Wideo Wabbit (1956)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Story by Tedd Pierce
Music by Carl Stalling
Animation by Ted Bonnicksen, Keith Darling, Russ Dyson, George Grandpré
Bugs Bunny answers a newspaper advertisement seeking a rabbit to appear on-camera at QTTV-TV. Bugs shows up and is hired, unaware that his job is to be the prey in Elmer Fudd’s television program “The Sportsman’s Hour,” sponsored by The French Fried Fresh Frozen Rabbit Company. Bugs narrowly avoids being shot by Elmer on live television and escapes through the corridors of the television studio, disguising himself as various small-screen personalities before turning tables on his predator by tricking Elmer to dress as a rabbit. Bugs then dresses up like Elmer and shoots the rabbit-suited Elmer on television.
The best of the Bugs Bunny television parodies, much of the humor in “Wideo Wabbit” might be lost on younger viewers who are unfamiliar with the personalities and programs being spoofed in this cartoon. Bugs disguises himself as Groucho Marx (hosting the show “You Beat Your Wife” – a riff on Marx’s “You Bet Your Life”), as Liberace (calling himself Liverace, with old footage from “Rhapsody Rabbit” inserted for the piano sight gags), and as Art Carney’s Ed Norton. There is also joking on the docudrama series “You Are There” and the game show “Masquerade Party,” while the producer of Elmer’s program is a vocal sound-alike for comic actor Frank Nelson, best known as one of Jack Benny’s nemeses. For viewers familiar with this chapter of show business history, this is a classic example of IYKYK.
There is also a light assault on the then-reigning Production Code with Bugs exaggerating an effeminate male voice as a production assistant, an obvious wink to the considerable non-heterosexual population working in show business. While Mel Blanc received screen credit for voice performances, an uncredited Arthur Q. Bryan voiced the befuddled Elmer and an equally uncredited Daws Butler filled in brilliantly for the rest of the characters.