Porky's Hare Hunt

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Porky's Hare Hunt
Bugs Bunny debut.PNG
Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny (Happy Rabbit)
Directed byBen Hardaway
Story byHoward Baldwin
Produced byLeon Schlesinger
Music byCarl W. Stalling
Animation byVolney White
Color processBlack-and-white
Production
company
Leon Schlesinger Studios
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date
  • April 30, 1938 (1938-04-30)
Running time
8:00
LanguageEnglish

Porky's Hare Hunt is a 1938 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated short film directed by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway and an uncredited Cal Dalton,[1] which stars Porky Pig as a hunter whose quarry is a rabbit named Happy.[2] The short was released on April 30, 1938.[3]

This cartoon marked the first appearance of the rabbit that would evolve into Bugs Bunny, who is barely recognizable compared to his more familiar later form. Bugs' first official appearance would come two years later in A Wild Hare.

Plot[]

Several rabbits are eating carrots and ruining crops. Another rabbit warns them to evacuate by saying "Jiggers, fellers!" Soon, Porky and his dog meet this rabbit and try to outwit him in the forest. Porky and the rabbit get in a long, long fight and soon the hare thinks he has won the battle. However Porky finds the rabbit and he doesn't have any brainstorms to protect him. The rabbit shows Porky a photo of himself and of how many children he has with his wife. However, when Porky's about to shoot him, the gun fails.

After Porky attempts to shoot down and procure the rabbit, he asks Porky: "Do you have a hunting license?" As Porky reaches for his pocket to obtain the document, the hyper-hare suddenly snatches it out of Porky's grasp, rips it in two, remarks, "Well you haven't got one now!" and makes a getaway by twisting his ears as though they were a helicopter propeller, flying away. But Porky suddenly throws a rock at the hovering hare which sends him crashing into a haystack. He emerges from the stack appearing injured, but suddenly grabs Porky and says (in an imitation of Groucho Marx's line from Duck Soup), "Of course, you know that this means war!" He then starts marching like one of the spirits of '76. Ultimately, the rabbit wins when Porky throws dynamite into the cave in which the rabbit is hiding and he throws the dynamite back at him. Later, Porky is in the hospital and the rabbit comes to him with some flowers. Porky tells the rabbit that he'll be out in a few days. "That's what YOU think!", the rabbit declares, and then he pulls on the anvil in Porky's bed, adding insult to injury to the hapless hunter and runs off into the distance laughing.

Production[]

The rabbit's hyperactive personality and laugh provided by Mel Blanc predated the 1940 Walter Lantz/Universal Pictures release Knock Knock which starred Andy Panda and introduced cartoon audiences to Woody Woodpecker, who was created for the Lantz studio by Hardaway after his departure from the Leon Schlesinger/Warner Bros. studio.

Music[]

The incidental music heard throughout the piece are scored arrangements of "Bei Mir Bistu Shein", a popular song which was a hit for The Andrews Sisters around this time, and "Hooray for Hollywood," from the contemporary motion picture Hollywood Hotel.

Home media[]

Rediscovered colorized version[]

The redrawn colorized version was long considered to be a lost cartoon, until the redrawn was found on a recorded tape and uploaded on the Internet Archive on April 30, 2021, exactly 83 years after the short premiered in theaters.[4]

References[]

  1. ^ Jones, Chuck (1989). Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 195. ISBN 0-374-52620-6. 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-hoos!” into a rabbit skin.
  2. ^ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 70. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
  3. ^ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 124–126. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  4. ^ Leon Schlesinger Productions, Color Systems Incorporated (1938-04-30), Porky's Hare Hunt (1938, Redrawn Colorized, Full Cartoon), retrieved 2021-05-04

External links[]

Preceded by
None
 Bugs Bunny Cartoons
1938 		Succeeded by
Retrieved from ""