{"id":51124,"date":"2025-12-24T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=51124"},"modified":"2025-12-22T18:28:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T23:28:30","slug":"every-bugs-bunny-ever-hare-abian-nights-1959","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/24\/every-bugs-bunny-ever-hare-abian-nights-1959\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Hare-abian Nights (1959)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHare-abian Nights\u201d<\/strong> (1959)
\nDirected by Ken Harris
\nStory by Michael Maltese
\nAnimation by Ken Harris and Ben Washam
\nMusic by Milt Franklyn<\/p>\n

Bugs Bunny is burrowing underground on his way to Perth Amboy, only to arrive in an Arabian sultan\u2019s palace \u2013 a mistake he blames on failing to make a left turn in Des Moines. He thinks he is in a movie theater, but quickly discovers he is part of a line-up of would-be entertainers ordered to amuse the sultan. The performers work on an elevated stage with a trap door. If the sultan is not entertained, he pushes a button that drops the unlucky performers into a crocodile pit. Bugs is introduced as a \u201cteller of tales\u201d and quickly endeavors to stay out of the crocodile pit by recalling a few of his unlikely comic adventures.
\n<\/p>\n

\u201cHare-abian Nighst\u201d gets off to a cute start with a pair of music acts that displease the sultan: a jazz quartet called \u201cTimbuk Two Plus 3\u201d who perform a rousing version of \u201cSweet Georgia Brown\u201d and an Arabian rocker named \u201cEl-Viz Preslii\u201d who starts singing \u201cYou ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 but a hound camel\u201d before being dropped into the crocodile pit.<\/p>\n

When Bugs begins to tell his tales, originality evaporates as clips from three older shorts are inserted \u2013 \u201cBully for Bugs,\u201d \u201cWater, Water Every Hare,\u201d and \u201cSahara Hare.\u201d The third film features Yosemite Sam as an Arab warrior, and Bugs\u2019 derogatory references to him immediately cues the viewer that Sam is also the sultan.<\/p>\n

In animation circles, a work like \u201cHare-abian Nights\u201d is known as a \u201ccheater,\u201d which is a cartoon that contains a large amount of footage from earlier cartoons. On its own terms, that is not necessarily terrible \u2013 the 1951 \u201cHis Hare-Raising Tale\u201d deftly mixed older sequences with funny new footage featuring Bugs and his nephew Clyde. But in this film, unfortunately, the style and substance differences between the older and more vibrant classic work and the dullish new sequences with Bugs and Sam are difficult to overlook. And Sam\u2019s inevitable descent into his crocodile pit is among the weakest and most predictable gags to be served in this series. <\/p>\n

\u201cHare-abian Nights\u201d is the only Golden Age short featuring Sam that was made by Chuck Jones\u2019 unit, although direction was credited to animator Ken Harris. This was the first and only time Harris received such a Golden Age directing credit.<\/p>\n

The plot of \u201cHare-abian Nights\u201d would be reworked in the 1982 feature \u201cBugs Bunny’s 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales,\u201d with Sam as the sultan ordering Bugs to read stories to his bratty son, a new character named Prince Abba-Dabba. As with \u201cHare-abian Nights,\u201d that film was a \u201ccheater\u201d with memorable classic scenes linked by desultory new footage.<\/p>\n

Oh, a word about the lobby card illustration at the top of this review. It is a very funny picture that certainly helps pique interest in \u201cHare-abian Nights,\u201d but there is no such scene in the film \u2013 and it is too bad that the imagination and humor that went into the lobby card is absent from the film it is promoting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHare-abian Nights\u201d (1959) Directed by Ken Harris Story by Michael Maltese Animation by Ken Harris and Ben Washam Music by Milt Franklyn Bugs Bunny is burrowing underground on his way to Perth Amboy, only to arrive in an Arabian sultan\u2019s palace \u2013 a mistake he blames on failing to make a left turn in Des […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":51125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3068],"tags":[167,2078,3916,2077],"class_list":["post-51124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bugs-bunny-ever","tag-bugs-bunny","tag-cartoon","tag-ken-harris","tag-yosemite-sam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51127,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51124\/revisions\/51127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}