This month, Bugs Bunny is TCM’s Star of the Month. No, TCM hasn’t lost their minds. Looney Tunes is joining TCM’s library and this was their way of welcoming Bugs and the gang into the fold. I personally am excited. I love Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny. In fact, I hadn’t watched Looney Tunes for a long time, despite my owning 7 volumes of Looney Tunes shorts and a collection of Bugs Bunny cartoons. TCM’s salute to Bugs, combined with this fairy tales blogathon, allowed me to binge a lot of Looney Tunes shorts and documentaries.
Looney Tunes released over a thousand animated shorts over a span of forty years (1929-1969). These shorts were released under both the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies banners. Both series’ names were take-offs of Disney’s popular Silly Symphonies series. Looney Tunes began in 1930 and Merrie Melodies started in 1931. Originally, the idea was that Looney Tunes would be black and white and feature reoccurring characters. Merrie Melodies would be color and would feature one-off characters. These films would also include Warner Brothers’ music, so they could also serve as advertising for their films. Eventually Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies more or less were the same. Remember, the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons used to air in the theater prior to the main feature film. I wish they’d show cartoons before the movies. It’d be way better than seeing actual commercials in the theater.
Many of the shorts released were either film parodies or spoofs of popular stories, like fairy tales and fables. Over the course of forty years, many directors and animators were at the helm. This led to different versions of the same source material, but involved a different Looney Tunes character as the star or a different spin on the material. The gang at Termite Terrace (the nickname given to the Warner Brothers’ animators less than stellar accommodations) would never deign to do a straight telling of a familiar tale. I’m not even going to attempt to talk about all of them, but I will touch on a few of my favorites.
“The Three Little Bops” (1957). This short is my absolute favorite Looney Tunes take on a fairy tale. It is perfection. As one can infer from the title, this is a take on “The Three Little Pigs.” Everyone is familiar with the story of The Three Little Pigs. The Big Bad Wolf is after the Three Little Pigs. The first little pig builds a house out of straw. The wolf easily destroys the house and eats the pig. The second pig had built a house out of sticks. He too, has his house destroyed and is eaten by the wolf. The third little pig builds a house out of brick. The wolf is unable to destroy the house using the same means he used on the straw and stick house. Frustrated and unwilling to accept defeat, the wolf goes down the chimney. However, the little pig anticipated the wolf’s next move and places a hot boiling kettle of water inside the fireplace. The wolf enters the home and the hot water and is boiled alive. The pig eats him.
Thankfully, “The Three Little Bops” does not stay completely true to the original fable. None of the Three Little Pigs are eaten. Instead, they are part of a hot jazz trio. The wolf is desperate to get into their club and be part of their band, however, he’s a square and too stiff. His trumpet playing just isn’t hot. The Three Little Pigs kick him out of the House of Straw for being lame. Insulted, the wolf uses his trumpet to blow the club down.
The Three Little Pigs move onto the Dew Drop Inn, the House of Sticks. Again, they play in their hot trio and again the wolf tries to get in on the action. He’s again thrown out for being lame. The wolf is insulted again, and again, uses his trumpet to blow the club down. The Three Little Pigs move to the House of Bricks.
The wolf keeps trying to get into the House of Bricks, but to no avail. He tries a battering ram, He tries to masquerade as a band member wearing a fur coat and playing the Charleston on a ukulele, he tries to dress as a plant. Nothing works. Angry and desperate, the wolf decides he’ll use the ever popular TNT to blow up the club. However, he ends up blowing himself up and is killed. The wolf’s spirit does not ascend to Heaven. Instead, he is in Hell. But the bright side is, now he’s hot and a great jazz trumpet player. His spirit rises up through the floor and the wolf is finally part of The Three Little Bops. I’m glad that the Three Little Bops don’t eat him.
I love this short. The jazz music is fantastic. The art work is excellent. The story is a lot of fun. Stan Freberg also does excellent voice work as the hip narrator.
“Little Red Riding Rabbit” (1944). This short is the familar tale of that fairy tale, “Little Red Riding Hood.” In the original story, Little Red Riding Hood is a young girl, donning a hooded red cape, is walking with a basket of goodies for her grandmother who is sick. Riding Hood must walk through woods to get to her grandmother’s home. She is spotted by a wolf who decides that he is interested in both the basket of goodies (cake or wine) and Riding Hood herself. He approaches Riding Hood and suggests that she pick some flowers to bring to her grandmother. While she is off looking for flowers, the wolf goes to the grandmother’s home. He pretends to be Riding Hood to gain entry to the house. He eats the grandmother and then disguises himself as the grandmother and climbs into her bed. Riding Hood arrives. She questions her “grandmother’s” appearance, which eventually culminates with the wolf eating her too.
