Cover of Jo-Jo, Congo King #23 (1949)

Tarzanesque^[1] or Tarzanide^[2] is a term for fictional characters who live adventures in the jungle, like the Tarzan created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tarzanesque

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Robert George "Joe" Meek (5 April 1929 Newent, Gloucestershire – 3 February 1967 in London^[1]) was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter.

His most famous work was The Tornados' hit "Telstar" in 1962, which became the first record by a British group to hit #1 in the US Hot 100. It also spent five weeks atop the UK singles chart, with Meek receiving an Ivor Novello Award for this production as the "Best-Selling A-Side" of 1962.

Meek's other notable hit productions include "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O" and "Cumberland Gap" by Lonnie Donegan (as engineer), "Johnny Remember Me" by John Leyton, "Just Like Eddie" by Heinz, "Angela Jones" by Michael Cox, "Have I the Right?" by The Honeycombs, and "Tribute to Buddy Holly" by Mike Berry. Meek's concept album I Hear a New World is regarded as a watershed in modern music for its innovative use of electronic sounds.

Joe Meek was also producing music for films, most notably Live It Up! (US title Sing and Swing), a 1963 pop music film starring Heinz Burt, David Hemmings and Steve Marriott, also featuring Gene Vincent, Jenny Moss, The Outlaws, Kim Roberts, Kenny Ball, Patsy Ann Noble and others. Meek wrote most of the songs and incidental music, much of which was recorded by The Saints and produced by Meek.^[2]

His commercial success as a producer was short-lived and Meek gradually sank into debt and depression. On 3 February 1967, using a shotgun owned by musician Heinz Burt, Meek murdered his landlady before turning the gun on himself.

Biography[link]

Pre-London years[link]

Meek developed an interest in electronics and performance art at a very early age, filling his parents' garden shed with begged and borrowed electronic components, building circuits, radios and what is believed to be the region's first working television. A stint in the Royal Air Force as a radar operator escalated his life-long interest in electronics and outer space. From 1953 he worked for the Midlands Electricity Board. He used the resources of the company to develop his interest in electronics and music production, including acquiring a disc cutter and producing his first record.

London 1954–1959[link]

He left the electricity board to work as an audio engineer for a leading independent radio production company that made programmes for Radio Luxembourg, and made his breakthrough with his work on Ivy Benson's Music for Lonely Lovers. His technical ingenuity was first shown on the Humphrey Lyttelton jazz single "Bad Penny Blues" (Parlophone Records, 1956) when, contrary to Lyttleton's wishes, he 'modified' the sound of the piano and compressed the sound to a greater than normal extent. The record became a hit. He then put enormous effort into Denis Preston's Landsdowne Studio but tensions between Preston and Meek soon saw Meek forced out. During his time he recorded US actor George Chakiris for SAGA Records and it was this that led him to Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks and an independent career.

Triumph Records[link]

In January 1960, together with Barrington-Coupe, Meek founded Triumph Records. At the time Barrington-Coupe was working at SAGA records in Empire Yard, Holloway Road for Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks and it was the Major who provided the finance. The label very nearly had a #1 hit with Meek's production of Angela Jones by Michael Cox. Cox was one of the featured singers on Jack Good's TV music show Boy Meets Girl and the song was given massive promotion. As an independent label,Triumph was at the mercy of small pressing plants, which could not -or would not – keep up with sales demand. The record made a respectable appearance in the Top Ten, but it proved Meek needed the major companies' distribution muscle to get his records into the shops when it mattered.

In spite an interesting catalogue of Meek productions, its indifferent business results and Joe proving difficult to work with eventually led to the label's demise. Meek later licensed many Triumph recordings to labels such as Top Rank and Pye.

That year Meek conceived, wrote and produced an "Outer Space Music Fantasy"' concept album I Hear A New World with a band called Rod Freeman & The Blue Men. The album was shelved for decades, apart from some EP tracks taken from it.

304 Holloway Road[link]

	"Telstar" noicon "Telstar" featured a clavioline, a keyboard instrument with a distinctive electronic sound. The song won an Ivor Novello Award and sold over five million copies worldwide.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Meek went on to set up his own production company known as RGM Sound Ltd (later Meeksville Sound Ltd) with toy importer, Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks as his financial backer. He operated from his now-legendary home studio which he constructed at 304 Holloway Road, Islington, a three-floor flat above a leather-goods store.

His first hit from Holloway Road was a UK #1 smash: John Leyton's Johnny Remember Me (1961) written by active psychic Geoff Goddard. This memorable "death ditty" was cleverly promoted by Leyton's manager, expatriate Australian entrepreneur Robert Stigwood. Stigwood was able to get Leyton to perform the song several times in an episode of ITV's short-lived^[3] department store-based TV soap opera Harpers West One in which he was making a guest appearance. Meek's third UK #1 and last major success was with The Honeycombs' Have I The Right? in 1964, which also became a number 4 hit on the American Billboard pop charts. The success of Leyton's recordings was instrumental in establishing Stigwood and Meek as two of Britain's first independent record producers.

When his landlords, who lived downstairs, felt that the noise was too much, they would indicate so with a broom on the ceiling. Joe would signal his contempt by placing loudspeakers in the stairwell and turning up the volume.

A privately manufactured "black plaque" (designed to ape the official blue plaque) has since been placed at the location of the studio to commemorate Meek's life and work.^[4]

Murder and suicide[link]

Meek was obsessed with the occult and the idea of "the other side". He would set up tape machines in graveyards in a vain attempt to record voices from beyond the grave, in one instance capturing the meows of a cat he claimed was speaking in human tones, asking for help. In particular, he had an obsession with Buddy Holly (claiming the late American rocker had communicated with him in dreams) and other dead rock and roll musicians.

His professional efforts were often hindered by his paranoia (Meek was convinced that Decca Records would put hidden microphones behind his wallpaper in order to steal his ideas), drug use and attacks of rage or depression. Upon receiving an apparently innocent phone call from Phil Spector, Meek immediately accused Spector of stealing his ideas before hanging up angrily.

Meek's homosexuality – illegal in the UK at the time – put him under further pressure; he had been convicted of "importuning for immoral purposes" in 1963 and fined £15: he was consequently subject to blackmail.^[5] In January 1967, police in Tattingstone, Suffolk, discovered a suitcase containing the mutilated body of Bernard Oliver. According to some accounts, Meek became concerned that he would be implicated in the murder investigation when the Metropolitan Police said they would be interviewing all known homosexual men in the city.

The hits had dried up and Meek's depression deepened as his financial position became increasingly desperate. French composer Jean Ledrut accused Joe Meek of plagiarism, claiming that the tune of "Telstar" had been copied from "La Marche d'Austerlitz", a piece from a score Ledrut had written for the 1960 film Austerlitz. This lawsuit meant Meek never received royalties from the record during his lifetime.

