Big House Bunny

Big House Bunny
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Airdate:	22 April 1950
Series:	Looney Tunes
MPAA Number:	13436
Production Number:	1115
Vitaphone Number:	1815
Runtime:	7 minutes, 9 seconds
Copyright Renewed:	26 February 1976
Starring:	Bugs Bunny Yosemite Sam
Crew
Voice Characterizations:	Mel Blanc
Director:	I. Freleng
Written By:	Tedd Pierce
Producer:	Eddie Selzer (uncredited)
Animated By:	Virgil Ross Arthur Davis Gerry Chiniquy Ken Champin
Layout Artist:	Hawley Pratt
Background Artist:	Phil DeGuard
Film Editor:	Treg Brown (uncredited)
Musician:	Carl Stalling

Big House Bunny is a 1950 Looney Tunes short directed by I. Freleng.

Plot

Finding a way to avoid the hunters, Bugs digs a tunnel and accidentally winds up in Sing Song Prison. As he tries to walk away, prison guard Sam Schultz attacks Bugs with a billy club, telling him, "Trying to pull an escape, #777174, huh?" Bugs replies, "Oh, you're mistaken, Doc! You see, I'm not #777174 - I'm only 3 1/2." Sam finds this fine, and soon Bugs is in a prison uniform, breaking rocks with the prison number "3 1/2" as Bugs says, "Eh, my mother told me there'd be days like this."

When Sam tells Bugs he'll be in prison for fifty years, Bugs tries to make an escape, telling Sam that a different prisoner is escaping over the wall. Bugs puts his own ball, to which he's chained, in the cannon, which Sam fires, pulling Bugs over the wall. Sam chases after Bugs and brings him back.

When Sam attempts to put Bugs into a jail cell, Bugs pulls a switch by tricking Sam into thinking the outside of the cell is the inside, and vice-versa. This results in Sam being locked up instead. When this ploy fails, Sam vows to place Bugs in solitary confinement for 99 years, to which Bugs replies, "You wouldn't be so tough if you weren't wearing that uniform!" Sam takes the bait and doffs his jacket and cap, while Bugs, in a striped prison tunic and hat, does the same. After a few fight gestures from Sam, Bugs concedes and dons Sam's guard uniform, leaving Sam to unthinkingly wear the prison garb, at which point Bugs summons the guards and gets Sam locked up instead. Although now free to leave through his tunnel, Bugs is having too much fun to quit outsmarting Sam, so, posing as a sympathetic guard, he hands Sam an 'escape kit', complete with map and pickaxe. Sam digs into a jungle and starts walking through it. As soon as he reaches the end of the jungle, he sticks his head out of the plants and hears a loud scream by the warden yelling "SCHULTZ! Just what is the meaning of this?" Behind the office door, the warden yells at Sam, "I won't stand for anymore of your nonsense! Now get out! Out!" Sam leaves the warden's office and mutters, "I hate him." Bugs walks around the prison, turns around, sees Sam running after him, and runs away. Bugs runs up a scaffold and descends like an elevator, and Sam tries to do the same thing but ends up being hanged. Sam yells in angry gibberish, but then the warden yells, "SCHULTZ! OFFICE!"

Sam walks into the warden's office, but it's Bugs disguised as the warden. He tells him to come in, offers him a cigar, and tells him to pull up a chair and sit down. Sam pulls up the electric chair, and Bugs tells him to have a light, but Bugs pulls the switch that turns on the electric chair, and Sam is electrocuted. Bugs takes the cigar out of his mouth but accidentally takes the fake mustache off. Sam notices, takes a bat, jumps on the desk, and tries to hit Bugs with it, but misses. Bugs runs out of the office, and Sam chases him, but Bugs runs back into the office. Sam runs into the office, too, and sees the real warden sitting at the desk, but he still thinks it's Bugs. Sam hits the warden on the head, and a large lump grows on his head when he gets up. Sam takes his hat off and knocks the lump back into his head. In his office, the warden says, "I've had all the tomfoolery I'm taking from you! Quiet! One more slip, you strudel-brained bonehead, and you'll be looking for another job! Now get out! OUT!" Sam walks out with purple eyes, and he has finally had enough. He opens the door, yelling for Bugs to get out. With Bugs gone, Sam is delighted. However, the warden notices Sam letting a criminal escape and yells at Sam over the intercom to head to his office.

Sam, now incarcerated and in a prison uniform breaking rocks, wonders who was the "stool pigeon" who squealed on him. Bugs reveals it was him, then stands on a stool, acting like a pigeon.

Caricatures

• Billy Gray - "I'm only three-and-a-half"

Availability

(1984) VHS
The Looney Tunes Video Show Volume 19

(1993) VHS
Bugs Bunny's Hare-Brained Hits

(1993) LaserDisc
Bugs Bunny Winner by a Hare

(2000) VHS
Mil-Looney-Um 2000 - Bumper Collection

(2003) DVD
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1, Disc One (1998 THIS VERSION, without dubbed notice)

(2003) DVD
Looney Tunes Collection Best of Bugs Bunny

(2009) DVD
Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Volume 2, Disc 1 (part of The Bugs Bunny Show, restored without the opening and closing titles)

(2010) DVD
3 Spooky DVD Treats

(2011) DVD
Bugs Bunny

(2020) DVD
Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny Golden Carrot Collection, Disc 1 (1998 THIS VERSION, without dubbed notice)

(2023) Blu-ray
Caged! (restored)

Streaming

HBO Max (2020) (low pitched, restored, but taken down)

iTunes ( - ) (low pitched, restored)

Censorship

• The entire scene of Bugs running up onto a gallows, pressing a button that lowers him like an elevator, and Sam Schultz doing the same, only to get hanged was cut when aired on Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, ABC, and both the syndicated and the FOX version of The Merrie Melodies Show.
  • The ABC version also cuts the part where Bugs (posing as the warden) offers Sam a cigar and a seat on the electric chair and pulls the lever that activates it.
  • The Merrie Melodies Show version also edits out the part where after Sam is locked in one of the cells, Bugs poses as a crooked prison guard who gives Sam a prison escape kit and Sam tunnels his way out and into his boss' (the warden's) office, though the electric chair scene that ABC edited is left uncut here.
• MeTV airs this short uncut, including the often censored gallows scene.

Goofs

• Sam's ear is color as if it were part of his beard for two frames.
• When Bugs locks the cell that Sam is in, the sound effect is delayed.

Notes

• When this cartoon was used in The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special, the gallows scene was drastically changed. Instead of Sam being hanged after pressing the gallows button, there is brand-new animation added in which he gets launched into the air by a spring platform.
• This cartoon, alongside "What's Up Doc?", "Hillbilly Hare", "Bunker Hill Bunny", and "Bushy Hare" are the only cartoons from 1950 to not get a Blue Ribbon reissue. Coincidentally, all of these cartoons star Bugs Bunny.

Gallery

Lobby card

Lobby card

Bugs as prisoner '3 1/2' warning Sam of a "prisoner escape attempt"

Sam getting hanged, an oft-censored scene on most American TV channels

External links

• "Big House Bunny" at the SFX Resource