Bugs Bunny - Misplaced Pages

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The fictional cartoon character Bugs Bunny was "born" in 1940 in Brooklyn, New York (or so his bio says), but his accent, according to his real-life voice, Mel Blanc, is an equal blend of someone from the Bronx and someone from Brooklyn. He soon wound up on the Warner Brothers studio lot.

According to film and animation historians, Bugs Bunny was originally seen in early Warner Bros. cartoons as an insane rabbit, cast in the image of the equally nutty Daffy Duck. He was given the name "Bugs" by the Termite Terrace animators in honor of his creator, Ben "Bugs" Hardaway. Early cartoons featuring the character include Elmer's Candid Camera by Chuck Jones, though his true personality first emerged in 1940 when he made his first feature appearance in Tex Avery's A Wild Hare (1940). It was in this cartoon that he emerged from his rabbit hole to ask Elmer Fudd, "What's Up Doc?" His calm, flippant insouciance endeared him to American audiences during and after World War II.

He appeared in numerous cartoon shorts in the Looney Tunes series as well as a Saturday morning and syndicated animated series. Considered an ideal actor, he was directed by Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones and starred in feature films, including Space Jam which co-starred Michael Jordan.

He is noted for his feuds with Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, 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 likes 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 3 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. When Bugs meets other characters who are also "winners", however, like Cecil the Turtle or, in WWII, the Gremlin, his record is rather dismal; his overconfidence tends to work against him.

The Bugs Bunny short, Knighty Knight Bugs, in which a medieval Bugs Bunny traded blows with Yosemite Sam (as the Black Knight) and his fire-breathing dragon, was awarded an Oscar. What's Opera, Doc?', Chuck Jones' cartoon starring Bugs and Elmer parodying Wagner's Ring, has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was, at the time, the only cartoon short to have achieved this honour.

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