Falling Hare

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Falling Hare is a 1943 Merrie Melodies short directed by Bob Clampett.
==Title ==
The title is a play on words, as "falling hair" refers to impending baldness, while in this cartoon's ending, the title turns out to be descriptive of Bugs' situation, a hare falling to earth.
== Plot ==
After strains of "Down by the Riverside", at an Army Air Force base, the brassy strains of "We're In to Win" play. The sign at the base reads "U.S. Army Air Field", and below that is listed the location, the number of planes and number of men, all marked "Censored" as a reference to military secrecy. Beneath those categories, the sign reads "What men think of top sergeant", which is shown with a large white-on-black "CENSORED!!".
Bugs is found reclining on a piece of ordnance, idly reading Victory Through Hare Power and laughing uproariously at the book's claim that gremlins wreck American planes with "di-a-bo-lick-al sab-oh-tay-gee" (diabolical sabotage). He immediately encounters one of the creatures, who is experimentally striking the blockbuster bomb Bugs is sitting on with a mallet to the tune of "I've Been Working on the Railroad". In response to Bug's "Eh.... what's all the hubbub, bub?" the gremlin replies, "These Blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them ju-u-u-u-st right." Noticing the gremlin's lack of success, Bugs offers to "take a whack at it" in a whispering voice, but comes to his senses the instant before striking the explosive device, screaming "What am I doing?!"
Bugs asks sotto voce, "Hey! I bet that was a... Say, do youse t'ink dat..., Hey, could there's been a... gremlin?" The gremlin, perched on Bugs' shoulder the whole time, shouts in his ear, "It ain't Vendell Villkie!" The Gremlin ties up Bugs' ears leaving him confused and hits his foot with a wrench. Bugs being angry, and tries to find the gremlin, which is then hits Bugs on the head with the wrench, which makes Bugs a little unconscious and called Gremlin George asked him, “Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?” And Gremlin crossed his eyes pointed in both directions and said, “Hmmm….that way,” and Bugs thanked Gremlin and still called him George, causing him to faint. The gremlin then tried to talk to Bugs, who acted like a kid and said that he was only three and a half years old and Gremlin laughs and liked Bugs and figured that he is silly and the gremlin then pulls out Bugs' tongue and releases it.
Bugs then chases the gremlin with the wrench only to get hit on the foot again with it. The gremlin continues to outsmart Bugs throughout the film, frequently hitting him with a mallet or a wrench, or otherwise giving him grief, following two of his "hits" on Bugs by "laughing" the first seven notes of Yankee Doodle once aboard the aircraft, to taunt Bugs.
Bugs soon finds himself fighting a losing battle with the gremlin inside a flying but unpiloted bomber. Bugs then charges the gremlin and goes all the way outside, suddenly realizes he's in mid-air, stops suddenly and transforms into a donkey lettered with the then-hyphenated word, "JACK-ASS". When Bugs comes back inside from being outside by slipping into the banana peels of the aircraft mid-flight, his heart is pounding, with 4F labeled on it. Bugs is flattened into a coin shape, then is dropped through the bomb bay doors, where he is caught by his feet on a wire between the doors. He sees the Gremlin flying toward a pair of twin towers and quickly rushes into the cockpit, takes control of the airplane, and flies between the towers vertically, emerging in a "victory roll."
In the finale, the plane goes into a tailspin, ripping apart during its descent, with only the fuselage remaining, and the altimeter briefly reminds Bugs, "Incredible Ain't It???", but comes to a sputtering halt about six feet before hitting the ground, hanging in mid-air, defying gravity. Bugs and the Gremlin now seem to be on friendly terms as they both address the audience. The gremlin apologizes for the plane having "run out of gas." Bugs chimes in, revealing a wartime gas rationing sticker, "You know how it is with these 'A' cards!"
== Caricatures==
*Lon Chaney Jr. - "Which way did he go, George?"
*Billy Gray's character Matilda - "I'm only three-and-a-half years old"
*Wally Maher's character Wilbur - "I like him, he's silly!"
==Availability==
Cartoon Moviestars 2.jpg|(1989) VHS Cartoon Moviestars: Bugs and Daffy: The Wartime Cartoons
LT Laserdisc 2.jpg|(1989) LaserDisc Cartoon Moviestars: Bugs and Daffy: The Wartime Cartoons
Bugs Bunny Collection VHS 3.jpg|(1991) VHS Bugs Bunny Collection: Bugs Bunny's Comedy Classics
Golden-Age-of-Looney-Tunes-3-F.jpg|(1992) LaserDisc The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 3, Side 6: Tashlin/Clampett
LTCE VOL 7 WELCOME TO WACKYLAND.jpg|(2000) VHS Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition Volume 7: Welcome to Wackyland (1995 Turner dubbed version)
Golden Collection box 3.jpg|(2005) DVD Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc Four (restored)
Lt cas4.jpg|(2006) DVD Looney Tunes Collection All Stars Volume 4
Lt thank dvd.jpg|(2008) DVD Thank Your Lucky Stars (1995 Turner dubbed version)
Lt homefront.jpg|(2008) DVD Warner Bros. and the Homefront Collection
Lt spotlight 7.jpg|(2009) DVD Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 7, Disc 2
LT Platinum Collection VOL 3 DVD Cover.png|(2014) DVD Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3, Disc One (restored)
LTPC Volume 3 Cover.png|(2014) Blu-ray Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3, Disc One (restored)
Lt thank blu.jpg|(2015) Blu-ray Thank Your Lucky Stars (restored)
Lt cv3.jpg|(2018) DVD Looney Tunes Collection Volume 3
===Streaming ===
lt boomerang.jpg|Boomerang App ( - ) (restored)
lt hbo max.jpg|HBO Max (2020 - 2023) (restored)
lt max.jpg|Max (2023 - 2024) (restored)
==Goofs==
*The Gremlin hits Bugs' right foot with a wrench, but the wrench inexplicably switches to his left foot when Bugs recoils in pain.
