Hair-Raising Hare

Chuck Jones (1946)

Hair-Raising Hare is a Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon, released in 1946. It was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Tedd Pierce. It stars Bugs Bunny and features the first appearance of Chuck Jones’ imposing orange monster character, unnamed here, but in later cartoons named “Rudolph” and then “Gossamer”.

Animation director J. J. Sedelmaier writes, “It’s interesting to see how different Bugs’ character is in this film, from, say, the cool and calm Bugs in Rabbit Seasoning (1952). He’s much more the Groucho Marx type in this short; in fact, I doubt you’ll find another cartoon in which he does the Groucho walk more than here. The other unique aspect that has always grabbed me about this particular cartoon is the design of the monster. Where do his hands and arms go when we don’t see them? Why the sneakers? It’s this sort of stuff that reminds me why I love good cartoons: You don’t care about this stuff. You just enjoy it.”

Story by Tedd Pierce

Music by Carl Stalling

Animated by Ben Washam, Ken Harris, Basil Davidovich, and Lloyd Vaughan

Backgroungs by Robert Bribbroek

Starring Mel Blanc

Technicolor

7 Comments

  1. Yeah, I can never seem to figure out why I can’t get Daily Motion videos to play through the reader when they play perfectly fine through my website. According to my research, I would have to upgrade my plan to the next tier in order to access the appropriate add on that would allow Daily Motion videos to play on the reader. I’m not sure if I’m ready to make that jump quite yet.

  2. It had something to do with Warner bros. They would only allow six minute slots in programming for looney tunes to produce cartoons. So actually at seven minutes, this was a long one.

  3. It’s funny to think of these cartoons now, like how this one’s a little over 7 minutes long, but when I was a kid they seemed longer. I love Bugs Bunny. I hope I’m more like him in my next life. 🙂

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