On 3 February 1967, the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly's death, Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then himself^[6] with a single barreled shotgun that he had confiscated from his protegé, former Tornados bassist and solo star Heinz Burt at his Holloway Road home/studio. Meek had flown into a rage and taken the gun from Burt when he informed Meek that he used it while on tour to shoot birds. Meek had kept the gun under his bed, along with some cartridges. As the shotgun had been registered to Burt, he was questioned intensively by police, before being eliminated from their enquiries.

Meek was subsequently buried at Cemetery lodge Newent, Gloucestershire. His black granite tombstone can be found near the middle of the cemetery.

The lawsuit against Meek was eventually ruled in Meek's favour three weeks after his death in 1967. It is unlikely that Meek was aware of Austerlitz, as it had been released only in France at the time.

Meek's legacy[link]

Despite not being able to play a musical instrument or write notation, Meek displayed a remarkable facility for writing and producing successful commercial recordings. In writing songs he was reliant on musicians such as Dave Adams, Geoff Goddard or Charles Blackwell to transcribe melodies from his vocal "demos". He worked on 245 singles, of which 45 were major hits (top fifty).

He pioneered studio tools such as multiple over-dubbing on one- and two-track machines, close miking, direct input of bass guitars, the compressor, and effects like echo and reverb, as well as sampling. Unlike other producers, his search was for the 'right' sound rather than for a catchy musical tune, and throughout his brief career he single-mindedly followed his quest to create a unique "sonic signature" for every record he produced.

At a time when many studio engineers were still wearing white coats and assiduously trying to maintain clarity and fidelity, Meek, the maverick, was producing everything on the three floors of his "home" studio and was never afraid to distort or manipulate the sound if it created the effect he was seeking.

Meek was one of the first producers to grasp and fully exploit the possibilities of the modern recording studio. His innovative techniques—physically separating instruments, treating instruments and voices with echo and reverb, processing the sound through his fabled home-made electronic devices, the combining of separately-recorded performances and segments into a painstakingly constructed composite recording—comprised a major breakthrough in sound production. Up to that time, the standard technique for pop, jazz and classical recordings alike was to record all the performers in one studio, playing together in real time, a legacy of the days before magnetic tape, when performances were literally cut live, directly onto disc.

Meek's style was also substantially different from that of his contemporary Phil Spector, who typically created his famous "Wall of sound" productions by making live recordings of large ensembles that used multiples of major instruments like bass, guitar and piano to create the complex sonic backgrounds for his singers.

In 1993, ex-Joe Meek session singer Ted Fletcher introduced a line of audio equipment named after Joe Meek, due to his influence in the early stages of audio compression. The name and product line were sold to the American company PMI Audio Group in 2003. This product line includes a microphone series called "Telstar", named after Joe Meek’s most famous work.^[7][8]

Meek's reputation for experiments in recording music was acknowledged by The Music Producers Guild who created The Joe Meek Award for Innovation in Production in 2009.^[9] MPG chairman Mike Howlett said the award was "paying homage to this remarkable producer’s pioneering spirit".^[9] The winner of the inaugural award in 2009 was producer and musician Brian Eno.^[9]

Artists Meek recorded[link]

He passed up the chance to work with the then unknown David Bowie, The Beatles (the latter he once described as "just another bunch of noise, copying other people's music") and Rod Stewart. John Repsch, in The Legendary Joe Meek recounts that upon hearing Stewart sing, Meek rushed into the studio, put his fingers in his ears and screamed until Stewart had left. He preferred to record instrumentals with the band he sang with – The Moontrekkers.

In 1963 Meek worked with a then-little-known singer Tom Jones, then the lead vocalist of Tommy Scott & The Senators. Meek recorded seven tracks with Jones and took them to various labels in an attempt to get a record deal, with no success. Two years later after Jones gained popularity with the worldwide hit It's Not Unusual in 1965, Meek was able to sell the tapes he'd recorded with Jones to Tower (USA) and Columbia (UK).^[10] Meek also recorded the following artists:

Robb Shenton, Screaming Lord Sutch and The Savages, The Tornados, The Honeycombs, The Syndicats, The Buzz, Mike Berry, The Outlaws, The Moontrekkers, Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Deke Arlon and The Offbeats, David John and the Mood, John Leyton, Geoff Goddard, Petula Clark, Lonnie Donegan, Humphrey Lyttelton, Diana Dors, The Blue Men, Tom Jones, Tony Dangerfield and the Thrills, Heinz and The Wild Boys, Dave Adams, Joy and Dave, Chico Arnez, Jimmy Miller and the Barbecues, Mike Preston, Emile Ford and the Checkmates, Chris Williams and the Monsters, Lance Fortune, Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, Yolanda^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Big Jim Sullivan, Ricky Wayne and The Offbeats, George Chakiris, Michael Cox, Frankie Vaughan, Iain Gregory, Danny Rivers, Gerry Temple, Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, The Charles Blackwell Orchestra, Don Charles, The Stonehenge Men, Andy Cavell, The Dowlands, Houston Wells and the Marksmen, The Packabeats, Jenny Moss, Burr Bailey and the Six Shooters, The Checkmates, The Saints, The Cameos, Sounds Incorporated, The Puppets, The Beat Boys, Mike Sarne, The Ambassadors, Pamela Blue, Glenda Collins, The Sharades, Roger LaVern and the Microns, Gunilla Thorne, Kim Roberts, Billie Davis, Freddie Starr and the Midnighters, Shade Joey and the Night Owls, Flip and the Dateliners, Valerie Masters, Alan Dean and his Problems, The Blue Rondos, Peter Cook, Jess Conrad, The Saxons, The Shakeouts, Bobby Rio and the Revelles, Peter London, The Four Matadors, The Cryin' Shames, The Riot Squad, The Millionaires, The Impac, Shirley Bassey, Anne Shelton, Kenny Graham and the Satellites, Tommy Steele, Chris Barber, The Fabulous Flee-Rakkers, Carter-Lewis and the Southerners, Brian White & The Magna Jazz Band, The Ferridays (Scorpions), Ray Dexter and The Layabouts, Neil Christian, Kenny Hollywood, Jamie Lee and The Atlantics, Toby Ventura, Wes Sands, The Thunderbolts, Silas Dooley Jr., Bobby Cristo and The Rebels, Malcolm and The Countdowns, The Diamond Twins, The Hotrods, Charles Kingsley Creation, Danny's Passion, The Classics, The Manish Boys, Pete, Chris and The Outcasts, Simplicity Pattern, and Joe Meek himself.

