Bugs Bunny finds himself aboard a riverboat bound for the South, not realizing for a minute he'd been shanghaied by accident, in "Mississippi Hare". Dailymotion has a Blue Ribbon reissue.
The character of Colonel Shuffle (an uncredited Billy Bletcher), it is said, was later rebooted as Yosemite Sam. Same size, attitude, everything. The hair simply changed from white to red.
Is it just me, or did Chuck Jones insist on Bugs being in drag for at least one scene in every film he directed?
Rating: B+.
4 comments:
Actually, Yosemite Sam's first appearance was in Hare Trigger in 1945, so he predates Colonel Shuffle by a few years. On a special feature on one of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection sets, there is an interview with Friz Freleng wherein he mentions that unbeknownst to him at the time his animators and writers had based Yosemite Sam on him. Apparently he had quite a temper and a lot of red hair. He said he was told of this long after the fact (he seemed OK with it). Friz's unit was the only one to use Yosemite Sam, so Jones may have been inspired to create Colonel Shuffle by the Yosemite Sam character.
Hmm, seems to make sense, but why use a different actor for the colonel?
By "actor" do you mean voice actor (Billy Bletcher vs. Mel Blanc) or "actor" as in Yosemite Sam, Bugs Bunny, etc. whom the animators & directors at Termite Terrace thought of as actors inhabiting the various roles they created for them? If you mean voice actor, maybe Mel Blanc was busy on another gig, or had too many WB voices to perform at the time? I really have no idea about that. If you mean cartoon character "actor", then it would be because Freling's unit was the only one that ever used the character of Yosemite Sam, at least up until the original WB animation studio's closing circa 1964.
I meant voice actor, of course.
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