Yes. Bugs was well on his way, and he might have retained his early, Harpo Marx–Groucho Marx-like personality if Tex Avery had not left for M-G-M. But in the hopscotch manner described earlier, Bugs was gradually becoming a more complex character. The writers and directors were all beginning to realize that we had the potential of a brilliant and lasting star on our hands, a rambunctious, unbridled, and often balky baby Bugs that needed now to grow, to smooth out; we must find out how to harness that energy without destroying the spirit and how to guide the child without steering it.
A Wild Hare had certainly won all filmic baby contests so far, but he was still a baby, still incomplete. It was up to us to find out, during the painful growth period—babyhood through childhood—so nervously recognizable to all parents. We had to find out who Bugs was. We already knew what he was.
While learning to walk in a way demonstrative of his unique personality, Bugs went through a period of wild awkwardness before settling into the self-contained studied attitudes peculiar to him, so that his every movement is Bugs and Bugs only, just as his speech developed from a kind of vaudevillian patois loaded with “deses” and “doses” to a fully cadenced speech in which he studiously inserts an occasional “ain’t” in the same casual way as an Oxford graduate does.
In short, all fat had to be removed from his dialogue, his figure, and his behavior. We were, in volleying Bugs back and forth from director to director, developing the heart and muscles of a mature and believable character.
I think we all would have been embarrassed if one of us had tried to state what was happening in philosophic or logical terms. Logic and philosophy were certainly there, underlying the growth of our characters. But we were shy of pontification as well as of aesthetic theorizing or critique. Only in retrospect can we see that there was a deep and innocent knowledge forming within this heterogeneous and varied crew, and that knowledge produced the atmosphere for all the other characters who grew to maturity during those same years, between 1941 and 1950, and beyond. During those years we learned what was funny without analyzing why it was funny, and, even more important, what was not funny.
So Bugs Bunny was in the good hands of parents who loved and admired him, who were good-humored and constantly surprised and pleased by his antics and by those of his playfellows, just as all good and sensible parents are, and who were just as uncertain as parents are about our contributions to the children’s growth. Nevertheless, we watched carefully for that flash of individuality, that spark of the unusual, that happy accident that could be encouraged and developed into the interesting, stimulating, and sympathetic adult we would all like our children to become.
Great comedians are always sympathetic; Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, Jack Benny, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams are not stand-up comedians. It is not what they say, it is always how they say it that evokes sympathy, laughter, and affection. And each is discrete; we can recognize their individual attitudes and characteristics so well that they can be imitated by having those characteristics copied—the mark of all great comedians.
Great comic lines are seldom funny in themselves, which would be a death knell to the stand-up comedian, because he is tickling your ear, not your heart. Jack Benny’s “Well.” is hardly a funny line in itself; it is funny in the context of his personality, just as “What’s up, Doc?” is not humorous in and of itself. It is very funny in the context of a scene that has been carefully and incongruously structured to make the line an absurdity. One does not, after all, stroll up to a hunter pouring bullets into one’s domicile and, after a casual nip at a carrot, just as casually inquire, “What’s up, Doc?” Daffy Duck’s perfectly logical report to the audience—“Pronoun trouble”—has in the abstract no meaning at all, rational or humorous, without an elaborate and frustrating harangue between Daffy and Bugs Bunny over the ever present Duck Season?/Rabbit Season? dilemma.
Bugs “Daffy Duck” Bunny
and bewildered Elmer
and Daffy “Bugs Bunny” Duck: RABBIT FIRE (1951)
In SUPER-RABBIT (1943) I began to get some remote idea of what Bugs Bunny was all about
Humorous dialogue, we discovered, is not what is said; it is where it is said, how it is said, who is doing the saying, and who are the characters involved and/or physically or verbally responsive to that dialogue. Where would the insane common sense of Groucho be without the beautiful illogic of Chico, or the unpredictable but also logical response of Harpo: “Three cheers for Captain Spaulding” not only becomes “Three chairs for Captain Spaulding”; the chairs appear too. Yes, underlying all humor is the necessary logic, believability, and ultimate sympathy that is the touchstone of humor.
But the discovery that these were not philosophic but entirely practical matters led me struggling and squirming down that rabbit hole until I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Each of the following films contributed something to my knowledge of Bugs Bunny as I saw and could understand him:
CASE OF THE MISSING HARE (DECEMBER 1942)
SUPER-RABBIT (APRIL 1943)
HARE CONDITIONED (AUGUST 1945)
And when as a director I did burst forth, I found awaiting me a rabbit far different from Tex Avery’s wild hare. Why was this necessary? Because I am not Tex Avery. (The Greek chorus moans: “More’s the pity.”) I could not animate a character I could laugh at but could not understand. A wild wild hare was not for me; what I needed was a character with the spicy, somewhat erudite introspection of a Professor Higgins, who, when nettled or threatened, would respond with the swagger of D’Artagnan as played by Errol Flynn, with the articulate quick-wittedness of Dorothy Parker—in other words, the Rabbit of
