{"id":50336,"date":"2025-10-29T09:30:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T13:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=50336"},"modified":"2025-10-29T16:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T20:00:10","slug":"every-bugs-bunny-ever-show-biz-bugs-1957","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/29\/every-bugs-bunny-ever-show-biz-bugs-1957\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Show Biz Bugs (1957)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Show Biz Bugs <\/strong>(1957)
\nDirected by Friz Freleng
\nStory by Warren Foster
\nAnimation by Gerry Chiniquy, Arthur Davis, Virgil Ross
\nMusic by Milt Franklyn<\/p>\n

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are performers in a vaudeville revue, but Daffy is furious that Bugs has top billing and a star\u2019s dressing room plus the audience\u2019s frenzied adulation while he faces the indignity of being assigned the men\u2019s bathroom as his dressing room and an audience that greets his performing with either stony silence or a tomato thrown at his face. Unable to upstage and sabotage Bugs, Daffy pulls out all stops to perform a wildly dangerous act where he consumes multiple explosive ingredients and blows himself up. The audience loves the act and wants more, but alas it is too late \u2013 Daffy\u2019s soul is Heaven bound when he ruefully confides to Bugs that he can only do that explosive act once.
\n<\/p>\n

This Bugs-Daffy Duck frenemy entry is a tremendously funny cartoon, but it is also an odd work because Bugs doesn\u2019t have a single funny line in the film. Indeed, Bugs is almost a blank slate of a personality while Daffy has too much negative personality, going so far as to repeatedly insult Bugs with surprisingly harsh taunts.<\/p>\n

\u201cShow Biz Bugs\u201d is also curious because some of the most memorable gags are recycled from earlier cartoons, which at this point was starting to become a habit for the Friz Freleng-directed cartoons. In this case, Daffy\u2019s disastrous act with supposedly trained pigeons and his show-stopping number were used in the 1949 \u201cCurtain Razor\u201d while the booby-trapped xylophone was previously seen as a dynamite-rigged piano in the 1951 \u201cBallot Box Bunny.\u201d<\/p>\n

And still, it works. It is astonishing to watch Daffy\u2019s violent ego grows more corybantic while Bugs\u2019 laid-back demeanor betrays no acknowledgment of the sputtering duck\u2019s contempt \u2013 this is funnier than having Bugs goading Daffy because the latter\u2019s self-destructiveness is entirely of his making. Even better, the recycled gags are funnier here than in their original presentations \u2013 Daffy\u2019s over-the-top reactions makes these scenes work brilliantly, a tribute to Mel Blanc\u2019s incredible voice performances and the animators\u2019 talent in capturing multiple degrees of the character\u2019s humiliation.<\/p>\n

There is also the sublime segment with Bugs and Daffy doing a dance routine to \u201cTea for Two.\u201d This is one of the all-time best musical numbers in a Warner Bros. cartoon, bringing a touch of high style to the low comedy knockabout. <\/p>\n

\u201cShow Biz Bugs\u201d was the last Bugs-Daffy frenemy film that is truly a laugh out loud classic. The characters would appear together in other cartoons, but they never duplicated the inventiveness found here.<\/p>\n