*As Bugs shakes the Gremlin's hands before passing out from being whacked on the noggin with a wrench, part of the lower half of his left leg and the white part on his foot swap colors for one frame.
==Notes==
*"We're In to Win" is a World War II song also sung by Daffy Duck in "Scrap Happy Daffy" which was released two months before.
*Victory Through Hare Power is a parody of the extremely influential book Victory Through Air Power and its film adaptation.
*Vendell Villkie is an accented pronunciation of the real American lawyer and politician from Indiana, Wendell Willkie.
*Within the cartoon are several contemporary pop culture references, including to Wendell Willkie, John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men, and the folk songs "Yankee Doodle", "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and the Russian "Dark Eyes".
*The Gremlin's behavior is possibly an homage to Bob Clampett's version of Daffy Duck; for example, he rides an invisible bicycle, one of Daffy's old trademarks.
*The "A" card, under the reverse-psychology of the rationing scheme, was the least generous of the classifications, limiting the bearer to minimal gasoline purchases; the "Is this trip really necessary?" gag was also related to gas rationing of the period. A similar gag was pulled in Looney Tunes Back in Action, during the scene where the spy car stops in mid-air because it ran out of gas. However, it soon crashes after Kate mentions that reality does not work that way.
*At least one lobby card (below) uses the working title "Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin"; here, the book ("Hare Force") shares a name with a short which was released the following year.
*The WB logo changes slightly starting with this cartoon. This variation would be used until "False Hare". Although cartoons from 1947 to 1953 used a different variation, the 1943-46 variation would return starting with "Dog Pounded".
*The cartoon lapsed into the public domain in 1971 due to United Artists failing to renew the copyright in time.
**On top of that, this is the most recent Bugs Bunny cartoon to enter the public domain, as every Bugs Bunny cartoon released after this remain under copyright.
*The jackass gag would be reused in "Russian Rhapsody", another cartoon directed by Clampett, as one of Hitler's transformations when he is electrocuted.
*When this cartoon was restored and remastered for Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 DVD release, a prototype restoration was done, which was affected with DVNR (Digital Video Noise Reduction) which unintentionally erases or blurs some of the picture on certain scenes of the cartoons. Following controversy among collectors about DVNR on both Golden Collection Volumes 1 and 2, this cartoon's prototype restoration was scrapped, and the cartoon has been re-restored properly from scratch without the use of DVNR, along with the rest of the not-yet-restored shorts in the DVD set (except for "The Last Hungry Cat", which instead re-used the earlier 2001 restoration from the I Love Tweety: Volume 1 Japanese DVD set, which contained DVNR).http://classicanimation.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-dvnr-sucks-pt-3.htmlhttp://www.dohtem.com/bugs/foreign/tweety/?fbclid=IwAR0zV1PQo_FAC0kLO_LlyzgLdJplEAOTE66c6qeYOSOBmbbOkTX5gSzPvII This cartoon's restoration from Golden Collection Volume 3 also appears on Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3 Blu-ray set in high-definition, and also, clips from this cartoon's scrapped DVNR-laden prototype restoration also appears on Golden Collection Volume 3's bonus feature Behind the Tunes: Fine Tooning: Restoring the Warner Bros. Cartoons (one can tell the difference between the restorations by the lack of film grain and the Gremlin having a more orange-ish coloring in this prototype restoration; see image at "Gallery" for more details).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvjwD2eUTu8
*A short clip of this cartoon appears in the 1996 family comedy film House Arrest.
*The short would later become an inspiration for the 1984 Steven Spielberg film "Gremlins", directed by Joe Dante.
*A short clip of this cartoon appears in the home video release of the 1990 film Gremlins 2: The New Batch, directed by Joe Dante.
==Gallery==
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File:Layout Drawing for Falling Hare.jpg|Animation layout drawing
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Falling Hare (1943) - Storyboard Reel
==References==
Category:1943
Category:Merrie Melodies Shorts
Category:Public domain films
Category:Bugs Bunny Cartoons
Category:Wartime Shorts
Category:Cartoons directed by Bob Clampett
Category:Cartoons that contain excerpts from "Powerhouse"
Category:Shorts
Category:Cartoons written by Warren Foster
Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling
Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc
Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn
Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger
Category:Cartoons in a.a.p. package
Category:Cartoons with camera by John W. Burton
Category:Cartoons with layouts by Thomas McKimson