Unreleased recordings aka the Tea Chest Tapes[link]

After the death of Joe Meek the thousands of recordings Meek hid at his studio remained unreleased and preserved by Cliff Cooper of The Millionaires. At the time of Joe's death in 1967, Mr. Cooper is said to have purchased all of Joe's recordings for £300. These recordings were called the "Tea Chest Tapes" among fans, as they were stored in a tea chest when Cooper took them out of his apartment.^[11] Alan Blackburn, former president of the Joe Meek Appreciation Society, is the only person known to the public who has listened to all these tapes, as he catalogued all of them in the mid-1980s.^[12]

On 4 September 2008 these unreleased recordings went up for auction in Fame Bureau's 'It's More Than Rock 'N' Roll' auction. The auction website states they fetched £200,000, but others have said considerably more was taken. The auction site says that there are over 5000 recordings on 1850 tapes containing recordings by David Bowie as singer and sax player with the Konrads, Gene Vincent, Denny Laine, Billy Fury, Tom Jones, Jimmy Page, Mike Berry, John Leyton, Ritchie Blackmore, Jess Conrad, Mitch Mitchell and Screaming Lord Sutch. The tapes also contain many examples of Joe Meek composing songs and experimental sound techniques. Tape 418 has Meek composing songs for the film Live It Up!.^[13]

The future of these unreleased Joe Meek "Tea Chest Tapes" recordings remains unknown.

Tributes and references[link]

Songs[link]

• Franco-English pop singer-songwriter MeeK chose his stage name as a homage to the British producer.
• British punk Wreckless Eric recounts Meek's biography and recreates some of his studio effects in his song "Joe Meek" from the album Donovan of Trash.^[14]
• According to some, the song "Green Door" alludes to Meek. "When I said, 'Joe sent me,' someone laughed out loud behind the green door".^[15]
• The Marked Men, a Texas punk band, have a song titled "Someday" with lyric: "Joe Meek wanted all the world to know about the news he found."
• The Frank Black song "White Noise Maker" deals with Meek's suicide by shotgun, the white noise maker of the title. "It's been so long since my Telstar."
• The Bleeder Group, a Danish alternative rock group recorded a song on their second album Sunrise, called "Joe Meek Shall Inherit The Earth"
• Matmos, an Electronic duo, have a song on their 2006 album The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast called "Solo Buttons for Joe Meek".
• Pluto Monkey, British left field artist, released a three track CD single on Shifty Disco featuring the tracks "Joe Meek" and "Meeksville Sound Is Dead"
• Swing Out Sister include a short instrumental named "Joe Meek's Cat" on their 1994 album Shapes and Patterns, inspired by Joe's 1966 ghost-hunting expeditions to Warley Lea Farm during which he allegedly captured recordings of a talking cat channeling the spirit of a former landowner who committed suicide at the farm
• Graham Parker's 1992 album Burning Questions includes the cryptic "Just Like Joe Meek's Blues"
• Sheryl Crow claimed that her song "A Change Would Do You Good" was inspired by an article she read about Joe Meek
• Jonathan King recorded a song about Meek called "He Stood In The Bath He Stamped On The Floor".^[16]
• Johnny Stage, Danish producer and guitarist released an album in tribute of Meek, entitled The Lady with the Crying Eyes featuring various Danish artists, on 3 February 2007(www.myspace.com/joemeektribute
• Dave Stewart (the keyboardist) and Barbara Gaskin recorded the song "Your Lucky Star" dealing with the life and death of Joe Meek, released on the 1991 album "Spin".
• Dave Stewart also recorded a version of Joe Meek’s "Telstar" hit on the occasion of its 40th anniversary in 2002. This was later released on the Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin 2009 mini-album “Hour Moon”. The album also features the duo’s previously released Meek tribute "Your Lucky Star" from their 1991 album "Spin".
• The Spanish label Spicnic released in 2001 a tribute CD, "Oigo un nuevo no mundo. Homenaje a Joe Meek", featuring various Spanish bands.^[17]
• Trey Spruance from the band Mr. Bungle has stated that the 10 part song/instrumental "The Bends" from their album Disco Volante is inspired by Joe Meek's music. Specifically "I Hear a New World".
• Thomas Truax regularly performed his Meek tribute "Joe Meek Warns Buddy Holly" on his 2008 tours, a song apparently about Meek's supposed warning via spirit-writing predicting Buddy Holly's death. A single and accompanying video was scheduled for release on 3 February 2009, the 50th anniversary of Holly's demise, also the date of Meek's suicide.
• Robb Shenton released /*Lonely Joe*/ as a tribute to the legendary producer on 28 October 2008. Robb was one of Joe's artists and was with five Meek bands between 1963 and early 1966: The Bobcats, David John and the Mood, The Prestons, The Nashpool and Flip and the Dateliners. He also sang backing vocals with many others.
• 'Meet Joe Meek' sometimes known as 'Just like Joe Meek' by the Babysitars sampled the BBC2 Arena documentary on Joe Meek and their composition 'Crazyhead' said to be inspired by Joe Meek himself.

[edit] Telstar: The Joe Meek Story – play and film

Telstar: The Joe Meek Story, a stage play by Nick Moran and James Hicks which premiered in 2005, is a dramatisation of Joe Meek's life and starred Con O'Neill as Meek and Linda Robson as his landlady.^[18] It was also made into a film, released in the UK in June 2009, directed by Nick Moran starring Kevin Spacey, Ralf Little and Pam Ferris with O'Neill reprising his stage role.^[19][20]

Documentary film[link]

• A Life in the Death of Joe Meek, an independent American documentary,^[21] by Howard S. Berger and Susan Stahman.

The production includes over 60 interviews with Meek's family, close friends, associates, musicians and pop culture movers and shakers.

• The Very Strange Story of the Legendary Joe Meek A 1991 UK TV documentary from BBC TV's Arena series.^[22]

Radio play[link]

In March 1994, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Lonely Joe, a radio play based on the life of Joe Meek, written by Janey Praeger and Peter Kavanagh.

Literatur[link]

• John Repsch: The Legendary Joe Meek (UK; 1989, Jul 2003) ISBN 1-901447-20-0
• Barry Cleveland: Creative Music Production – Joe Meek's BOLD Techniques (USA; Jul 2001) ISBN 1-931140-08-1
• Nick Moran with James Hicks: "Telstar – The Joe Meek Story", (UK, Oberon Books 1/2007) ISBN 978-1-84002-588-0^[23]
• The penultimate chapter of Alan Moore's spoken word piece "The Highbury Working" concerns Joe Meek's last moments.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Joe Meek at the Internet Movie Database
• Photo of Meek's grave
• BBC Music Profile: Joe Meek
• Biography by John McCready (Mojo Magazine)
• Joe Meek discography at Discogs

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2011)

Bugs Bunny is an American animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons.^[1] Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray hare or rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality, a pronounced Brooklyn accent, and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most notably the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of theatrical short films. His popularity there led to his becoming a corporate mascot of the Warner Bros. company. Bugs has appeared in more films than any other cartoon character and is the ninth most portrayed film personality in the world.^[2]

According to Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare, Bugs was born on July 27, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York in a warren under Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In reality, he was created by many animators and staff, including Tex Avery, who directed A Wild Hare, Bugs' debut role, and Robert McKimson, who created the definitive "Bugs Bunny" character design. According to Mel Blanc, the character's original voice actor, Bugs has a Flatbush accent. Bugs has had numerous catchphrases, the most prominent being a casual "Eh... What's up, doc?", usually said while chewing a carrot.

