The Big Snooze is a 1946 Looney Tunes short planned by Bob Clampett and finished by Arthur Davis.
Title[]
The title was inspired by the 1939 book The Big Sleep and its 1946 film adaptation, also a Warner release.
Plot[]
Bugs and Elmer are in the midst of their usual hunting-chasing scenario. After Bugs messes with Elmer by switching sides of the log that the hunter went through, Elmer angrily quits, because he feels the writers will not "allow him" to catch Bugs. Elmer even tears up his contract with Warner Bros. to prove his point. Then Elmer decides to go fishing instead, thinking that he will not be around anymore rabbits, including Bugs. He was wrong, as Bugs follows Elmer to his fishing spot and sees him sleeping.
Bugs worms his way into Elmer's dream by taking sleeping pills and lying next to him in order to torment the inept hunter with nightmare imagery; Bugs chooses 'billions and trillions of red and yellow wabbits' to start off the agony. Later, Bugs ties Elmer to the railroad track, and then runs over him with a "train" consist of himself wearing a Native American chief headpiece and smaller rabbits. Elmer's failed pursuit of the "wabbit" through the surreal landscape, as well as down connected rabbit holes, allows Bugs to dress Elmer in drag, making Elmer look like Rita Hayworth.
Bugs inspects his handiwork, then introduces Elmer to a trio of literal wolves, lounging by the sign at Hollywood and Vine. Upon noticing "Elmer", one wolf cries out, "How-ooooold is she?" Another wolf begins flirting with Elmer, causing the gender-morphed Elmer to exclaim "Gwacious!", and flee from the wolves, pausing long enough to ask, "Have any of you giwls evew had an expewience wike this?"
In an attempt to "help", Bugs persuades Elmer to follow a mad dash towards stage right, as Bugs plays the old gag "run 'this way'!", putting Elmer through a bizarre series of steps which include him running on his feet and on his hair, hopping like a frog, as well as Russian folk dancing.
Bugs and Elmer jump off the edge of the dreamscape. During the descent, Bugs drinks some "Hare Tonic - Stops Falling Hare" and screeches to a halt. The dream-Elmer lands roughly back in his own body and awakens. Elmer swiftly returns to get his job back at Warner Bros. and reassembles his torn-up contract. Bugs chuckles and then happily speaks the catchphrase from the "Beulah" character on the radio show Fibber McGee and Molly, "I love dat man!"
Music cues[]
- "Some Sunday Morning" - played over the opening titles.
- "Beautiful Dreamer" - sung by Bugs, and plays instrumentally as he takes the sleeping pills
- "Someone's Rocking My Dreamboat" - sung by Bugs as he invades Elmer's dream, and plays instrumentally
- "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals" - Plays as Bugs turns Elmer's dream into a nightmare
- "The Campbells are Coming" - Sung as "The Rabbits are Coming, Hooray Hooray"
- "September in the Rain" - Sung by Bugs as he and Elmer fall in the dream
- ”William Tell Overture” - Plays as Elmer chases Bugs around the log.
Availability[]
Viddy-Oh! For Kids Cartoon Festivals: Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd Cartoon Festival Featuring "Wabbit Twouble"
Cartoon Moviestars: Cartoons for Big Kids
Cartoon Moviestars: Cartoons for Big Kids
Cartoon Moviestars: Bugs vs. Elmer
Bugs Bunny Collection: Bugs Bunny's Greatest Hits
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 1, Side 4: Bob Clampett
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 4: Bob Clampett
Bumper Edition (Woolworths Exclusive)
Night and Day (1995 Turner dubbed version)
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, Disc One (restored, with DVNR)
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc Two, through What's Up Doc: A Salute to Bugs Bunny (restored, with DVNR)
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3, Disc One (restored, without DVNR)
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3, Disc One (restored, without DVNR)
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 8 Disc 1
Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny Golden Carrot Collection, Disc 2
Nora Prentiss
Streaming[]
Production[]
According to Milton Gray, Bob Clampett, who wrote and directed The Big Snooze, left the short unfinished as he left the studio mid-production. Arthur Davis, who had inherited Clampett's unit after his departure, would finish the cartoon. Davis told Gray that he did not understand Clampett's humor, so he "finished what he had to and just throughout everything else that Clampett did." Gray theorized that Clampett directed the cartoon's nightmare sequence while Davis directed the short's unfinished elements, including its opening and closing. Clampett would not see the finished cartoon until decades later with Gray, in which he commented that "some things were done very differently than he would have done them."
The short also reuses animation and backgrounds from previous cartoons, mainly those by Tex Avery. The opening sequence, in which Bugs traps Elmer inside a log and rolls it toward a cliff each time Elmer tries to exit, reuses the animation from the 1941 cartoon "All This and Rabbit Stew". Instead of Elmer, though, the previous film features a black hunter chasing Bugs. Elmer was simply drawn in over the animation of the black hunter, right down to the same body poses and facial expressions.
Backgrounds from "A Wild Hare" and "The Crackpot Quail" were also reused in this cartoon.
Censorship[]
- The scene of Bugs taking a sleeping pill (from a bottle labeled, "Sleeping Pills: Take Dese and Doze") to invade Elmer's dream was originally edited out when shown on most TV channels in the United States, particularly on local TV stations (both affiliates and independent stations) and the Ted Turner-owned cable networks TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network, most often deleted with a jump cut, though most of the Ted Turner-owned networks used a fake black-out,[3] even though similar scenes of pill ingestion from "Beep, Beep", "Lighthouse Mouse" and "Gopher Broke" were left uncensored on Cartoon Network. In 2001, "The Big Snooze" was shown uncut on Cartoon Network's The Bob Clampett Show and has been shown uncut ever since, including on Boomerang (after The Bob Clampett Show aired it uncut) and on MeTV.
- Before 2001, Cartoon Network USA aired this scene edited with a jump cut as opposed to a fake black-out like what TBS and TNT did, much like the local TV stations (both affiliates and independent stations) that aired before it.
- This scene in question is left unedited on various international Cartoon Network and Boomerang feeds outside the United States, including on the Latin American TV network Tooncast.
Notes[]
- The question of whether or not any of the girls in the audience have to put up with what was going on in a scene was later used in "Hare Splitter".
- Elmer tears up his contract with Warner Bros. and leaves. This was the last cartoon directed by Robert Clampett in production order before he left Warner Bros. As such, Clampett is not credited.
- In the sequence where Bugs ties Elmer to the railroad tracks and pretends to run him over with a train, Elmer's cries of "Oh, agony, agony, agony!" are provided by Mel Blanc instead of Arthur Q. Bryan.
- As Bugs pleads with Elmer not to quit, he turns to the audience and comments, "'Bette Davis' is gonna hate me for this." Nine years prior, Davis was sued by Warner Bros. for doing work for another studio while under an exclusive contract with Warner Bros. Davis was unhappy with her contract, as she felt the movies she was making with Warner Bros. at the time were low quality and damaging her career.[4]
- After the dream, Elmer arrives back at the log in a rush and the contract pieces blow about in the air. A nearly off-screen Bugs on the left looks like he mouths his catchphrase, "Ehhhh, What's up Doc?", but there is no sound.
- The Polish dubbing version has the 1946-55 version of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down opening music theme replaced with the 1945-46 opening theme.
- The scene where Bugs Bunny is about to drink his "Hare Tonic" to prevent his falling became a meme in 2015, known as "Bugs Bunny's no".[5]
- The scene of Bugs painting Elmer’s Dream with nightmare paint was used in the Sega CD tech demo.
Gallery[]
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