Homeless Hare

"Homeless Hare"
Merrie Melodies (Bugs Bunny) series
Directed by	Charles M. Jones
Produced by	Edward Selzer (uncredited)
Story by	Michael Maltese
Voices by	Mel Blanc John T. Smith (uncredited)
Music by	Carl Stalling
Animation by	Ken Harris Phil Monroe Ben Washam Lloyd Vaughan
Layouts by	Robert Gribbroek
Backgrounds by	Peter Alvarado
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	March 11, 1950 (USA)
Color process	Technicolor
Running time	7 minutes 4 seconds
Language	English

Homeless Hare is a Merrie Melodies cartoon short starring Bugs Bunny, directed by Chuck Jones and released by Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. in 1950 and Reissued in 1961 as a Blue Ribbon.^[1]

Plot

Bugs wakes up after a long night to find that a burly construction worker (whom Bugs derisively refers to as "Hercules") has just shoveled up his rabbit hole near a highrise building being built. Bugs kindly asks the construction worker to put his hole back, but the worker simply dumps Bugs and the dirt into a dump truck. Bugs angrily shouts "Hey, you big gorilla! Haven't you ever heard of the sanctity of the American home?" before another mound of earth falls on him and the truck hauls him away.

But a when the worker exits the crane, Bugs calls him from the building under construction ("Yoo hoo! Hercules! Here's a message for ya!") dropping a brick on him (along with a telegram labeled "Eastern Onion" reading "Okay Hercules... You asked for it... Bugs Bunny"), then a steel girder, and then plays with the elevator controls while the worker is inside the elevator. Bugs then impersonates the project engineer and orders the worker to make a high brick wall, followed by several attachments. Once done, the worker is trapped at dizzying heights on a teeterboard. As Bugs removes the bricks from one end, the worker on the other end strips off his clothes to save weight. This only works temporarily; by the time Bugs removes the last brick the worker is down to nothing but his underwear. He takes the fall, but suddenly manages to turn the tables on Bugs, knocking him out temporarily with a steel girder and causing Bugs to dumbly "sleepwalk" through a harrowing series of moving girders and other objects. He finally regains his senses when he falls into a barrel full of water, then witnesses his nemesis bullying a shy employee, swiping his lunch and ordering him back to work. Infuriated, Bugs decides to put the goon out of commission once and for all. Appropriating a red-hot rivet with pliers, Bugs takes a look at the posted floor plans for the building and finds his mark. He releases the rivet down a hole; it bounces around through an elaborate maze of objects and finally lands and burns through a rope holding up a giant steel casing which falls on top of the worker (who echoes Candy Candido's radio catchphrase, "I'm feelin' mighty low"). Bugs' ultimatum: "Do I get my home back or do I have to get tough?" prompts the worker to finally wave the white flag in defeat. The next shot is of the finished skyscraper, with a slight indentation in the middle. At the bottom, Bugs sits in his hole - the building has been built around it - and declares: "After all, a man's home is his castle."

Edited versions

When the short aired on ABC, the part where Bugs throws a brick to the construction worker's head with a message attached was edited to remove the brick actually making contact with his head and the shot of the brick on the construction worker's face before he rips the note off and reads it.

See also

• List of Bugs Bunny cartoons
• No Parking Hare - a remake of this cartoon in 1954

References

External links

• Homeless Hare at the Internet Movie Database