The Big Snooze
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The Big Snooze is a 1946 Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, his final cartoon for Warner. Its title was likely inspired by the 1939 book The Big Sleep, and its 1946 film adaptation, a Warner release. The Big Snooze features Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, voiced as usual by Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan respectively.
In this cartoon-within-a-cartoon, Bugs and Elmer are in the midst of their usual hunting-chasing scenario. After Bugs tricks Elmer into running through a hollow log and off a cliff three times (a comic triple of sorts), Elmer becomes enraged and frustrated that the writers never let him catch the rabbit "in these cartoons". He tears up his Warner contract and walks off the set to devote his life to fishing. With a line in the water, and lying against a tree, Elmer quickly falls asleep.
Bugs, stunned by Elmer's walkout, observes Elmer's nap and takes sleeping pills ("Take Dese and Doze") in order to rock Elmer's "dreamboat" by "invading" his dream and continuing to drive Elmer crazy. Symbolic of his dreamland plight, Elmer appears nearly nude, wearing only his derby hat and a strategically placed "loincloth" consisting of a laurel wreath. The two resume their chase, through a surreal landscape.
Bugs tricks Elmer into donning a slinky dress (complete with bustline), high heels, and wig, and Elmer even purses his lips while Bugs applies lipstick. Then a curtain rises and they are at Hollywood and Vine, where a group of "Hollywood wolves" dressed in zoot suits hoot and holler at Elmer, crying "Howwwwww old is she?" (a line also used by the "wolves" in Clampett's Book Revue, released the same year). Elmer cries, "Gwacious!" and runs away with Bugs at high speed, mimicking some crazy dance steps suggested by Bugs, ("Hey, Doc, run 'this way'!"). At one point, the apparently gender-confused Elmer stops and asks the audience, "Have any of you giwls evew had an expewience wike this?" Bugs and Elmer dive off a cliff (in a scene similar to The Heckling Hare). Bugs drinks some "Hare Tonic - Stops Falling Hare" and screeches to a halt in mid-air, while the dream Elmer continues to careen toward earth, finally crash-landing into the real Elmer's snoozing body as he wakes up with a start: "Oh, what a howwibwe nightmawe!"
Elmer dashes back to the cartoon's original set, pieces his Warner contract back together, and tells the audience, "Oh, Mw. Wawnew... I'm ba-ack!" and the chase through the log begins anew. The happy Bugs faces the audience in a closeup, closing with the catchphrase from the "Beulah" character on the radio show Fibber McGee and Molly [1] (also used at the end of The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, another Clampett feature from 1946), "Ah love dat man!" ("Love dat man!")
[edit] Note
- Sometimes, the scene where Bugs takes sleeping pills to get into Elmer's dream is edited out on TV versions. It is shown uncut on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection.