In “Little Red Riding Rabbit,” we meet “Riding Hood” a loud, shrill bobbysoxer teen who is singing popular song, “Five O’Clock Whistle.” In her basket, instead of the cake or wine from the original tale, Riding Hood has a rabbit to bring to her grandmother. Of course, the rabbit is none other than Bugs Bunny, so we expect some hijinks. Riding Hood’s trip is delayed when she’s tricked into taking an unusually long shortcut by the wolf. In the Looney Tales tale, Riding Hood’s grandmother isn’t sick, she’s working the swing shift at Lockheed. It’s World War II after all. There’s a funny bit where the wolf dresses up in grandmother’s nightgown to hide in her bed and there are already four other wolves there. He kicks them all out, and then finds a little tiny wolf hidden under the pillow! LOL. Eventually Riding Hood arrives. HEY GRANDMA! I BROUGHT A LITTLE BUNNY RABBIT FOR YOU TO HAVE! She yells. The wolf’s interest is piqued. Forget about Riding Hood, he wants Bugs.
In a hilarious change of events, the wolf is no longer interested in following the Red Riding Hood script. He couldn’t care less about Riding Hood. He only wants that Rabbit. Bugs tries to out run and out trick the wolf. Riding Hood, however, keeps interrupting the wolf and Bugs, with her “oh grandma what big eyes you have” type script–a desperate (or perhaps oblivious) attempt to get the story back on track. At first, her interruptions help Bugs, but eventually even he is irritated and joins forces with the wolf! I also love in Looney Tunes how the wolf from Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs, and any other stories with a “big bad wolf” is always the same wolf and he seems to have recollection of his actions in those other stories.
HONORABLE MENTION: “Red Hot Riding Hood” (1943). This cartoon isn’t technically Looney Tunes. It’s actually MGM. However, I am listing it here, because it was directed by Tex Avery who directed Looney Tunes cartoons prior to working at MGM. This cartoon is pretty funny. This is a more risqué interpretation of the “Little Red Riding Hood” tale that I described above. The cartoon starts with the standard Little Red Riding Hood story. Riding Hood is carrying a basket of goodies to her sick grandmother. There’s a wolf. Blah. Blah. Blah.
Suddenly, Riding Hood, the grandmother, and the wolf stop performing and start complaining that the story is boring and it’s already been done. The narrator agrees and the cartoon starts over with a new title, “Red Hot Riding Hood.” The locale has changed from a forest to a city hot spot. Riding Hood, now called “Red,” is now an adult and appears to be working at a burlesque house, or at the very least, is a sexy nightclub performer. The wolf is a swinger who moves from club to club looking to hook up with the ladies. Grandma is the hip proprietor of a club. She is also hot to trot and wants to get with the wolf almost immediately. The wolf hits on Red and she’s not interested. She manages to get away from him and heads to Grandma’s. This cartoon has an insane ending where the wolf kills himself after swearing off women and spotting Red again.
Tortoise and the Hare Trilogy: “Tortoise Beats Hare” (1941), “Tortoise Wins by a Hare” (1943), and “Rabbit Transit” (1947). This trilogy is the classic tortoise and the hare fable. In Aesop’s original fable, a hare constantly harasses the slow-moving tortoise. Fed up, the tortoise challenges the hare to a race. When the race starts, the over-confident hare takes off, leaving the tortoise in the dust. He’s so confident in fact, he takes a nap. The hare awakes just in time to see the tortoise crossing the finish line.
In the Looney Tunes’ shorts, the hare-esque Bugs Bunny plays the cocky and arrogant opponent to Cecil the turtle. The first installment of the short plays just as Aesop’s Fable, except that Bugs and Cecil also make a monetary bet and we see Cecil arrange a prank with his turtle buddies to play a trick on Bugs. As Bugs rounds each checkpoint of the course, he is shocked to see Cecil there. Eventually, he gets to the finish line, only to see that Cecil has won. While Bugs does pay up, he is skeptical and wonders if Cecil cheated. We then see Cecil and his turtle friends all holding dollar bills. This ending does somewhat go against the lesson learned in the fable, but it’s funny.
In the second installment, Bugs Bunny is still trying to figure out how Cecil beat him. Bugs deduces that it was Cecil’s shell which gave him the advantage over rabbits. He challenges Cecil to a rematch. Bugs even goes as far as to build his own shell to use in the race. Somehow, the rabbit mob gets wind of the rematch and bets a large sum of money on Bugs winning and Cecil losing. The race starts and Bugs Bunny gets a sizeable lead. He then puts on his Cecil costume to continue the race. Except the mob spot him, think he’s a turtle and start beating him up. Meanwhile, Cecil puts on a Bugs Bunny costume and ends up helped to the finish line by the rabbit mob. Bugs Bunny is disgusted, removes his Cecil costume to reveal that the mob just helped Cecil win.
