Rabbit Every Monday (1951)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Animation by Manuel Perez, Ken Champin. Virgil Ross, Art Davis
Music by Carl Stalling
“Rabbit Every Monday” casts Yosemite Sam in the hunter role usually occupied by Elmer Fudd, and Sam’s distinctive mix of bellicosity and idiocy expanded the possibilities for wildly original comedy.
The cartoon opens with Bugs cooking carrots on a rotisserie – the food preparation occurs above ground from his hole-residence, with only his hands emerging from the subterranean residence while he sings a parody of the song “It’s Magic” from the 1948 Warner Bros. film “Romance on the High Seas.” According to Bugs, “Oh, carrots are divine, you get a dozen for a dime – it’s magic!” When he finally emerges, Bugs takes a roasted carrot and caresses it as if it was a long-lost lover.
Sam is on the prowl with his rifle and smells the carrots cooking. As he closes in on Bugs, the silhouette of a theater patron moves across the bottom of the screen. Sam points his rifle at the silhouetted figure and orders him back to his seat – and then he looks directly at the viewer and issues a warning that he’ll shoot anyone who tries to exit and tip off Bugs of his arrival.
Sam’s rifle is then used in one of the most imaginative scenes in Bugs Bunny history. The hunter arrives at rotisserie and points his rifle into Bugs’ hole. Bugs’ hands pop up through the rifle to sauté and flavor Sam’s nose as if it was one of the cooking carrots. Sam gets pulled into the rifle and quickly emerges, angry that Bugs bit his nose.
Bugs himself emerges from the shotgun, and Sam ejects him by releasing a gun shell with Bugs inside of it. Rather than shoot him on sight, Sam angrily announces, “Now start prayin’, cuz I’m a-blowin’ ya to smithereenies at the count of 10!” As Sam counts, Bugs chews bubble gum and plugs up the gun’s opening, causing it backfire and encase Sam in a giant gummy bubble. Bugs exhales mightily and the bubble-trapped Sam floats off a cliff while the soundtrack offers an instrumental riff from “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” – as usual, musical director Carl Stalling always knew when to place the best pop ditty into a scene. Sam tries to blow the bubble from the inside back up the cliff, but Bugs sticks a pin into the bubble and Sam drops into a sticky freefall.
Amazingly, Sam captures Bugs by shoveling around the hole’s entrance and shaking the dirt away through a sieve. Bugs is taken back to Sam’s cabin and hung on a wall by his feet while Sam prepares a wood-burning stove to cook his prey. This final stretch of the cartoon is limited to the cramped kitchen, with the stove being used in unexpected sight gags – and we’ll pause the descriptive section of the review here so as not to spoil the surprise ending.
This is one of the most invigorating shorts where Sam is Bugs’ adversary, which is all the more remarkable since it is among the least elaborate in terms of setting – most of the action takes place around Bugs’ hole and in Sam’s kitchen, with only the relatively brief cliff sequence offering a wider vista. One curious aspect of “Rabbit Every Monday” is the absence of a writer credit. It is unclear if this was an oversight, and it is a shame because the viewers deserved to know which inventive talent created this short.