History[link]

Bugs' precursor[link]

A rabbit with some of the personality of Bugs, though looking very different, first appears in the cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt, released on April 30, 1938. Co-directed by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway and an uncredited Cal Dalton (who was responsible for the initial design of the rabbit), this short has an almost identical plot to Tex Avery's 1937 cartoon Porky's Duck Hunt, which had introduced Daffy Duck. Porky Pig is again cast as a hunter tracking a silly prey less interested in escape than in driving his pursuer insane. The latter short replaces the little black duck with a small white rabbit. The rabbit introduces himself with the odd expression "Jiggers, fellers", and Mel Blanc gave the character a voice and laugh almost like that he would later use for Woody Woodpecker. This cartoon also first uses the famous Groucho Marx line, "Of course you realize, this means war!" This rabbit was so popular with its audience that the Schlesinger staff decided to use it again.

The rabbit appears again in 1939's Prest-O Change-O, directed by Chuck Jones, where he is the pet rabbit of unseen character Sham-Fu the Magician. Two dogs, fleeing the local dogcatcher, enter his absent master's house. The rabbit harasses them, but is ultimately bested by the bigger of the two dogs.

His third appearance is in another 1939 cartoon, Hare-um Scare-um, directed by Dalton and Hardaway. This short, the first where he is depicted as a gray bunny instead of a white one, is also notable for the rabbit's first singing role. Charlie Thorson, lead animator on the short, gave the character a name. He had written "Bugs' Bunny" on the model sheet that he drew for Hardaway.^[3][4] In promotional material for the short, including a surviving 1939 presskit, the name on the model sheet was altered to become the rabbit's own name: "Bugs" Bunny (quotation marks only used at the very beginning).^[5] In his later years, Mel Blanc stated that a proposed name was "Happy Rabbit."^[6] Oddly, "Happy" was only used in reference to Bugs Hardaway. In the cartoon Hare-um Scare-um, a newspaper headline reads, "Happy Hardaway".^[7]

In Chuck Jones' Elmer's Candid Camera Happy first meets Elmer Fudd. This rabbit looks more like the present-day Bugs, taller and with a similar face. However, this rabbit, speaks with a rural drawl. The early version of Elmer is also different from the present-day one, much fatter and taller, although Arthur Q. Bryan's voice is the same as it would be later. In Robert Clampett's 1940 Patient Porky, a similar rabbit appears to trick the audience into thinking that 750 rabbits have been born.

Bugs Bunny emerges[link]

A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery and released on July 27, 1940, is the first cartoon where both Elmer Fudd and Bugs are shown in their fully developed forms as hunter and tormentor, respectively. In this cartoon Mel Blanc first uses what would become Bugs' standard voice; this cartoon also marks the first time that Bugs uses his catchphrase, "What's up, Doc?" Animation historian Joe Adamson counts A Wild Hare as the first "official" Bugs Bunny short.^[8] The short was a huge success in theaters and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.^[9]

Bugs's second appearance, in Jones' 1941 short Elmer's Pet Rabbit, introduces the audience to the name Bugs Bunny, which until then had only been used among the Termite Terrace employees. It was also the first short where he received billing under his now-famous name, but the card, "featuring Bugs Bunny", was just slapped on the end of the completed short's opening titles when A Wild Hare proved an unexpected success. However, Bugs' voice in this cartoon is noticibly different, and his design was slightly altered as well. For the next several cartoons produced afterwards, Bugs' original design from A Wild Hare would be re-used. Mel Blanc would also re-use the voice he had created in A Wild Hare for Bugs' subsequent appearances.

World War II[link]

By 1942, Bugs had become the number one star of Merrie Melodies. The series had originally been intended only for one-shot characters in shorts after several early attempts to introduce characters (Foxy, Goopy Geer and Piggy) failed under Harman–Ising. (In 1937, under Schlesinger, it had started introducing newer characters.) The 1942 short Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid shows a slight redesign of Bugs, with less-prominent front teeth and a rounder head. The character was reworked by Robert McKimson, then an animator in Robert Clampett's unit. The redesign at first was only used in the shorts created by Clampett's unit, but in time it would be taken up by the other directors, with Freleng and Frank Tashlin the first. When McKimson was himself promoted to director, he created yet another version, with more slanted eyes, longer teeth and a much larger mouth. He used this version until 1949 (as did Art Davis for the one Bugs Bunny cartoon he directed) when he started using the version he had designed for Clampett. Jones would come up with his own slight modification, and the voice had slight variations between the units.^[3] Bugs also made cameos in Tex Avery's final Warner Bros. short, Crazy Cruise.^[10]

Since Bugs' debut in A Wild Hare, he had appeared only in color Merrie Melodie cartoons (making him one of the few recurring characters created for that series in the Leon Schlesinger era prior to the full conversion to color), alongside Elmer predecessor Egghead, Inki, Sniffles, and Elmer himself. While he made a cameo appearance in the 1943 Porky and Daffy cartoon Porky Pig's Feat this was his only appearance in a black-and-white Looney Tune cartoon. He did not star in a cartoon in the Looney Tunes series until that series made its complete conversion to only color cartoons beginning with 1944 releases. Buckaroo Bugs was Bugs' first cartoon in the Looney Tunes series, and was also the last Warner Bros. cartoon to credit Leon Schlesinger.

Bugs' popularity soared during World War II because of his free and easy attitude, and began receiving special star billing in his cartoons by 1943. By that time Warner Bros. had become the most profitable cartoon studio in the United States. In company with cartoon studios such as Disney and Famous Studios, Warners put its characters against Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and the Japanese. The 1944 short Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips features Bugs at odds with a group of Japanese soldiers. This cartoon has since been pulled from distribution due to its racial stereotypes of Japanese people. He also faces off against Herman Goering and Hitler in the 1945 short Herr Meets Hare, which introduced his well-known reference to Albuquerque as he mistakenly winds up in the Black Forest of 'Joimany' instead of Las Vegas, Nevada. Bugs also appeared in the 1942 two-minute U.S. war bonds commercial film Any Bonds Today, along with Porky and Elmer.

