The Hole Idea

A scientist, Professor Calvin Q. Calculus, successfully creates a portable hole invention, despite disapproval from his nagging wife. He displays his creation in a newsreel, showcasing the various uses for a portable hole: Rescuing a baby from a safe, cheating at your golf game, giving dogs a new place to bury their bones and escaping from housework. Spurred by the film, a thief, later called Holey Terror by the press, steals Calvin's portable hole and uses it for criminal purposes, including emptying Fort Knox and abducting a dancing girl from a burlesque house. However, he is chased by the police, who fall through another of his holes. He even tried to escape by using a very large portable hole, but ended up becoming a train tunnel exit as he would later be chased by a train. The police continue to chase Terror, until he is backed against a wall; he uses the last portable hole in the briefcase to go through the wall and seemingly escape, but the other side is inside a prison. Holey Terror at last is caught. Calvin reads about the arrest in the paper and is glad and tells his audience that crime does not pay, but Calvin's domineering wife chews him out for not treating her right. In retaliation, Calvin creates one more portable hole and throws it on the floor. The wife steps in it and falls through it. After a few seconds, The Devil comes up the portable hole, throws her back to Earth, and replies, "Isn't it bad enough down there without her?"

Television[]

The Bugs Bunny Show (1960-1968; 1971-1975)
The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (1968-1971; 1975-1976)
The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (1976-1983)
The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour (1985-1986)
The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (1986-1988)
Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon (1988-1995)
The Bugs and Daffy Show [Cartoon Network] (1997-2004)
The Bugs Bunny Show [TBS] (1997)
Acme Hour [Cartoon Network] (1998-2003)
Toonheads [Cartoon Network] (1998-2003)
The Bugs Bunny Show [Boomerang] (2000-2002)
The Looney Tunes Show [Cartoon Network] (2001-2004)
Looney Tunes on Boomerang (2003-2005)
Looney Tunes on Cartoon Network (2009-2010)
Toon In with Me [Me TV] (2021-present)

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Censorship[]

In ABC's The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, the sequence with the newsreel showing different uses for the portable hole was edited to remove the scene where the portable hole is used to get a baby out of a locked safe.

Notes[]

Robert McKimson was the sole animator on the short as this was during the time he was re-assembling his unit after the brief 1953 shutdown of Warner Bros. Cartoons.
This is the first short Robert McKimson directed with his new unit.
This color short contains black-and-white sequences simulating an old-fashioned newsreel.
The start of the newsreel contains the credits “Camera: Selzer” and “Narration: Moray”, references to producer Eddie Selzer, and Norman Moray, a key executive with The Vitaphone Corporation, Warner Bros'. short-subject division. His name was also used in “”Rocket Squad””.
This short was used in the special Bugs Bunny's Lunar Tunes.
This was the final short to feature the voice of Bea Benaderet.