Homeless Hare

Homeless Hare
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Airdate:	11 March 1950 Blue Ribbon reissue: 16 June 1962
Series:	Merrie Melodies
MPAA Number:	13025
Production Number:	1107
Vitaphone Number:	1821
Runtime:	7 minutes, 5 seconds
Copyright Renewed:	11 March 1977
Starring:	Bugs Bunny
Crew
Voice Characterizations:	Mel Blanc John T. Smith (uncredited)
Director:	Charles M. Jones
Written By:	Michael Maltese
Producer:	Eddie Selzer (uncredited)
Animated By:	Phil Monroe Ben Washam Ken Harris Lloyd Vaughan Emery Hawkins (uncredited)
Layout Artist:	Robert Gribbroek
Background Artist:	Peter Alvarado
Film Editor:	Treg Brown (uncredited)
Musician:	Carl Stalling

Homeless Hare is a 1950 Merrie Melodies short directed by Chuck Jones.

Plot

Bugs wakes after a long night to find that a burly construction worker, whom Bugs derisively calls "Hercules", has just shoveled up his rabbit hole near a highrise building being built. Bugs kindly asks the construction worker to put his hole back; the worker seemingly complies but then simply dumps Bugs and the dirt into a dump truck. Bugs angrily shouts "Hey, you big gorilla! Haven't you ever heard of the sanctity of the American home?" before the worker dumps another mound of earth on him and the truck hauls him away.

But when the gleeful worker exits the crane, Bugs calls him from the building under construction, "Yoo hoo! Hercules! Here's a message for ya!" He drops a brick on him, along with a telegram labeled "Eastern Onion" reading "Okay Hercules... You asked for it... Bugs Bunny," then a steel girder, and then plays with the elevator controls when the angry worker is inside the elevator in his attempt to get to Bugs. Eventually, Bugs accidentally breaks the lever operating the elevator, which launches the worker extremely high in the sky that he eventually comes face-to-face with a passing dove. The dazed worker points at the dove until after regaining senses and realizing he is standing hundreds of feet in midair, he falls from his great height and into a tub of wet cement that a smaller bespectacled worker is filling.

Bugs, now disguised as a foreman, berates the worker for “laying down on the job“ and orders him work on an unfinished brick wall. The befuddled worker complies and begins construction on the wall per Bug’s instructions, erecting it hundreds of feet high and adding boards, pipes, and steel girders tied together at an extremely fast rate. Soon, the exhausted worker reaches the 103rd floor of the building project next to him, standing on his last wooden plank on one side with only a small pile of bricks on the other end to keep the plank evenly balanced. Bugs emerges from the elevator of the building project and begins removing the bricks in gradual increments from the plank, forcing the worker to remove his clothes in an attempt to keep the plank evenly balanced. Eventually Bugs removes all the bricks completely, sending the worker falling and hitting his head on another girder, where he is accidentally painted in the face by the bespectacled worker.

As Bugs muses that he hopes the worker has learned his lesson, the worker manages to get the better of Bugs, knocking him out temporarily by slamming a hanging girder in his face. After the worker walks away in jeering laughter, Bugs wakes with strange fits and walks oddly through a harrowing series of moving girders and other objects, finally regaining his senses when he falls into a barrel full of water. Bugs recovers and sees the worker taking the lunch of the timid bespectacled worker for himself and sending the hapless man back to work. infuriated by this, Bugs takes a look at the floor plans for the building, then drops a single red-hot rivet down a hole, which bounces around through an elaborate maze of objects, until it burns through a rope holding up a giant steel pipe. The pipe then falls on top of the worker, who echoes Candy Candido's radio catchphrase, "I'm feelin' mighty low." Bugs says, "Do I get my home back, or do I have to get tough?" The worker finally waves the white flag in defeat. The next shot is of the finished skyscraper, with a slight indentation in the middle. At the bottom, Bugs sits in his hole, the building has been built around it, and declares, "After all, a man's home is his castle."

Caricatures

• Candy Candido - "I'm feelin' mighty low"

Availability

(1984) VHS
The Looney Tunes Video Show Volume 10

(1990) VHS
The Anniversary Cartoon Collection

(1996) VHS
Stars of Space Jam: Bugs Bunny

(1997) LaserDisc
Japanese Looney Tunes LaserDiscs Bugs Bunny

(1997) VHS
Special Bumper Collection (Vol. 5)

(2005) DVD
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc One

(2005) DVD
White Heat

(2005) DVD
Looney Tunes Collection Best of Bugs Bunny Volume 3

(2013) Blu-ray
White Heat (same print as Golden Collection: Volume 3)

(2014) DVD
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 8 Disc 1

(2018) DVD
Stars of Space Jam: Bugs Bunny

(2018) DVD
Stars of Space Jam Collection Volume 1

(2018) DVD
Looney Tunes Collection Volume 3

(2020) Blu-ray
Young Man with a Horn (in HD)

(2020) DVD
Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny Golden Carrot Collection

Streaming

iTunes ( - ) (restored)

Max (2024 - 2025) (restored)

Tubi (2025 -)

Censorship

• On ABC, the part where Bugs throws a brick to the construction worker's head with a message attached was edited to remove the brick actually making contact with his head and the shot of the brick on the construction worker's face before he rips the note off and reads it.

Notes

• The original "Bugs Bunny In" title to the cartoon was replaced when it was reissued. This also happened to "Hot Cross Bunny", "Knights Must Fall", and "Rabbit Hood" when these shorts were reissued.
• This cartoon was shown in theatres with Perfect Stranger during its original release.
• This cartoon was later remade as "No Parking Hare". That cartoon would be directed by Robert McKimson, and also star John T. Smith as a construction worker.
• A 16mm print with the original opening and closing rings surfaced on eBay in January 2025.

Gallery

Original opening rings