Bugs Bunny celebrated his 75th birthday last month, and I celebrated the occassion by posting my choice for top ten Bugs Bunny cartoons of all time. Now, here's a posting listing some of Bugs' most rare, most unusual, and most unseen appearances. We'll start with a 1942 film commissioned by the US Treasury. America had just entered World war II and the treasury was using all the Hollywood stars to promote the sale of US Savings Bonds, so why not Bugs Bunny? The short film features Bugs Bunny singing an Irving Berlin number, "Any Bonds Today?" and includes a short sequence of Bugs imitating Al Jolson.
Warner Bros. was not above using Bugs Bunny as a cameo in other shorts... one of my favorites occurs in Porky Pig's Feat, which I posted on my blog HERE. But Bugs made appearances in other places as weel. During World War II, Warners Bros. produced a series of cartoons for the armed forces that starred a less-than-perfect soldier named Private SNAFU. Snafu usually demonstaretd the wrong way to do things and was a big hit at the Army camps. The cartoons were never meant for public viewings but have recently been showing up on Youtube and in DVD sets. Here is a typical entry, GAS, with a short cameo by Bugs Bunny.
Bugs was so popular, he could even make a cameo in cartoons made by other studios. In 1944, Paramount released a stop-motion cartoon by George Pal, Jasper Goes Hunting. Take a look at who joins the film briefly at the 4:40 mark (and sorry for the poor condition of the clip)
Bugs Bunny - (Ep. 36) - Jasper Goes Hunting 2015 by serijedomace04
Bugs Bunny also appeared in a couple of live-action features for Warner Bros.. In the 1949 Doris Day comedy My Dream is Yours, Bugs gets a full song and dance routine along with Day and Jack Carson. Friz Freleng directed the animation.
Next time, we'll hit a few other rare appearances of Bugs, including one of his several appearances at the Academy Awards! Stay tuned!
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