Frigid Hare

Frigid Hare
Merrie Melodies (Bugs Bunny) series
The title card of Frigid Hare.
Directed by	Charles M. Jones
Produced by	Eddie Selzer
Story by	Michael Maltese
Voices by	Mel Blanc
Music by	Carl Stalling
Animation by	Phil Monroe Ben Washam Lloyd Vaughan Ken Harris
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date(s)	October 8, 1949 (USA)
Color process	Technicolor
Running time	7 minutes
Language	English

Frigid Hare is a 1948 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short, released in 1949, and was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese.^[1] The title can be seen as a simple play on "frigid air" and/or on the refrigerator brand called "Frigidaire".

Synopsis

While traveling to Miami Beach for an overdue vacation from Warner Brothers, Bugs Bunny mistakenly ends up at the South Pole, having yet again missed the left turn at Albuquerque. While there, he meets a young penguin being pursued by an Eskimo hunter. Bugs sends the hunter in the opposite direction but finds the penguin has grown attached to him. Wanting to get back to his vacation, Bugs distracts the penguin, then pushes him down a snowbank, only to see him land in the hunter's bag. Bugs starts to resume his journey but is overcome by his better nature and rescues the penguin. Although successful, Bugs grumbles that he only has four days of vacation left, only to learn from the penguin that, at the South Pole, the nights are six months long. Figuring this means he can stretch his four-day vacation until July 1953, Bugs dons top hat and tails and accompanies the penguin on "a nice long formal vacation."

Censorship and alterations

• On the syndicated Merrie Melodies Show, Bugs calling the Inuit hunter an "Eskimo pie-head" was muted out.
• This cartoon was initially banned from airing on the 2001 installment of Cartoon Network's "June Bugs" marathon due to the stereotypical portrayal of the Inuit hunter. The cartoon resurfaced on a February 2002 airing of The Looney Tunes Show on Cartoon Network (in an installment that showed only Chuck Jones cartoons due to the director's then-recent death), with only one edit: After Bugs finds out from the penguin that the days and nights are six months long in the Arctic, Bugs' line about not having to return to work until July 1953 is edited (to keep the cartoon from being dated). When the cartoon aired again on a 2002 "June Bugs", wherein all the Bugs Bunny cartoons that Cartoon Network is allowed to air are shown in alphabetical order, both the 1953 line that was cut when CN first showed this cartoon and the "Eskimo pie-head" line that was muted from the syndicated Merrie Melodies Show were edited out of the new CN version. This cartoon aired again in 2011, with the same edit it had nine years ago.
• On a 1965 telecast of The Bugs Bunny Show, Bugs' line about not going back to work until July of 1953 was changed to July of 1968.

Availability

• Frigid Hare is available, uncut and restored, on the third disc of Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1 (2003).
• The cartoon was included, uncut and uncensored, as an extra on the DVD issue of March of the Penguins (2005).

References

External links

• Frigid Hare at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Frigid Hare at the Internet Movie Database