30th April: Bugs Bunny

Today is the 77th anniversary of the first time Bugs Bunny appeared in a film. 10 things you didn't know about the cartoon rabbit.

1. Bugs Bunny made his début in the film, Porky's Hare Hunt, released on April 30 1938; although in this film, he was white rather than Grey and looked rather like a duck dressed up as a Rabbit. The plot line was very similar to the 1937 film, Porky's Duck Hunt, in which Daffy Duck first appeared.
2. One of the directors of Porky's Hare Hunt was Ben "Bugs" Hardaway. Charlie Thorson, lead animator on the film, was given a model sheet by Hardaway, and he wrote on top of it, "Bugs' Bunny". The name stuck.
3. Hare-um Scare-um (1939) was the film in which Bugs Bunny was first coloured grey and it was also the first film to feature him singing.
4. Although the rabbit in Porky's Hare Hunt is generally accepted as being Bugs, the first official Bugs Bunny cartoon was A Wild Hare in 1940. This is also the first time Bugs utters the immortal words, "What's up, Doc?"
5. Another of Bugs' catchphrases is "Of course you realise this means war!" This line was ripped off from two Marx Brothers films in which the line is used: Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera.
6. Bugs' characteristic Carrot-eating pose was ripped off from the 1934 film It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable's character Peter Warne leans against a fence, eating carrots rapidly and talks with his mouth full to Claudette Colbert's character. Viewers at the time would have been familiar with this and would recognise it as satire.
7. Bugs Bunny is an honorary Marine Master Sergeant in the US Marines. At the end of Super-Rabbit (1943), Bugs appears wearing a United States Marine Corps dress blue uniform. He was very popular during World War II, partly because of his free and easy attitude, and possibly also because antagonists Bugs outwitted during this time included Hermann Göring, Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. There is even a film from this era called Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips in which he takes on a group of Japanese soldiers - but you won't ever see it as it has been banned for being racist.
8. According to Guinness World Records, Bugs has appeared in more films (both short and feature-length) than any other cartoon character. He is the ninth most-portrayed film personality in the world.
9. In 1997, Bugs Bunny was the first cartoon character to appear on a US Postage stamp, beating even Mickey Mouse.
10. An oft quoted fact about Bugs Bunny is that Mel Blanc, who provided the voice, was allergic to carrots. This probably isn't true. Blanc's autobiography doesn't mention it, and he went so far as to emphatically deny it in a 1984 interview. The story may have originated because chewing carrots interfered with dialogue. A certain amount of carrot biting and chewing needed to be on the sound track, though, and no other food sounded quite right - so Blanc had to munch a little bit and then spit the carrots out. Someone somewhere assumed he was doing this so he wouldn't get an allergic reaction and the story spread.