most popular U.S. stamps, as calculated by the
number of stamps purchased but not used. A younger
version of Bugs is the main character of Baby
Looney Tunes, which debuted on Cartoon Network in
2002.

Also, Bugs has appeared in numerous video games,
including Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle, Bugs Bunny:
Rabbit Rampage, Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time, and its
sequel, Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters.


Greatest cartoon character
In 2002, TV Guide compiled a list of the 50
greatest cartoon characters of all time as part of
the magazine's 50th anniversary. Bugs Bunny was
given the honor of number 1. [1] [2]

In a CNN broadcast on July 31, 2002, a TV Guide
editor talked about how they went about creating
the list. The editor also talked about Bugs being
named the greatest toon character. As the editor
explained: "his stock...has never gone
down...Bugs is the best example...of the
smart-alec American comic. He not only is a great
cartoon character, he's a great comedian. He was
written well. He was drawn beautifully. He has
thrilled and made many generations laugh. He is
tops." [3]


Ace Bunny
Warner Bros and the developers of the 2005
animated series Loonatics Unleashed developed the
character of Ace Bunny as a a modernized,
superhero successor to Bugs Bunny in the series.
The character was originally going to be called
Buzz Bunny but this was changed due to a
pre-existing trademark. The design of Ace Bunny
was modified and made less menacing than in his
earlier preproduction model appearance, partially
in response to an Internet petition started by a
11 year old Bugs Bunny fan.


Further reading
Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare, by
Joe Adamson (1990), Henry Holt, ISBN 0805018557 
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, by Jerry Beck
and Will Friedwald (1989), Henry Holt, ISBN
0805008942 
Chuck Amuck : The Life and Times of an Animated
Cartoonist by Chuck Jones, published by Farrar
Straus & Giroux, ISBN 0374123489 
That's Not All, Folks! by Mel Blanc, Philip
Bashe. Warner Books, ISBN 0446390895 (Softcover)
ISBN 0446512443 (Hardcover) 
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated
Cartoons, Leonard Maltin, Revised Edition 1987,
Plume ISBN 0452259932 (Softcover) ISBN 061364753X
(Hardcover)