The Abominable Snow Rabbit (1961)
Directed by Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble
Story by Tedd Pierce
Animation by Ken Harris, Tom Ray, Richard Thompson, Bob Bransford, David R. Green
Music by Milt Franklyn
Bugs Bunny burrows underground on a trip to Palm Springs, with Daffy Duck following him. Somehow, they wind up in the Himalayas. Daffy is exasperated by Bugs’ poor sense of direction and decides to burrow his way home, but winds up encountering the Abominable Snowman. This oversized creature is strong but cheerfully dimwitted, and he is too eager to have a pet rabbit that he wants to name George.
“The Abominable Snow Rabbit” came 10 years after the premiere of the “Hunting Trilogy” classic “Rabbit Fire,” and it was depressing to see how the artistic quality and comic imagination of the Bugs-Daffy frenemy cartoons frayed over that decade. Compared to the earlier classics, this offering was too heavy in dialogue and relatively light in sight gags, while the animation had a flat style that suggested the Looney Tunes team was working on a very low budget.
One curious aspect is that Daffy is much more sedate in this cartoon compared to his other pairings with Bugs. The character generates a few slapstick laughs (especially when he dives headfirst into a frozen lake) and is given some funny dialogue (particularly the line “It’s a simple matter of logic. I’m not like other people. I can’t stand pain. It hurts me.”). But the angst-fueled neuroticism that fueled the character since the “Hunting Trilogy” was dialed down considerably, resulting in Daffy running at half-speed.
“The Abominable Snow Rabbit” is mostly recalled – and, by many fans, beloved – because of the Abominable Snowman character. (He was dubbed Hugo years after the cartoon’s release but does not carry that name on-screen.) The oversized being, with a mop of hair covering his eyes and a huge blue nose, is crafted as a caricature of Lon Chaney Jr.’s character of Lenny from the 1939 film “Of Mice and Men.” The Lenny character was used frequently years earlier in Warner Bros. cartoons and in the Tex Avery shorts he made at MGM and recycling it yet again showed that screenwriter Tedd Pierce was seriously short of original ideas. Still, Mel Blanc’s playful voice performance helped make it one of more likable one-shot characters.
This was the first cartoon where Chuck Jones shared co-directing credit with Maurice Noble. Their teamwork was erratic, with a great deal of so-so work (particularly with the 1960s Tom and Jerry shorts at MGM) but also an occasional peak that included two Oscar-nominated cartoons (“Beep Prepared” and “Now Hear This”) and one Oscar winner (“The Dot and the Line”).
The Abominable Snow Rabbit
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