Release Date:

August 11, 1951

Main Character(s):

Bugs Bunny, Clyde

Summary:

Bugs Bunny is looking at a photo album with his nephew, Clyde, and tells him about some of his past adventures via clips from earlier cartoons.

That’s Not All, Folks:

The production number is 1164 and was released as a Looney Tune.

The cartoon was given a Blue Ribbon reissue.

This is the first Warner cartoon to be known as a “clip show”, which is a cartoon that revolves around remembering events from previous cartoons with the footage from those cartoons being shown as part of the new cartoon (almost all the other major cartoon studios did these as well). Other clip shows Warner Bros. did include “This Is a Life” (1955), “Feather Bluster” (1958), “Hare-abian Nights” (1959), “Tweet Dreams” (1959), “Devil’s Feud Cake” (1963), “Freudy Cat” (1964), and “Mucho Locos” (1966). I personally think clip show cartoons are rather interesting because these actually show just how much a studio’s cartoons have developed over the years (and in this case, show me and all of you how much far I’ve gotten in this blog).

The clips shown in this cartoon include “Baseball Bugs” (with the Gas House Gorillas being renamed as the “Boston Argyle Socks”), “Stage Door Cartoon”, “Rabbit Punch”, “Falling Hare” (without the Gremlin), and “Haredevil Hare” (without Marvin and K9).

A few new footage from some of the clips are seen such as a new background of the “He Got It” grave and new animation of Bugs reacting to the ball being hit out of the stadium for a home run from “Baseball Bugs”, new footage of Bugs piloting the plane and a shot of it in the air, and a new background of the destroyed plane having run out of gas just inches before hitting the ground from “Falling Hare”, and new animation of Bugs looking below him after screaming, “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” from “Haredevil Hare”.

This is the first of two appearances of Clyde, Bugs’ nephew who looks a bit like him, but is a lot smaller. He also appeared in “Yankee Doodle Bugs” (1954), also directed by Freleng.

Interestingly, in both of Clyde’s appearances, Bugs is shown to live in an actual house instead of a hole (although the exterior of the house in this one is never shown, the windows and ending gag make it clear it’s indeed a house instead of a rabbit hole).

This is the first cartoon in a good long while (probably since “Old Glory” all the way back in 1939) to be animated by only one animator. In this case, all of the new footage in this cartoon was animated by Virgil Ross. Since Ross was the sole animator on this cartoon, I will not be pointing out who animated what this time around (this will also be the case with future cartoons that have only one animator).

Despite being credited, Manuel Perez, Ken Champin, and Arthur Davis did not actually contribute to the cartoon.

The title is a pun for “his hair raising tale”.

This and tomorrow’s cartoon, “Cheese Chasers”, have Carl Stalling back as the composer.

This cartoon was released exactly two years before my paternal grandmother was born.

The run over by streetcar if story isn’t true ending gag is reused from “The Trial of Mr. Wolf”, although the gag itself was originally “I hope lightning strikes me!” from “The Hardship of Miles Standish”.

Favorite Scene:

The entire ending with Clyde being skeptical about all of Bugs’ adventures.

What Happens in This One:

After Bugs shows Clyde a picture of him when he graduated high school, Clyde laughs at presumably the cap and gown: “You sure did look funny, Uncle Bugs!” Upon seeing a pic of Bugs in a baseball uniform, Clyde asks with interest, “Was you a baseball pitcher, Uncle Bugs?” Bugs answers before the footage leads into “Baseball Bugs”: “Baseball pitcher? The best! ‘Screwball Bugs’ they called me. Here. Look at this. That was me at the World Serious”.

Bugs continues, “I’ll never forget. It was the seventh game against the Boston Argyle Socks. They called me in in the sixth inning to save the day. Bases loaded and no outs”. After footage of Bugs striking out three of the Gorillas at once with his slow ball is shown, we briefly return to the present with Bugs imitating a batter by holding a broom like a bat: “Then it came my turn to bat. The crowd was yellin’ for a hit. I drove a screaming liner into right field!” Footage of Bugs hitting the ball, , Bugs tells Clyde in the present, “Then came the last of the ninths! A hit would beat us! Their heavy hitter was up!”

Since this clip ends with new animation of Bugs reacting to the ball being hit out of the stadium by the Gorilla using a tree as a bat to ensure a home run instead of him going all the way to the “Umpire State Building” to catch the ball and win the game in the original, Bugs answers to Clyde’s “What happened, Uncle Bugs? What happened?”, with a new explanation, “Well, uh, after I got back from the Foreign Legion, I went into vaudeville. My partner and I had an act at the palace”. Footage from “Stage Door Cartoon” of Bugs tricking Elmer into doing a high dive into a glass of water is shown.

Clyde asks, “But what happened with the act, Uncle Bugs?” Bugs explains, “Oh, uh, my partner insisted on equal billing so I broke up the act. There was more money in boxing anyway”. Clyde: “You was a fighter, too, Uncle Bugs?” Bugs: “Oh, yeah. I fought the Champ. It was at Madison Round Garden”. Footage from “Rabbit Punch” is shown, via the scenes of Bugs fake fainting and then punching the Champ with both fists, him slingshotting a boulder into the Champ’s face, and them flying headfirst into each other, with the Champ firing himself from a cannon and Bugs launching himself as the arrow in a bow.

Bugs continues, “The fight went on and on. It might never have ended but along came the war. I wanted to do my part, so I became a test pilot. The most dangerous job I could think of. One day, I was testing a new supersonic job. Suddenly, something went wrong. I was the victim of sabo-ta-gee! The plane was out of control!” Footage from “Falling Hare” is shown with the plane zooming towards the ground at tremendous speed only for it to sputter to a stop a few inches before crashing. In the present, Bugs explains (although it was explained in the original cartoon but is not shown here since the original was released during the war and had a wartime reference), “Heh. Lucky for me, I ran out of gas!”

Clyde is impressed, “Gee, Uncle Bugs. You’ve been EVERY place. I guess. Except the moon”. Bugs confirms, “Oh, uh, I’ve been there, too”. Amazed, Clyde asks, “The moon!?” Bugs replies, “Sure, look. Here’s a few newspaper clippin’s”, which transitions into footage from “Haredevil Hare” where Bugs is blasted into space and his crash-land on the moon in the original is replaced with the impact leading into the explosion from the original.

After the footage of the scientists radioing Bugs if he has a statement for the press after landing on the moon, and Bugs replying, “Well, uh, yes, I have prepared a statement: GET ME OUT OF HERE!”, Bugs imitates this in the present by hanging on a chandelier, “And there I was hangin’ on the moon. Lucky I had plenty of carrots with me”. After getting him down, he starts to explain, “Y’know, it took ‘em 22 years to build a ladder long enough to…” but then sees Clyde staring at him in disbelief with his arms folded. Confused at Clyde’s skepticism, Bugs asks, “What’s the matter? Don’t ya believe me? Why, if everything I’ve told you isn’t true, I uh… I, I hope I’m run over by a streetcar!” A streetcar immediately crashes through the wall and hits Bugs. Emerging from the wreckage, Bugs tells an astonished Clyde, “I suppose you don’t believe I was run over by a streetcar!”

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org!

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