The Release Date Confusion of “Lumber Jack Rabbit”

Not a normal special Saturday post, but I wanted to post this, because all over the Internet, YouTube, and anywhere online you can think of, everyone likes to say that Jones’ “Lumber Jack Rabbit” was released on September 26, 1953 but it was actually released on November 13, 1954 as evidenced by the cartoon’s production number (1291), the filmography section in “That’s All Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation”, which is 99% accurate, due to relying on Warner’s original release sheets, the filmography section in Jones’ autobiography, “Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist”, and in Jerry Beck’s commentary for the cartoon on the Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection Blu-Ray set in 2020 where he says its November 1954 release was the official release (and also where the cartoon is presented on that set as it is between the 1954 cartoons “Yankee Doodle Bugs” and “Baby Buggy Bunny”. Had it been released in 1953, it’d be between “Upswept Hare” and “Robot Rabbit”). The reason people say it was released in September 1953 was because the cartoon was apparently released in 3-D due to the 3-D craze in 1953, which was thought to be the new thing going forward (several other studios did 3-D cartoons in 1953 such as Walter Lantz with the Woody Woodpecker cartoon, “Hypnotic Hick” and Disney with the Donald Duck and Chip and Dale cartoon, “Working for Peanuts”). However, “Lumber Jack Rabbit” does not have any 3-D gimmicks in it aside from the Warner Bros. shield zooming far out into the audience as seen below (and the “Bugs Bunny in” card looking slightly different), implying that the cartoon likely wasn’t intended for 3-D. Around the time, though, they likely had this cartoon finished and the studio showed it in 3-D only in certain theaters. Whatever the case may be, November 13, 1954 was the cartoon’s official release date so that is what I have always been going for and the post for it is scheduled to be out on April 9. So, in case, anyone has been looking at the filmography online and expecting “Lumber Jack Rabbit” to be Monday’s cartoon, I’m telling you it won’t be, because it wasn’t released officially in 1953.