Show Biz Bugs
| Show Biz Bugs | |
|---|---|
| Looney Tunes (Bugs Bunny) series | |
 Lobby card. | |
| Directed by | Friz Freleng |
| Produced by |
Edward Selzer (uncredited) |
| Story by | Warren Foster |
| Voices by | Mel Blanc (All) |
| Music by |
Milt Franklyn Friz Freleng (Gag compositions)[1] |
| Animation by | |
| Layouts by | Hawley Pratt |
| Backgrounds by | Boris Gorelick |
| Studio | Warner Bros. Cartoons |
| Distributed by |
Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
| Release date(s) | November 2, 1957 (USA)[2] |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Running time | 7 minutes |
| Language | English |
Show Biz Bugs is a 1957 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated short directed by Friz Freleng and featuring Mel Blanc as the voices of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.[3]
The basic setting and conflicts of this film were reprised for the linking footage for the television series The Bugs Bunny Show.
Summary
Arriving at the theater where he and Bugs are appearing, Daffy is furious to discover that the rabbit's name on the marquee is above his in much larger letters. Rebuffed by the unseen manager's claim that he gives his performers billing "according to drawing power", Daffy is determined to prove that he is the star of the show.
That evening, Bugs and Daffy are performing an on-stage number to "Tea for Two". Daffy, tired of Bugs hogging up all the cheering and applause (especially after the reception Bugs gets for his "Shave and a Haircut" bit), and convinced he is more talented, decides to try numerous numbers on his own in order to impress the audience. He begins on the spot with a time step to "Jeepers Creepers". After failing to impress the audience, Daffy attempts to sabotage Bugs' xylophone act by rigging it to explode when a certain note is played, but Bugs avoids the trap. Bugs does a sawing-in-half trick; Daffy volunteers in hopes of proving that the trick is fake, but ends up literally sawed in half. ("Good thing I got Blue Cross.") In a final attempt to impress the audience, Daffy performs a deadly stunt (which he refers as "an act that no other performer has dared to execute!"), by drinking some gasoline, some nitroglycerin, some gunpowder, and some Uranium-238, "shake well", and swallowing a lit match ("Girls, you better hold onto your boyfriends!"), causing him to explode. The audience loves the performance, but Daffy (now a transparent ghost and ascending to heaven) "can only do it once".
Cast
Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Taxi Driver and Manager
Critical reception
In a commentary by Greg Ford, he cites that the short contains some of Warren Foster's "best gags as a writer". Ford also described it as "a definitive Bugs/Daffy showbiz rivalry cartoon".[4]
Production
- As revealed in the audio commentary on the second Golden Collection set, the song "The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady" was intended to be used during the sequence where Daffy showcases some trained birds. A pre-score recording was produced, but was not used in the final cartoon. Other pre-score music included slightly longer versions of both "Tea for Two" and "Jeepers Creepers".[3]
- This would be the second to last Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck Cartoon Friz Freleng would direct with his musical methods and techniques (the final one would be Person to Bunny released in 1960; though Daffy did make a brief cameo in Apes of Wrath released in 1959 and was also directed by Freleng).[1]
Previous film references
The xylophone gag was previously used in the Private Snafu short Booby Traps and the Bugs/Yosemite Sam short Ballot Box Bunny (and later in Rushing Roulette), only in both cases the instrument used was a piano. The song used in each case, as in Show Biz Bugs, is "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms".
The final act and the pigeon circus had been used in an earlier Porky Pig cartoon called Curtain Razor in which a fox does the same act Daffy does attempting to show Porky he is a star, and, much like Show Biz Bugs, the final act in Curtain Razor has been edited on Cartoon Network to remove him ingesting gasoline (the syndicated version of The Merrie Melodies Show also cuts the gasoline-drinking and edits it even further by cutting out the fox swallowing a match).
Availability
- Show Biz Bugs is available uncut on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 DVD set, disc 4 and on the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2 Blu-ray set, disc 1. It is also available on the "A Salute to Friz Freleng" VHS, the Superior Duck VHS, and the "Looney Tunes: Curtin Calls" laserdisc.
See also
References
- 1 2 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xk0sxw_irreverent-imagination-the-golden-age-of-looney-tunes_shortfilms
- ↑ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. New York: Henry Holt and Company. p. 303. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2. OCLC 19671400.
- 1 2 "Show Biz Bugs". Big Cartoon DataBase, August 30, 2014
- ↑ Greg Ford (filmmaker). Show Biz Bugs (commentary) (DVD). Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 (disc 4).