At the end of the 1943 short Super-Rabbit, Bugs appears wearing a United States Marine Corps dress blue uniform. As a result, the Marine Corps made Bugs an honorary Marine Master Sergeant.^[11] From 1943 to 1946, Bugs was the official mascot of Kingman Army Airfield, Kingman, Arizona, where thousands of aerial gunners were trained during World War II. Some notable trainees included Clark Gable and Charles Bronson. Bugs also served as the mascot for 530 Squadron of the 380th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force, U.S. Air Force, which was attached to the Royal Australian Air Force and operated out of Australia's Northern Territory from 1943 to 1945, flying B-24 Liberator bombers.^[12] Bugs riding an air delivered torpedo served as the squadron logo for Marine Torpedo/Bomber Squadron 242 in the Second World War.

In 1944, Bugs Bunny made a cameo appearance in Jasper Goes Hunting, a short produced by rival studio Paramount Pictures. In this cameo (animated by Robert McKimson, with Mel Blanc providing the voice), Bugs pops out of a rabbit hole, saying his usual catchphrase; Bugs then says, "Hey, I'm in the wrong picture!" and then goes back in the hole.^[13]

The post-war era[link]

After World War II Bugs appeared in numerous cartoon shorts in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, making his last appearance in the theatrical cartoons in 1964 with False Hare. He was directed by Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, Arthur Davis and Chuck Jones. The short Knighty Knight Bugs (1958), in which a medieval Bugs trades blows with Yosemite Sam and his fire-breathing dragon (which has a cold), won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1959.^[14] Three of Chuck Jones' Bugs Bunny shorts — Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit, Duck! — comprise what is often referred to as the "Duck Season/Rabbit Season" trilogy. Jones' 1957 classic, What's Opera, Doc?, cast Bugs and Elmer in a parody of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. It has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, the first cartoon short to receive this honor.^[15]

In the fall of 1960, ABC debuted the prime-time television program The Bugs Bunny Show. This show packaged many of the post-1948 Warners shorts with newly animated wraparounds. After two seasons, it was moved from its evening slot to reruns on Saturday mornings. The Bugs Bunny Show changed format and exact title frequently, but remained on network television for 40 years. The packaging was later completely different, with each short simply presented on its own, title and all, though some clips from the new bridging material were sometimes used as filler.

After the classic cartoon era[link]

Bugs Bunny did not appear in any of the post-1964 Looney Tunes shorts produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises or Format Films, nor did he appear in the lone Looney Tunes production produced by Filmation. He would not appear in new material on-screen again until How Bugs Bunny Won the West aired in 1978.

After Mel Blanc died in 1989, Jeff Bergman, Greg Burson, Billy West, and Joe Alaskey became the new voices of Bugs Bunny and many of the other Looney Tunes, each taking turns doing Bugs' voice for various projects over the years.

Bugs has made appearances in animated specials for network television, mostly composed of classic cartoons with bridging material added, including How Bugs Bunny Won the West, and The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special. Bugs Bunny's Busting Out All Over (1980) contained no vintage clips and featured the first new Bugs Bunny cartoons in 16 years. It opened with "Portrait Of The Artist As a Young Bunny", which features a flashback of Bugs as a child thwarting a young Elmer Fudd, while its third and closing short was "Spaced Out Bunny", with Bugs being kidnapped by Marvin the Martian to be a playmate for Hugo, an Abominable Snowman-like character. (A new Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner short filled out the half hour.) Compilation films included the independently produced Bugs Bunny: Superstar, using the vintage shorts then owned by United Artists; as well as Warner Bros. efforts The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island, Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters. He also made guest appearances in episodes of the 1990s television program Tiny Toon Adventures as the principal of Acme Looniversity and the mentor of Babs and Buster Bunny, and would later make occasional guest cameos on spinoffs Taz-Mania and Animaniacs.

Bugs has had several comic book series over the years. Western Publishing had the license for all the Warner Brothers cartoons, and produced Bugs Bunny comics first for Dell Comics, then later for their own Gold Key Comics. Dell published 58 issues and several specials from 1952 to 1962. Gold Key continued for another 133 issues. DC Comics, the sister/subsidiary company of Warner Bros., has published several comics titles since 1994 that Bugs has appeared in. Notable among these was the 2000 four-issue miniseries Superman & Bugs Bunny, written by Mark Evanier and drawn by Joe Staton. This depicted a crossover between DC's superheroes and the Warner cartoon characters.

Bugs Bunny's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Like SpongeBob SquarePants for Nickelodeon and Mickey Mouse for Disney, Bugs has served as the mascot for Warner Bros. and its various divisions. He and Mickey are the first cartoon characters to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In the 1988 animated/live action movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Bugs was shown as one of the inhabitants of Toontown. However, since the film was being produced by Disney, Warner Bros. would only allow the use of their biggest star if he got an equal amount of screen time as Disney's biggest star, Mickey Mouse. Because of this, both characters are always together in frame when onscreen. For the same reasons, Bugs never calls Mickey by his name, only referring to him as "Doc," while Mickey calls him "Bugs."

Bugs made an appearance in the 1990 drug prevention special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. This special is notable for being the first time that somebody other than Mel Blanc voiced Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. (In this special, both characters were voiced by Jeff Bergman.) Bugs was also featured in The Earth Day Special showing his displeasure on how man started mistreating the environment.

Bugs returned to the silver screen in Box Office Bunny in 1990 (1991 in the U.S.). This was the first Bugs Bunny cartoon short since 1964 to be released in theaters, and it was created for the Bugs Bunny 50th anniversary celebration. It was followed by (Blooper) Bunny, a short that was shelved from theaters, but later premiered on Cartoon Network in 1997 and has since gained a cult following among animation fans for its edgy humor.^[16]

In 1996, Bugs and other Looney Tunes characters appeared in the live-action/animated film, Space Jam. In the film, the Looney Tunes are in danger of being enslaved by a group of aliens. Due to the aliens' small stature, the Looney Tunes challenge the aliens to a basketball game, but the aliens (known as the Nerdlucks) steal the talent of the best NBA players such as Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and become hulking, talented players known as the Monstars. Because of this, Bugs (voiced by Billy West) calls upon the help of the greatest basketball player in the world, Michael Jordan, who is initially reluctant to help due to his having retired from the NBA to play baseball for the MLB. The film also introduced the character of Lola Bunny. The film received mostly mixed to negative reviews from critics, but was a box office success grossing over $230 million worldwide. The success of Space Jam led to the development of another live-action/animated film, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, released in 2003 and directed by Joe Dante. Unlike Space Jam, Back in Action was a box-office bomb, but received more positive reviews from film critics. The film marked the first time Joe Alaskey provided Bugs' voice.

