Bushy Hare

Bushy Hare
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Airdate:	18 November 1950
Series:	Looney Tunes
MPAA Number:	13382
Production Number:	1131
Vitaphone Number:	1873
Runtime:	7 minutes, 19 seconds
Copyright Renewed:	11 March 1977
Starring:	Bugs Bunny Hippety Hopper Gracie
Crew
Voice Characterizations:	Mel Blanc
Director:	Robert McKimson
Written By:	Warren Foster
Producer:	Eddie Selzer (uncredited)
Animated By:	Charles McKimson Rod Scribner Phil DeLara John Carey J.C. Melendez Manuel Perez (uncredited)
Layout Artist:	Cornett Wood
Background Artist:	Richard H. Thomas
Film Editor:	Treg Brown (uncredited)
Musician:	Carl Stalling

Bushy Hare is a 1950 Looney Tunes short directed by Robert McKimson.

Title

The title is a play on "bushy hair" along with aborigines stereotypically being from "the bush" country.

Plot

Bugs pops out in Golden Gate Park and encounters a man whom he initially thinks is a 'bad guy', but who asks Bugs to hold on to his balloons while he ties his shoelaces. Bugs complies, but soon finds himself drifting off into the ocean. After commenting that "something's gotta happen pretty soon", that 'something' is a stork delivering a baby joey to a kangaroo. The joey bears a strong resemblance to Hippety Hopper, a McKimson character. After a mix-up in a cloud, where Bugs is switched with the joey, Bugs finds himself in Australia, dropped into a Gracie's pouch.

Bugs at first tries walking away from the Gracie, but feels guilty after the Gracie starts crying and reluctantly agrees to be its 'baby' (a gag used before by McKimson in "Gorilla My Dreams"). After a wild ride inside the Gracie's pouch, Bugs tries walking, but is soon felled by a boomerang thrown by an aborigine, whom Bugs later calls "Nature Boy". Bugs tries throwing the boomerang away (commenting, "that thing can give you a conclusion of the brain"), but is hit again and is soon chased by 'Nature Boy'. The aborigine thinks he's stabbing Bugs in a rabbit hole, but Bugs winds up kicking him in the hole instead. An attempt to shoot Bugs with a dart similarly backfires. Eventually, Bugs is chased by 'Nature Boy', first in a canoe, Where Nature Boy sits and rows in the rear, on the Billabong, (A large pond or lake), through the Tunnel of Love {"Gosh, Nature, I didn't know you cared"}, and then goes up a cliff, where he and 'Nature Boy' fight in Gracie's pouch, before the aborigine is kicked out and knocked off the cliff. The joey then floats down and into the Gracie's pouch.

Gracie and her son agree to give Bugs a lift back to the United States, with a speedboat motor attached to the Gracie's tail. The cartoon ends with Bugs telling the joey to "batten down the hatches!" When the joey replies, "I did batten them down!" Bugs replies, quoting Lou Costello, "Well, batten them down again! We'll teach those hatches!"

Caricatures

• Lou Costello - "Well, batten them down again!"

Availability

(2010) DVD
Looney Tunes Super Stars' Bugs Bunny: Hare Extraordinaire (restored)

(2013) DVD
Looney Tunes Super Stars 3-Pack, Disc 1

(2014) DVD
Looney Tunes Super Stars Family Multi-Feature, Disc 1

Streaming

HBO Max Latin America / Brazil (2021 - 2024)

Censorship

• When this short aired on Nickelodeon, the sequence of Nature Boy stabbing the hole Bugs is allegedly in and Bugs shrieking in agony was edited to remove Bugs moaning to Nature Boy to let him die, Nature Boy stabbing the hole with more sadistic vigor, and Bugs getting so mad at Nature Boy that he kicks him in the hole and tickles his feet.
• This cartoon was part of the "Twelve Missing Hares" that were barred from airing on Cartoon Network's June 2001 Bugs marathon due to featuring a stereotypical Australian Aboriginal hunter that would be deemed offensive to modern audiences. As with the other members of the "Twelve Missing Hares" as described in the unreleased ToonHeads episode, it was originally intended to air in the marathon, but was pulled due to executive backlash from AOL Time Warner. After Looney Tunes was last run on Nickelodeon, the short did not air on American television until 2021, when MeTV aired the short uncut on Saturday Morning Cartoons. This makes "Bushy Hare" one of three "Missing Hares" that have aired on MeTV, with the other two being "What's Cookin' Doc?" and "Frigid Hare".

Notes

• This is the only cartoon where Hippety Hopper speaks; he has one line in a cameo at the end.
  • This is also the only cartoon where Hippety is not paired with Sylvester and/or Sylvester Junior.
• This cartoon, alongside "Big House Bunny", "What's Up Doc?", "Hillbilly Hare", and "Bunker Hill Bunny" are the only cartoons from 1950 to not get a Blue Ribbon reissue. Coincidentally, all of these cartoons star Bugs Bunny.
• This is the first short involving Bugs Bunny visiting Australia, but the only time he visits the Australian mainland. He would return four years later where he visits the Australian island of Tasmania and encounters the Tasmanian Devil for the first time in "Devil May Hare".
  • Both shorts, coincidentally, were directed by Robert McKimson.

Gallery

Animator draft along with two other drafts for "Easter Yeggs" and "Hare We Go"

Lobby card