Bugs Bunny Rides Again
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Bugs Bunny Rides Again is a 1948 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short, directed by Friz Freleng, and written by Tedd Pierce and Michael Maltese. Voice characterizations are performed by Mel Blanc. The cartoon features Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. This is a sequel, of sorts, to the pair's first encounter in 1945's Hare Trigger. The title is a typical Western reference, as in "The Lone Ranger rides again."
[edit] Synopsis
Yosemite Sam is in town and no one dares to challenge him except Bugs. Sam declares "this town ain't big enough for the both of us!" Bugs tries to rectify that by running offscreen and, to sound effects of hammers and saws, quickly constructs a background of modern skyscrapers in the town, but "it's still not big enough!" They square off in a variety of disciplines, such as dancing. In the time-honored western cliché, Sam orders Bugs to "Dance!" while firing at his feet. Bugs grabs a cane and straw hat from offscreen, and goes into the same vaudeville soft shoe routine he first exhibited in Stage Door Cartoon, then says "Take it, Sam!" The diminutive villain, although startled initially, quickly breaks into the same dance, and is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
When Sam returns to the surface, Bugs dares him to cross a line drawn with his foot. "OK, I'm a-steppin'!" Bugs continues this schtick all the way out of town to the edge of a cliff, where the unobservant Sam steps over the line and plummets toward the ground far below. Suddenly stricken with guilt, the speedy hare dashes down a roadway, beats Sam to the ground and lays down a mattress, telling the audience, "Ya know, sometimes me conscious kind-a bodders me ... but not this time!" as he pulls away the mattress. Sam smashes into the ground (offscreen) and the already pint-sized bandit has been vertically flattened like a collapsible drinking glass, but he still comes up firing.
A horseback chase scene ensues, to the tune of the William Tell Overture, as the two ride on horses that are proportional to their own sizes (or lack thereof). Bugs leads Sam into a tunnel, and again showing extraordinary construction talents, has time to don a painter's cap and build a brick wall at the other end, which Sam smacks into. After more chasing, they realize they are going in circles.
The two decide to settle their differences by playing cards ("Gin rummy's mah game, Sam"). Sam tells Bugs to "cut the cards", which he does using a meat cleaver, a joke taken directly from a Harpo Marx gag in the Marx Brothers' 1932 film Horse Feathers. With a new deck, Bugs tricks Sam into playing a card that gives Bugs the win. Bugs tries to get Sam to take the train out of town, but when the passenger car is revealed to be full of swimsuit-clad women headed for a beauty contest in Florida, Bugs fights with Sam to get on the train.
Bugs prevails as usual. In the final shot, he leans out the train window, his face covered with lipstick from kisses, and hollers, "So long, Sammy, see ya in Miami!"
[edit] Trivia
- When Sam first introduces himself, walking into the bar under the swinging doors, he originally described himself as "the roughest, toughest he-man hombre that's ever crossed the Rio Grand-ee -- and I don't mean Mahatma Gand-ee!" The cartoon was released the same year that the pacifist Indian leader was assassinated. For subsequent reissue prints, Blanc redubbed the last line to "And I ain't no mamby-pamby!"