In 1997, Bugs appeared on a U.S. postage stamp, the first cartoon to be so honored, beating the iconic Mickey Mouse. The stamp is number seven on the list of the ten most popular U.S. stamps, as calculated by the number of stamps purchased but not used. The introduction of Bugs onto a stamp was controversial at the time, as it was seen as a step toward the 'commercialization' of stamp art. The postal service rejected many designs, and went with a postal-themed drawing. Avery Dennison printed the Bugs Bunny stamp sheet, which featured "a special ten-stamp design and was the first self-adhesive souvenir sheet issued by the U.S. Postal Service."^[17]

A younger version of Bugs is the main character of Baby Looney Tunes, which debuted on Cartoon Network in 2002. In the action comedy Loonatics Unleashed, his definite descendant Ace Bunny is the leader of the Loonatics team and seems to have inherited his ancestor's Brooklyn accent and comic wit. Strangely, Bugs was one of the few Looney Tunes characters who never appeared in the 2003 Duck Dodgers series.

Bugs has appeared in numerous video games, including the Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle series, Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rampage and the similar Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble, Looney Tunes B-Ball, Space Jam, Looney Tunes Racing, Looney Tunes: Space Race, Bugs Bunny Lost in Time, and its sequel, Bugs Bunny and Taz Time Busters, and Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal.

[edit] The Looney Tunes Show

Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang returned to television in 2011 in the Cartoon Network sitcom The Looney Tunes Show, with Jeff Bergman returning to voice both Bugs and Daffy Duck. This series will also feature the characters singing original songs as well. A large difference between Bugs and Daffy's friendship in the show is that, whereas Bugs would hardly mind Daffy's flaws in the original cartoons, in the show Bugs is often and openly annoyed at Daffy's antics, sometimes to the point of aggression when Daffy becomes too obnoxious. He also dates Lola Bunny , but he found her to be "crazy" and a bit too talkative. Though later on as the series progressed they did rekindle their relationship. Unlike the original cartoons, Bugs lives in a regular home, which he shares with Daffy. However, in one episode, his old home (a hole in the ground) was seen. Bugs' income comes from having invented the carrot peeler.

Return to film[link]

On August 13, 2010, Warner Bros. Pictures announced that they were planning a live-action/CG-animated combo feature film based on the Looney Tunes character.^[18]

Personality and catchphrases[link]

Bugs Bunny is characterized as being clever and capable of outsmarting anyone who antagonizes him, including Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Willoughby the Dog, Marvin the Martian, Beaky Buzzard, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tasmanian Devil, Cecil Turtle, Witch Hazel, Rocky and Mugsy, Wile E. Coyote, the Crusher, Gremlin, Count Blood Count and a host of others. Bugs almost always wins these conflicts, a plot pattern which recurs in Looney Tunes films directed by Chuck Jones. Concerned that viewers would lose sympathy for an aggressive protagonist who always won, Jones arranged for Bugs to be bullied, cheated, or threatened by the antagonists while minding his own business, justifying his subsequent antics as retaliation or self-defense. He's also been known to break the fourth wall by "communicating" with the audience, either by explaining the situation (e.g. "Be with you in a minute, folks!"), describing someone to the audience (e.g. "Feisty, ain't they?"), clueing in on the story (e.g. "That happens to him all during the picture, folks."), explaining that one of his antagonists' actions have pushed him to the breaking point ("Of course you know, this means war."), etc.

Bugs will usually try to placate the antagonist and avoid conflict, but when an antagonist pushes him too far, Bugs may address the audience and invoke his catchphrase "Of course you realize this means war!" before he retaliates, and the retaliation will be devastating. This line was taken from Groucho Marx and others in the 1933 film Duck Soup and was also used in the 1935 Marx film A Night at the Opera.^[20] Bugs would pay homage to Groucho in other ways, such as occasionally adopting his stooped walk or leering eyebrow-raising (in Hair-Raising Hare, for example) or sometimes with a direct impersonation (as in Slick Hare).

Other directors, such as Friz Freleng, characterized Bugs as altruistic. When Bugs meets other successful characters (such as Cecil Turtle in Tortoise Beats Hare, or, in World War II, the Gremlin of Falling Hare), his overconfidence becomes a disadvantage. Most of Bugs' antagonists are extremely dim-witted, and Bugs is easily able to outwit and torment them, though on occasion they will manage to get the best of Bugs. Daffy Duck, who is arguably more intelligent but less clever, is unaffected by Bugs' usual schemes, which usually results in the two trying to outsmart the other with Bugs always triumphing in the end. However, there are only three antagonists that successfully defeated Bugs in the end of the cartoon, such as the Gremlin from Falling Hare, the unnamed mouse from Rhapsody Rabbit, and the fly from Baton Bunny.

During the 1940s, Bugs starts off immature and wild, but starting in the 1950s his personality matured and his attitude was more refined. Though often shown as highly clever, Bugs is never actually malicious, and only acts as such in self-defense against his aggressors; the only two cartoons where Bugs ever served as an antagonist were Buckaroo Bugs and Duck Amuck; the latter cartoon depicts him as far more sadistic than usual, as he becomes the animator and abuses his newfound divine powers to torture Daffy.

Bugs Bunny's nonchalant carrot-chewing standing position, as explained by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Bob Clampett, originated in a scene in the film It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable's character leans against a fence, eating carrots rapidly and talking with his mouth full to Claudette Colbert's character. This scene was well known while the film was popular, and viewers at the time likely recognized Bugs Bunny's behavior as satire.^[21]

The carrot-chewing scenes are generally followed by Bugs Bunny's most well-known catchphrase, "What's up, Doc?", which was written by director Tex Avery for his first Bugs Bunny short, 1940s A Wild Hare. Avery explained later that it was a common expression in his native Texas and that he did not think much of the phrase. When the short was first screened in theaters, the "What's up, Doc?" scene generated a tremendously positive audience reaction.^[22] As a result, the scene became a recurring element in subsequent films and cartoons. The phrase was sometimes modified for a situation. For example, Bugs says "What's up, dogs?" to the antagonists in A Hare Grows in Manhattan, "What's up, Duke?" to the knight in Knight-mare Hare and "What's up, prune-face?" to the aged Elmer in The Old Grey Hare. He might also greet Daffy with "What's up, Duck?" He used one variation, "What's all the hub-bub, bub?" only once, in Falling Hare. Another variation is used in Looney Tunes: Back In Action when he greets a lightsaber-wielding Marvin the Martian saying "What's up, Darth?"

