What's Up, Doc?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the 1950 Looney Tunes short. For the 1972 film of the same name see What's Up, Doc? (1972 film).
What's Up, Doc? is a 1950 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Robert McKimson and released by Warner Bros. Pictures, in which Hollywood star Bugs Bunny recounts his life story to a reporter from "Disassociated Press". Bugs Bunny talks about his birth, his rise to fame, and the slow years, when famous Vaudeville performer Elmer Fudd chooses Bugs Bunny to be part of his act. Eventually the duo comes upon their classic formula of hunter vs hare.
[edit] Trivia
In this short is a hilarious gag in which Warren Foster, the writer, uses the same piece of animation all over again. The sequence is extremely bathos. In what appears to be upwardly mobile in Bugs Bunny's career, there is a sign marquee, then music, the curtain rises, and Bugs Bunny and the Chorus Boys walk on stage, singing and dancing, "Oh we are the boys of the chorus. We hope you like our show. We know you're rooting for us, but now we have to go." Then a different sign will appear on the screen, and then the dance sequence is repeated. This gag was repeated at the end, after Bugs tells the press about his first big feature, givng the short a funny anticlimax. This repetive gag idea was parodied in Gene Kelly's musical Singin' in the Rain.
In this short, Bugs Bunny throws away many scripts he's considering, one of them including Life with Father. Bugs predicts: "Eh, this will never be a hit!" In reality, the play was a big success, with over 3000 performances and a rather lengthy run (from 1939-1947), making it the longest running non-musical on Broadway so far.
Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, and Eddie Cantor appear, through caricatures, in a park with Bugs Bunny, all of them out of work. Jolson spots Elmer Fudd, a big vaudeville star, and tells the others that Elmer is looking for a partner. The three then do their trademark phrases/songs, but Elmer ignores them. When the "fathead" reaches Bugs Bunny, he says, "Why are you hanging around these guys? They'll never amount to anything."
Bugs' classic catchphrase is shown in this film to have been originally an accident. It came from Bugs after he pied Elmer in the face and bonked him on the head with a mallet during their burlesque (it should have been the other way around). Bugs soon finds himself staring down the barrels of a shotgun, causing the scared Bugs to utter timidly, "Eh, what's up, Doc?" The audience reacts with laughter and applause, making Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd continue the act and later adopt their well known hunter vs. hare formula, which Bugs Bunny wins repeatedly.
In this short, musician Carl Stalling's "What's Up, Doc?" song lyrics are first actually heard. The song's tune had been first heard a few years earlier, usually over the title credits of other Bugs Bunny cartoon shorts.
A young Bugs Bunny plays Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody on a piano at the beginning. He would later make references to Franz Liszt in such films as Rhapsody Rabbit and My Dream is Yours.
Bugs Bunny is shown living in a 1930s/1940s Modernist house at the start of the cartoon.
