Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol

Title:

Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Short segment of an animated television special
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, for Warner Brothers Television and CBS
 
Year:
1979 (first broadcast on the CBS network in the USA on November 27^th that year)
 
Length:
8 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy Victorian
 
Background:
Bug Bunny is, of course one of the most famous American cartoon characters ever to have been created, having appeared in animations of various lengths for Warner Brothers since the 1930s. In those earliest days the cartoons would have been designed to form part of a cinema programme, although by this stage they were of course being made for television.
 
Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol wasn’t actually an entirely separate entity in and of itself; instead it was one of three cartoons which comprised Bug Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales. These featured various of the Looney Tunes stable of cartoon characters in assorted seasonal situations, with the Christmas Carol segment forming the first of the trio.

Cast and crew:
The famous voice of Bugs Bunny, Mel Blanc, is present and correct here, not just as Bugs but as… well, pretty much the entire cast, really!
 
Director Frez Freleng was a veteran of the Looney Tunes stable and had been handling Bugs Bunny cartoons for over thirty years by this point, so he certainly knew what he was doing. Freleng also co-wrote the script, along with Scots scriptwriter John W. Dunn and fellow animation veteran Tony Benedict.
 
Underdone Potato:
Given that this is a very short version of the story, you would expect them to speed through everything very quickly – and indeed they do – but despite that, the opening section is the one lingered on the longest. Probably because it has all the set-up and you only then need to go a quick pay-off, I suppose.
 
Yosemite Sam is cast in the role of Scrooge – ‘Sam Scrooge’, evidently, given a line he has near the end – with Porky Pig as Bob Cratchit. Porky asks for another lump of coal to put in the stove in his office and is of course abruptly refused. Mind you, he’d probably be a bit less old if he put some trousers on.

Put some bloody trousers on, Bob!

 
Bugs Bunny – who’s also the frame narrator of the whole thing – turns up as a sort of Fred character, although he’s never explicitly introduced as such. After failing to convince Scrooge of the need to celebrate Christmas, he’s kicked out of the office. He goes for dinner at Bob’s, where we briefly see Bob’s mostly-porcine family – except for Tiny Tim, played here by Tweety Pie and thus raising some awkward questions about what Mrs Cratchit has been up to. Not the last piggy Mrs Cratchit we’ll ever see in an adaptation, of course.
 
As happens occasionally in other versions, Cratchit is actually fired by Scrooge, and is to have his home repossessed too. Bugs decides that enough is enough, and hatches a plan to change Scrooge’s ways, sneaking into the house Sam Scrooge shares with Sylvester the cat. (Who he’s actually surprisingly nice to, letting him sleep in the bed with him!)

There is a suggestion of Marley as Bug dresses up in a ghostly sheet and chains, although Scrooge never sees this and only hears the noise of them. What’s interesting about this version is that there are no ‘real’ ghosts – Bugs explicitly states to the audience that he’s going to play a trick on Scrooge by only making him think there are.
 
Yet to Come:
As there are no ghosts, there are no visions, and there is also only one spirit – the ‘Ghost of Christmas’, combining all three spirits into one as was also done in 1908 and 1910 silent versions. Although with a sheet covering his head and Bugs occasionally stretching his arm out to point, the one he most resembles is indeed Yet to Come. It’s perhaps no surprise that the structure of this adaptation should have something in common with those from the silent era, given that it is similarly short.

As Bugs can’t show Sam any visions, he instead makes a threat, instead – telling Sam that he will meet the guy in the red suit, but not Santa. Scrooge asks if he means ‘downstairs’, and Bugs as the Ghost of Christmas confirms that he does, which panics Sam into pledging to change his ways and be nice to people.
 
What’s To-Day:
To show how great he now is, Sam even rushes to his wardrobe to find and dress up in a Santa suit – although why he owned such an item in the first place is anybody’s guess! It’s all a bit showy and shallow, his ‘redemption’, clearly not a case of him actually wanting to change his ways, but simply wanting to put on the appearance of being a reformed character to avoid having to go to hell! Still, he does make Porky Bob a partner in the business, thus at least giving him some sort of financial security!

Review:
Obviously it’s hard to make much of this, given how sleight it all is. I have to confess that I don’t remember ever being a particular fan of the Warner Brothers cartoon stable, even when I was a child. I certainly remember them being on television a lot, and I certainly watched them, but they were the kind of thing I watched more than enjoyed. Something to sit through as filler while you waited for the ‘proper’ children’s programmes.
 
I realise of course that’s rather unkind, and that these are characters which resonate with a huge number of people who hold them in high affection. And there’s obviously no doubt whatsoever that there’s a great deal of skill involved here, both on the animation side and from Mel Blanc doing a tour-de-force on vocal duties and making everyone sound sufficiently different.
 
It’s difficult to rate it particularly highly as an adaptation of the Carol, but of course there’s nothing at all wrong with existing fictional universes adopting the story to make their own parodies and versions. Indeed, it’s a tribute to the power of the story that so many of them do.

In a nutshell:
If you’re a fan of the Warner Brothers cartoon characters I’m sure you’ll enjoy it very much.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb