The Bugs Bunny Show
Anthology series hosting classic Warner Bros. cartoons.
Hosted by Bugs Bunny, this anthology series aired classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts from 1948 to 1969. It first appeared on ABC in 1960 as a half-hour primetime show, with new linking animation from Warner Bros. Cartoons. After two seasons, it shifted to Saturday mornings, running for nearly 40 years in various formats and on both ABC and CBS. The series, later called The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, ended in 2000 when Cartoon Network gained exclusive U.S. rights to the cartoon library.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Animation; Anthology
- Based on
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, Warner Bros.
- Bugs Bunny, Tex Avery
- Chuck Jones
- Bob Givens
- Robert McKimson
- Director
- Chuck Jones
- Friz Freleng
- Robert McKimson
- Voices
- Mel Blanc
- June Foray
- Stan Freberg
- Hal Smith
- Theme music
- Mack David & Jerry Livingston (1960–2000), Steve Zuckerman (1984–85)
- Opening theme
- "This Is It" (1960–1984, 1988–2000, 2021–present), "It's Cartoon Gold" (1984–1985)
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
Facts from the source article.
Broadcast and format history
The Bugs Bunny Show first appeared on ABC in prime time on October 11, 1960, airing Tuesdays at 7:30 PM Eastern, with General Foods as the sponsor. For each episode, the Warner Bros. animation team created new linking segments. Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng handled production, direction, and storyboards for the earliest of these wraparounds; later, Robert McKimson took over direction while Jones and Freleng kept producing and writing. Though the wraparounds were made in color, the original broadcasts were in black and white. The show ran for 52 episodes. Instead of using the full Warner Bros. logo and opening credits from each cartoon—which could last up to 20 seconds—new title cards were made. These cards appeared for only about five seconds over a fresh musical cue, showing just the cartoon’s title in bold letters on a plain background, with the main character off to one side and a small copyright notice at the bottom. The cartoon then cut straight to its opening scene, which sometimes felt awkward depending on how the original sequence was animated. At the end of each episode, a single credit line read: “Stories, Animation, layouts, and backgrounds: Members of Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839.” The theme song, “This Is It,” was written by Mack David and Jerry Livingston. Its opening title sequence, animated by Gerry Chiniquy from Freleng’s unit, showed Bugs and Daffy Duck singing together. For the final chorus, a parade of Looney Tunes characters joined them onstage, though Porky Pig was not in the lineup. Porky later got his own spin-off, The Porky Pig Show, which aired on ABC from 1964 to 1967.
Legacy
The Bugs Bunny Show is widely recognized for ensuring that Warner Bros.' Golden Age cartoons remained embedded in American culture. Its nearly forty-year run on Saturday morning television influenced generations of animators, comedians, and historians. The theme song, "This Is It," achieved notable fame beyond the show; in Ontario, Canada, it appeared in a commercial for performing arts attractions, with different artists singing individual lines. For Warner Bros.' 1985 "Golden Jubilee" video series, a new opening sequence featured Taz riding a motorcycle wildly through city streets, pursued by a police car, before swerving into a theater where other Looney Tunes characters perform to the familiar tune. In January 2021, the original "This Is It" opening was revived as part of the "Bugs Bunny and Friends" block on MeTV's Saturday morning lineup. The song's cultural reach even extended to television comedy: in a "Seinfeld" episode, Jerry Seinfeld hums "This Is It" while waiting for the opera, prompting Elaine to remark that his entire knowledge of high culture comes from Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Animated sequences produced for the show
The show’s framing device was a theater setting, and to connect the cartoons, the producers created short animated scenes. One such scene opened the program with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck singing a duet about the show’s beginning. As they performed, a parade of regular characters marched across the stage behind them, including Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, Pepé Le Pew, Sylvester the Cat, the Road Runner, Hippety Hopper, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote, and Foghorn Leghorn. In another bit, Daffy argued with Bugs on stage, complaining, “Last week you said you were going to introduce me next week!” Bugs calmly replied, “Right...but this isn’t next week, is it?” Daffy then tripped over his own logic, sputtering, “You’re doggone tootin’ it isn’t! This is this week! And next week is uhhh...ummm...sheesh!” A barking sheepdog later wandered into the theater, asking, “Which way did he go? Where’s the little bunny I saw on TV last week?” Daffy, now wearing a rabbit costume and pretending to be Bugs, was pounced on by the sheepdog, who shouted, “At last, at last! I have caught a bunny rabbit!” Bugs also entertained the audience by playing a guitar, only for an angry Yosemite Sam to burst in yelling, “Can’t ya see I’m tryin’ to sleep?!?” He snatched the guitar and snapped all but one of its strings. Bugs then demonstrated cartoon physics, such as slow-motion, fast-speed, and “vibrating to a stop.” These linking scenes, along with the show’s title sequences, appear as bonus features on each volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set, except for Volume 6. Because CBS and ABC cut up the original color negatives to create later versions of the show, the DVD uses a mix of surviving color negative footage and black-and-white prints from ABC’s early 1960s broadcasts. Additionally, the Golden Collection Volume 2 includes special features like the opening to the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (called the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour by the announcer) and two openings from the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (from 1988 and 1992). In 2009, a color episode of the Bugs Bunny Show was released on the Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960s Volume 2 set, and the Saturday Morning Cartoons 1970s Volume 2 set includes an episode of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show.
Broadcasts
The Bugs Bunny Show aired in prime time on ABC from October 11, 1960 to August 7, 1962. It then moved to Saturday mornings on ABC from April 7, 1962 to September 8, 1968 (in color starting September 10, 1966). The series aired under various titles on different networks: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on CBS from September 14, 1968 to September 4, 1971; The Bugs Bunny Show on CBS from September 11, 1971 to September 1, 1973; The Bugs Bunny Show on ABC from September 8, 1973 to August 30, 1975; The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on CBS from September 6, 1975 to November 12, 1977; The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show on CBS from November 19, 1977 to September 7, 1985; The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour on ABC from September 7, 1985 to September 6, 1986; and The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show on ABC from September 13, 1986 to September 2, 2000. In Canada, reruns of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show were aired on Teletoon and Teletoon Retro. Prior to those channels, CBC Television (1960–1975) and Global Television Network (1978–1982, 1990–2000) aired the show.
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