“Oh, no!” shrieks Bugs, slamming the door on him.

One house has someone different – the mean widdle kid again. Bugs attempts to hide in several houses, somehow always finding Elmer inside one step ahead of him. One surprise gag has Elmer dig a pit for Bugs to fall into, then insert a hose to try to drown him – only Bugs comes up floating on a rubber raft. A typical (and largely uninspired) chase ensues for the next few minutes. But inside is Elmer Fudd, disguised as a child, waiting for his prey to come to him – then “Easter wabbit stew.” Bugs decides, however, to get the drop on this one, and squashes the delivered Easter egg between Elmer’s hands before Elmer can make his first move. The next house is adorned with signs and banners welcoming the Easter rabbit. “I already have a bad name for the Easter rabbit”, says Bugs – but still gives it one more try. Bugs tries to retun his load to the Easter rabbit, who insists that if he quits he’ll give the Easter rabbit a bad name. Bugs leaves in a hail of bullets, the last few riddling the door with bullet holes reading “And stay out”. The kid’s giant relatives appear from nowhere, armed with shotguns. The minute Bugs tries to retaliate, the kid lifts a line from Red Skelton’s “mean widdle kid”, feigning “Oooh, he bwoke my widdle arm”. (The Easter Bunny really didn’t do his work this year – none of his eggs have even been boiled!) Then, while still insisting “I wanna Easter egg!”, the kid comes to wrestling blows with Bugs. Delivering his first egg to the junior brat inside, he gets it returned – right in his eye. While Bugs improvises a song, “Here’s the Easter Rabbit, hooray!” to the tune of his old introductory theme, “Woo Woo” from 1939’s “Hare-Un Scare-Um”, he comments that it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to do this for a living. The Easter rabbit, using the by-line of the Happy Postman, gives Bugs a final word of advice in a quavery voice: “And remember, keep smiling” – then asides to the audience that “Every year I get some dumb bunny to do my work.”īugs’ first stop is on a “Dead End” street, at the home of the “Dead End Kid” (reference to a long-popular series of B-movies about juvenile delinquents). Bugs, not doing anything, volunteers to deliver the “Technicolor henfruit”.

The stoop-shouldered geezer complains that he has all these eggs to deliver – but his feet are killing him.

(In fact, Bugs would perform Easter services twice, also appearing as an Easter bunny (but without eggs) in the “Freddie, Get Ready” number with Doris Day and Jack Carson in My Dream Is Yours (1949).) But in the 1947 edition, Bugs, while minding his own business catching up on his reading (a volume titled “How to Multiply” – which he guards like a teenager with a vimtage edition of Playboy), is set upon by a miserable old coot of an Easter Bunny (a character which had provided Mel Blanc a resume credit in another medium, as the established voice of the “Happy” Postman on the George Burns and Gracie Allen radio show – a dour fellow who was in fact anything but happy). It’s high time all of Hollywood’s chickens and bunnies took some tips on the subject from the greatest “Wabbit” of them all.Įaster Yeggs (Warner, Bugs Bunny, 6/28/47 – Robert McKimson, dir.) – If Walter Lantz could turn his staring Rabbit into an Easter Bunny, it was inevitable that Bugs would sooner or later have to follow suit. Into the late 1940’s, with another springtime holiday for eggs on the plate.

Just dance 2020 into the unknown