High Diving Hare | |
Director: | I. Freleng |
Story: | Tedd Pierce |
Animator: | Gerry Chiniquy Manuel Perez Ken Champin Virgil Ross Pete Burness |
Layout Artist: | Hawley Pratt |
Background Artist: | Paul Julian |
Starring: | Mel Blanc |
Music: | Carl Stalling |
Studio: | Warner Bros. Cartoons |
Distributor: | Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
Color Process: | Technicolor |
Runtime: | 7:30 |
Language: | English |
High Diving Hare is a 1948-produced Warner Brothers Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short starring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam.[1] Released to theaters on April 30, 1949,[2] the short is an expansion of a gag from Stage Door Cartoon, which was also directed by Friz Freleng, and co-stars Elmer Fudd. High Diving Hare can be seen in the third act of The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, and a segment can be seen in the special Bugs Bunny's Wild World of Sports (the latter revealing that Sam has become a champion high diver due to his experiences in the short).
Bugs Bunny is drumming up business for a vaudeville show in a remote Western town (notably one of the posters in the background is for "Frizby the Magician", a reference to director Friz Freleng). One of the main attractions is "Fearless Freep" and his high-dive act. As soon as Yosemite Sam hears the name "Fearless Freep", he goes into a joyful frenzy, buying as many tickets as he can. ("I'm a-splurgin'!")
During the show, as Bugs is about to introduce Freep, he gets a telegram informing him that Freep is delayed by a storm and will not be able to appear until tomorrow. An angered Sam insists on seeing the high-diving act, orders Bugs to take Freep's place and forces him at gunpoint to the top of a high-dive platform. But Bugs manages to pull out all his tricks and stops, and it is Sam who does all the diving, in a different comical setting nine separate times (in a variant of the diving act from "Stage Door Cartoon"):
After two more dives in which the setups are unseen, Sam finally has Bugs tied and standing on the edge of the platform, with Sam sawing away at the board, gloating: "Now ya smarty-pants, let's see ya get out-in this one! This time, you're a-diving!" However, as soon as Sam cuts through the board, it is the ladder and platform that fall, leaving the severed plank (and Bugs) suspended in midair. Bugs turns to the camera and cracks: "I know dis defies the law of gravity, but, ya see, I never studied law!"
• Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam and Telegram Boy (unseen)
In a commentary by Greg Ford, it is described as "arguably the best of all" Bugs and Sam confrontations. Ford also refers to the ways Bugs tricks Sam as "almost idiotically simple".[3]
Similarly, cartoonist Jeff Smith writes, "Written by Ted Pierce, High Diving Hare is a one-gag cartoon. Seriously — there is only one joke in this cartoon. Yosemite Sam falls 500 feet into a barrel of water, over and over again. And it gets funnier and funnier with each whistling plunge... The timing of Sam's high diving is all the more remarkable when you think about the fact that Warner's directors had no budget for editing after the film was finished. All the timing for action and gags was set in stone before a single frame was drawn. All Looney Tunes are fast, pared-down affairs that never waste a frame, but even by these standards, High Diving Hare is a precision masterpiece."[4]