Several Chuck Jones shorts in the late 1940s and 1950s depict Bugs travelling via cross-country (and, in some cases, intercontinental) tunnel-digging, ending up in places as varied as Mexico (Bully for Bugs, 1953), the Himalayas (The Abominable Snow Rabbit, 1960) and Antarctica (Frigid Hare, 1949) all because he "shoulda taken that left toin at Albukoikee." He first utters that phrase in Herr Meets Hare (1945), when he emerges in the Black Forest, a cartoon seldom seen today due to its blatantly topical subject matter. When Hermann Göring says to Bugs, "There is no Las Vegas in 'Chermany'" and takes a potshot at Bugs, Bugs dives into his hole and says, "Joimany! Yipe!", as Bugs realizes he's behind enemy lines. The confused response to his "left toin" comment also followed a pattern. For example, when he tunnels into Scotland in 1948's My Bunny Lies over the Sea, while thinking he's heading for the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California, it provides another chance for an ethnic stereotype: "Therrre's no La Brrrea Tarrr Pits in Scotland!" (to which Bugs responds, "Uh...what's up, Mac-doc?"). A couple of late-1950s shorts of this ilk also featured Daffy Duck travelling with Bugs ("Since when is Pismo Beach inside a cave?!").

Bugs Bunny has some similarities to figures from mythology and folklore, such as Br'er Rabbit, Nanabozho, or Anansi, and might be seen as a modern trickster (for example, he repeatedly uses cross-dressing mischievously). Unlike most cartoon characters, however, Bugs Bunny is rarely defeated in his own games of trickery. One exception to this is the short Hare Brush, in which Elmer Fudd ultimately carries the day at the end; however, critics note that in this short, Elmer and Bugs assume each other's personalities—through mental illness and hypnosis, respectively—and it is only by becoming Bugs that Elmer can win. However, Bugs was beaten at his own game. In the short Duck Amuck he torments Daffy Duck as the unseen animator, ending with his line, "Ain't I a stinker?" Bugs feels the same wrath of an unseen animator in the short Rabbit Rampage where he is in turn tormented by Elmer Fudd. At the end of the clip Elmer gleefully exclaims, 'Well, I finally got even with that scwewy wabbit!"

Although it was usually Porky Pig who brought the WB cartoons to a close with his stuttering, "That's all, folks!", Bugs would occasionally appear, bursting through a drum just as Porky did, but munching a carrot and saying in his Bronx-Brooklyn accent, "And dat's de end!"

The name "Bugs" or "Bugsy" as an old-fashioned nickname means "crazy" (or "loopy"). Several famous people from the first half of the twentieth century had that nickname, like famous gangster, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, who disliked the nickname. It is now out of fashion as a nickname, but survives in 1950s–1960s expressions like "you're bugging me", as in "you're driving me crazy".

Bugs wears white gloves, which he is rarely seen without, although he may remove one and use it for slapping an opponent to predicate a duel. Another glove-less example is the episode Long-Haired Hare, where Bugs pretends to be the famed conductor Leopold Stokowski and instructs opera star "Giovanni Jones" to sing and to hold a high note. As Giovanni Jones is turning red with the strain, Bugs slips his left hand out of its glove, leaving the glove hovering in the air in order to command Jones to continue to hold the high note. Bugs then nips down to the mail drop to order, and then to receive, a pair of ear defenders. Bugs puts on the ear defenders and then zips back into the amphitheater and reinserts his hand into his glove as singer Jones is writhing on the stage, still holding that same high note.

Bugs Bunny is also a master of disguise: he can wear any disguise that he wants to confuse his enemies: in Bowery Bugs he uses diverse disguises: fakir, gentleman, woman, baker and finally policeman. This ability of disguise makes Bugs famous because we can recognize him while at the same time realizing that his enemies are stumped. Bugs has a certain preference for the female disguise: Taz, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam were fooled by this sexy bunny (woman) and in Hare Trimmed, Sam discovers the real face of "Granny" (Bugs's disguise) in the church where they attempt to get married. For all the gullible victims of all these disguises, however, for some reason, Daffy Duck and Cecil Turtle are among those who are never fooled.

Bugs Bunny may also have some mystical potential. In Knight-mare Hare he was able to return to his bunny form (after being transformed into a donkey) by removing his donkey form as if it were a suit. Merlin of Monroe (the wizard) was unable to do the same thing. Later Bugs Bunny defeated the Count Blood Count in a magical spell duel. However, the story was a dream and Bugs Bunny's victory over Count Blood Count was a result of his intellect, not innate magical power.

Rabbit or hare?[link]

The animators throughout Bugs' history have treated the terms rabbit and hare as synonymous. Taxonomically, they are not synonymous, being somewhat similar but observably different types of lagomorphs. Hares have much longer ears than rabbits, so Bugs might seem to be of the hare family, yet rabbits live in burrows, as Bugs is seen to do. Many more of the cartoon titles include the word "hare" rather than "rabbit," as "hare" lends itself easily to puns ("hair," "air," etc.) although Elmer Fudd has always referred to Bugs as a "wabbit".

Within the cartoons, although the term "hare" comes up sometimes, again typically as a pun—for example, Bugs drinking "hare tonic" to "stop falling hare" or being doused with "hare restorer" to bring him back from invisibility—Bugs as well as his antagonists most often refer to the character as a "rabbit." The word "bunny" is of no help in answering this question, as it is a synonym for both young hares and young rabbits.

In Nike commercials with Michael Jordan, Bugs had been referred to as "Hare Jordan."^[23][24]

Openings and closings of shorts[link]

In the opening of many of the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes irises contain Bugs Bunny's head after the Warner Bros. shield (generally from 1944 and 1949 onward). Others have Bugs Bunny relaxing on top of the Warner Bros. shield: He chews on his carrot, looks angrily at the camera and pulls down the next logo (Merrie Melodies or Looney Tunes) like a window shade (generally on cartoons between 1945 until early 1949). Then he lifts it back up, to now be seen lying on his own name, which then fades into the title of the specific short. In some other cases, the title card sometimes fades to him, already on his name and chewing his carrot then fade to the name of the short. At the finish of Hare Tonic and Baseball Bugs, Bugs breaks out of a drum (like Porky Pig) and says, "And that's the end". Also, at the end of Box Office Bunny, right after Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd run out through the Looney Tunes "That's All Folks!" sequence, Bugs later comes in through the rings and says, "And that's all, folks!". He did the ending for the last time at the end of Space Jam but this time saying "Well, that's all, folks!".

Voice actors[link]

The following are the many voice actors who have voiced the character Bugs Bunny over the last seventy-one years:

Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc was the original voice of Bugs Bunny and would voice the character for nearly five decades.

