Well, maybe. But it is true that the rabbit, to my surprise as well as the dog’s, did kiss one of them, an act not to be confused in importance with “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” but still, to my knowledge, a rabbit had never kissed a dog before, although I had an aunt who preferred kissing her poodle to kissing me, a source of relief to all concerned.
The development of a major character such as Bugs, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc.—unlike most forms of life—was a hopscotch affair, moving from director to director to director, picking up and dropping comic turns and comedic characteristics of possible use to the mature character. But none of this was deliberate. We not only didn’t know that there was a comic genius brewing in our group, we didn’t even know we were pregnant. For me, certainly, the idea that any film of mine would contribute any useful trait to an immortal cartoon character like Bugs or Daffy would have carried pretentiousness to absolute absurdity.
Besides Prest-o Change-o, our embryonic rabbit went through two other stages before emerging as a highly interesting, surprising, and very funny baby in Tex Avery’s A Wild Hare in 1940:
1st stage: Porky’s Hare Hunt (April 1938). The directorial team of Bugs Hardaway and Cal Dalton tried in this film to adopt the existing and unfinished character of Daffy Duck, including “Woo-woos!” into a rabbit skin. But the Daffy they were imitating bore little or no relationship to the wonderfully suave, grasping, greedy, and altogether wonderful superduck of the future. However, to coin a phrase already coined, “gold and surnames are where you find them.” Our rabbit found his in the following way. There was in residence at the then Schlesinger Studio a character designer named Charles Thorson, who had designed Little Hiawatha and others at Disney. Hardaway asked him to design a rabbit for Porky’s Hare Hunt. Thorson did so and sent back the accompanying model sheet, labeled, naturally enough, “Bugs’ bunny.” Just as he would have labeled it “Chuck’s bunny” if it had been for me. The Curies’ discovery of uranium fades into insignificance in the light of such a historic moment.
Embryonic rabbit—fairly full-fledged Elmer, 1940
2nd stage: Elmer’s Candid Camera (March 1940), direction by some happily long-forgotten director named Charles M. Jones. (Leon Schlesinger thought it undignified to use nicknames, so we were respectively—if not respectfully—Charles M. Jones, I. Freleng, Robert McKimson, Robert Clampett, and Fred Avery. Schlesinger also thought the term “director” undignified, so we appeared on all early credits as “supervisors.”) In this cartoon we find Bugs stumbling, fumbling, and mumbling around, vainly seeking a personality on which to hang his dialogue and action, or—in better words than mine—“walking around with his umbilical in his hand, looking for some place to plug it in.” It is obvious when one views this cartoon, which I recommend only if you are dying to die of ennui, that my conception of timing and dialogue was formed by watching the action in the La Brea tar pits. It would be complimentary to call it sluggish. Not only Bugs suffered at my hands, but difficult as it is to make an unassertive character like Elmer Fudd into a flat, complete schmuck, I managed.
Perhaps the kindest thing to say about Elmer’s Candid Camera is that it taught everyone what not to do and how not to do it.
Ah-ha! Life begins! A baby finally born and the long gestation period is fully justified in:
A Wild Hare (July 1940), directed by Tex Avery. In this film, through the brilliant, wild, and stimulating mind of Tex Avery, we catch a remarkable first glimpse of the possibilities implicit in the personality of Warner Bros. Cartoons’ first true star.
Bugs in transit
Consider the elements that Tex introduced: the incongruously hilarious classic line “What’s up, Doc?” and the sadly hopeful appeal to the audience by Elmer Fudd, “Be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits!”; Bugs’s volatile unpredictability and sudden changes of mood; the quick timing—new to us all—and the utilization of all parts of Bugs’s anatomy (his ears as propellers, for instance; his hand coming out of the hole alone, strolling about on two fingers, checking the carrot and Elmer’s rifle, making a huge take and diving back into the hole). Actually, Tex was exploring not only two divergent characters but also their symbiotic relationship, their need for each other: Bugs Bunny’s agonized theatrical death throes after being “shot” and Elmer’s equally remorseful bewailments are a perfect example of this symbiosis.
So Bugs Bunny could now live happily ever after; the perfect example stood before us. All we had to do was follow Tex’s lead. The only problem was, none of us knew or could figure out what Tex had done right. Including Tex.
Because, in Tex’s second directorial effort with Bugs, in Tortoise Beats Hare (March 1941), after a wonderfully funny opening in which Bugs walks out in front of the main title and credits and reads them aloud—“Fray-ud Av-very; Dave Mon-o-a-han, Char-lus Mack-Himp-sun”—Tex apparently forgot what Bugs was all about, and the tortoise becomes the wisecracking wiseacre, humiliating Bugs at every turn. The tortoise in fact becomes Bugs, and Bugs becomes Elmer Fudd, outwitted and outacted, thereby losing control both of the tortoise-hare race and of the picture itself.
Friz Freleng stepped into the picture in June 1941 with Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt, and he, too, joined Tex and me in not quite understanding what the hell was going on, and he, too, went wide of the mark in understanding Bugs’s persona. Not as wide as I did and Tex did, but ’twas enough, ’twould serve.
Fortunately for all of us, Tex was back on track in July 1941 with The Heckling Hare. As Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald wrote: “Willoughby (a dog) goes hunting Bugs Bunny in a wonderful cartoon, featuring so many classic gags, sequences, and lines that it would be futile to attempt
