The 1979 television special “Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales” marked the first time since the end of the Golden Age that the Warner Bros. animators created a genuine classic. Consisting of three new shorts with brief bridging sections, this holiday offering was rich with inventive laugh-out-loud comedy.
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There is a scene in Ken Russell’s 1975 “Tommy” which ranks among the most remarkable and ridiculous visions ever put on film: Ann-Margret, in a swing of drunken rage, throws a champagne bottle at a television set. The bottle smashes the television’s screen, and waves of soap suds and baked beans come pouring out. Ann-Margret then writhes on the floor, covered head-to-toe in baked beans.
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This primetime television special finds Bugs as a diet doctor who is running his own practice after only six months of medical school. The upcoming Thanksgiving holiday creates a renewed emphasis on food management, with Bugs treating such diverse patients as Porky Pig (who is put on a carrot diet), Millicent the Slobbovian Rabbit (who has problems with food management and her love life), and an excessively nervous Sylvester.
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One of the most artistically ambitious productions from the golden age of B-movies was Joseph H. Lewis’ pulpy thriller, which borrowed heavily from the Bonnie and Clyde story while offering a production style that transcended its budgetary limitations.
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In 1979, Warner Bros. finally released a feature-length film centered around Bugs Bunny. And while “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie” had a few problems, its arrival in theaters signaled a commercial potential that the studio had overlooked for too long.
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I truly cannot understand why Fred Coe’s 1965 comedy “A Thousand Clowns” received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture – an honor that put it in the company of “The Sound of Music,” “Doctor Zhivago,” “Darling” and “Ship of Fools.” Those other four films are considered classics, while “A Thousand Clowns” is little more than a tired embarrassment.
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Warner Bros. cranked out these back-to-back primetime television specials that mixed post-1948 cartoon classics with so-so new animation bridging.
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