Mel Blanc voiced the character for 49 years, from Bugs' 1940 debut in A Wild Hare until Blanc's death in 1989. Blanc described the voice as a combination of Bronx and Brooklyn accents; however, Tex Avery claimed that he asked Blanc to give the character not a New York accent per se, but a voice like that of actor Frank McHugh, who frequently appeared in supporting roles in the 1930s and whose voice might be described as New York Irish.^[3] In Bugs' second cartoon Elmer's Pet Rabbit, Blanc created a completely new voice for Bugs, which sounded like a Jimmy Stewart impression, but the directors decided the previous voice was better. Though his best-known character was the carrot-chomping rabbit, munching on the carrots interrupted the dialogue. Various substitutes, such as celery, were tried, but none of them sounded like a carrot. So for the sake of expedience, he would munch and then spit the carrot bits into a spittoon rather than swallowing them, and continue with the dialogue. One often-repeated story, possibly originating from Bugs Bunny: Superstar, is that Blanc was allergic to carrots and had to spit them out to minimize any allergic reaction — but his autobiography makes no such claim.^[6] In fact, in a 1984 interview with Tim Lawson, co-author of The Magic Behind The Voices: A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors (University Press of Mississippi, 2004), Blanc emphatically denied being allergic to carrots.

Jeff Bergman

Jeff Bergman was the first to voice Bugs Bunny (and several other Looney Tunes characters) after Mel Blanc died in 1989. He got the job by impressing Warner Bros. higher-ups with a tape of himself re-creating the voices of several of Blanc's characters, including Bugs. He had rigged the tape player so that he could use a switch to instantly toggle back and forth between the original recording of Blanc and Bergman's recording of the same lines. Upon doing this, it was almost impossible for the producers to tell which voice was Blanc's and which voice was Bergman; thus his vocal ability was established and his career launched. Bergman first voiced Bugs during the 1990 Academy Awards, the television special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, and the first season of Tiny Toon Adventures. Bergman also voiced Bugs in the 1990s Looney Tunes shorts Box Office Bunny, (Blooper) Bunny, and Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers. In 2011, Bergman returned to voice Bugs after an almost 20-year absence for Cartoon Network's new series, The Looney Tunes Show.

Greg Burson

Greg Burson first voiced Bugs Bunny in later episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures. He was then given the responsibility of voicing Bugs in 1995's Carrotblanca, a well-received Looney Tunes short originally shown in cinemas alongside The Amazing Panda Adventure (US) and The Pebble and the Penguin (non-US); it has since been released on video packaged with older Looney Tunes cartoons and was even included in the special edition DVD release of Casablanca, of which it is both a parody and an homage. Burson next voiced Bugs in the 1996 short From Hare to Eternity; the short is notable for being dedicated to the memory of the then-just deceased Friz Freleng, and for being the final Looney Tunes cartoon that Chuck Jones directed. Burson also voiced Bugs in the Animaniacs episodes "Video Revue," "Warner's 65th Anniversary," and "Back in Style," as well as in The Bugs and Daffy Show, which ran on Cartoon Network during the 1990s. He died in 2008.

Billy West

Billy West has been in television since the late 1980s. His first role was for the 1988 revived version of Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil. West's breakthrough role then came almost immediately, as the voice of Stimpy and later Ren in John Kricfalusi's Ren & Stimpy. West has since been the voice talent for close to 120 different characters, including some of the most iconic animated figures in television history. Perhaps West's most notable film work came in the 1996 film Space Jam. Starring alongside Michael Jordan, West provided the voice of both Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. West would go on to reprise the roles of Bugs in subsequent Looney Tunes productions, including his cameos on Histeria!, also he made a cameo appearance on Kid vs. Kat in "Class Act", the Kids' WB! promotional spots, and the 2006 Christmas-themed special Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas and the DVD compilations "Reality Check" and "Stranger Than Fiction", along with several Looney Tunes-centric CDs and video games.

Joe Alaskey

Joe Alaskey, like Jeff Bergman, is well-known for his ability to successfully impersonate many Looney Tunes characters. In fact, Alaskey voiced Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as original voice actor Mel Blanc had found it too hard on his vocal cords (which makes Sam and Foghorn two of the few voices created by Blanc to be voiced by someone else during his lifetime). Alaskey's first performance as Bugs Bunny came in the 2003 film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, although he had tested performing the role in a few earlier projects, such as Tweety's High-Flying Adventure. While still best known for providing the voice of Daffy Duck, Alaskey has also gone on to do Bugs' voice in several subsequent productions, including Daffy Duck for President (which was released on The Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 and dedicated to the deceased Chuck Jones) and several recent video games and Looney Tunes cartoons, including Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Samuel Vincent

Samuel Vincent served as the voice of Bugs in the Cartoon Network TV series Baby Looney Tunes.

Noel Blanc

Noel Blanc, Mel Blanc's son, voiced Bugs for the Tiny Toon Adventures special It's a Wonderful Tiny Toon Christmas Special. The elder Blanc claimed in his later years that Noel substituted for Mel in various cartoon studios, including doing Bugs at Warner Bros., while he was recovering from a near-fatal car wreck. Noel can also be seen doing Bugs' voice with his father in the documentary on the making of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Legacy and influence[link]

In 2002, TV Guide compiled a list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time as part of the magazine's 50th anniversary. Bugs Bunny was given the honor of number 1.^[25][26] In a CNN broadcast on July 31, 2002, a TV Guide editor talked about the group that created the list. The editor also explained why Bugs pulled top billing: "His stock...has never gone down...Bugs is the best example...of the smart-aleck American comic. He not only is a great cartoon character, he's a great comedian. He was written well. He was drawn beautifully. He has thrilled and made many generations laugh. He is tops."^[27] Additionally, in Animal Planet's 50 Greatest Movie Animals (2004), Bugs was named #3, behind Mickey Mouse and Toto. In 2005 Bugs Bunny was voted the 10th greatest cartoon in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Cartoons behind The Simpsons, Tom and Jerry, South Park, Toy Story, Family Guy, Shrek, The Lion King, Spirited Away and The Incredibles. According to Time Warner, Bugs Bunny became the current official mascot for Six Flags theme parks beginning with their 45th anniversary. During an interview for Inside the Actors Studio, comedian Dave Chappelle cited him as one of his earliest influences, praising voice actor Mel Blanc.

Awards[link]

Academy Awards[link]

• Knighty Knight Bugs (1958)

Academy Award nominations[link]

• A Wild Hare (1940)
• Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (1941)

See also[link]

	Animation portal
	United States portal
	Film portal
	Biography portal

• Looney Tunes
• Merrie Melodies
• List of Bugs Bunny cartoons
• List of Looney Tunes feature films
• Golden Age of American animation

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Adamson, Joe (1990). Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-1855-7. 
• Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2. 
• Blanc, Mel; Bashe, Philip (1989). That's Not All, Folks!. Clayton South, VIC, Australia: Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-39089-5. 
• Jones, Chuck (1989). Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-12348-9. 
• Maltin, Leonard (1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (Revised ed.). New York: Plume Book. ISBN 0-452-25993-2. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bugs Bunny

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bugs Bunny

• Bugs Bunny at the Internet Movie Database
• Bugs Bunny at Toonopedia
• Warner Bros. Studios