In the final installment, Bugs and Cecil’s story is retconned and the previous two altercations between Bugs and Cecil never happened. Bugs is reading Aesop’s “The Tortoise and the Hare” and is incensed at the ending, insisting that a hare would never lose to a tortoise. Cecil scoffs, saying that the ending is believable. Bugs challenges Cecil to a race. They also mutually agree not to cheat. We then discover that Cecil has a motor installed in his shell. Eventually Bugs wins the race, but is tricked by Cecil into admitting that he was easily going over 100 mph. Cecil has Bugs arrested. Because of course.
“Bewitched Bunny” (1954). This is the Looney Tunes send up of the classic German Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel are siblings who live alone in a forest. They attract the attention of a witch, who lives in a house made of bread, sugar, and cake. The witch has built the home to attract the attention of the children, because she wants to eat them. Taking advantage of the children’s loneliness, cold, and hunger, the witch lures them with food and the promise of a warm home and cozy beds. She then spends the next few weeks fattening them up until they are good enough to eat. Eventually Gretel wises up and shoves the witch into the oven when she was about to do the same to her.
Bugs Bunny seems to be at the forefront of all of these fairy tale spoofs. This cartoon also features Witch Hazel. Witch Hazel is a very proud witch who prides herself on her ugliness and needs constant reassurance from her magic mirror that nobody else is uglier than her. However, one day, her confidence is shattered when her mirror announces that an even uglier witch has arrived. This ugly witch is actually Bugs Bunny in a Halloween costume. While trick or treating, Bugs spots Witch Hazel coaxing young Hansel and Gretel into her home. Hansel and Gretel speak with German accents in case there was any doubt about their story’s heritage. There is a funny, albeit somewhat morbid scene where Witch Hazel is reading a cookbook about cooking children that includes recipes like “Moppet Muffins,” “Waif Waffles,” and my personal favorite, “Smorgas Boy.”
To save the children, Bugs Bunny poses as a truant officer and comes to Witch Hazel’s door. There’s a running gag with Bugs and other characters being confused about Hansel’s name. I’m not sure what that was about. Unfortunately for Bugs Bunny, Witch Hazel becomes more interesting in eating him when she realizes that he’s not in fact a truant officer, but rather a rabbit. At one point, Bugs Bunny is asleep and he is awoken by Prince Charming’s kiss. Bugs tells him that he’s in the wrong story and Snow White (another Brothers Grimm tale) isn’t there. He then tells the Prince that he’s in Hansel and Gretel. The Prince is also confused about Hansel’s name. Witch Hazel busts in, she’s found Bugs Bunny. Bugs grabs some sort of potion from behind the “In case of emergency, break glass” and throws it at Witch Hazel. The potion transforms her into a gorgeous woman–her worst nightmare! Bugs then has a wild ending line about Witch Hazel’s transformation “Aren’t they (women) all witches inside?” Yikes, Bugs Bunny!
“Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears” (1944). This is a re-telling of the classic British fairy tale, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In the original story, a young woman with golden locks of hair more or less burglarizes the home of the three bears: Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. She tries each bear’s porridge, one is too hot, one is too cold, and one is just right and she eats it. She then sits in their chairs, one is too hard, one is too soft, one is just right and she breaks it. Finally, Goldilocks is exhausted and decides to sleep. Again, one bed is too hard, one bed is too soft, and one bed is just right. The three bears come home to find Goldilocks asleep in baby bear’s bed. She awakens and runs out of the home. Never to be seen again.
In the Bugs Bunny version, the Three Bears having already gone through the aforementioned Goldilocks situation, want to entice her to come back to their home because they’re starving. They decide to use carrot soup as bait. The Three Bears then pretend to leave, thinking that Goldilocks will return if she thinks the house is empty. Instead, the aroma of the carrot soup attracts the attention of Bugs Bunny and he ends up the Goldilocks of the story.
The Three Bears are unable to capture Bugs Bunny as planned. As a means to escape, Bugs compliments Mama Bear. However, this woman is obviously starved for affection from her husband, because she takes to Bugs very quickly and showers him with kisses and affection. Mama won’t keep her hands off of him. There’s a very funny scene where Bugs opens each and every door trying to escape. Behind each door is Mama in a seductive costume, one of which appears to be a Veronica Lake-type look. Mama continues her lust for Bugs all the way through the ending credits.
The Three Bears were used in multiple shorts by the Looney Tunes. In another short, the family is completely dysfunctional and out of control. They’re like a bizarro version of The Berenstain Bears, if there was no Sister Bear.