Happy Easter 2020 from Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog

It's a very odd Easter in 2020, one without family and friends getting together over some asparagus and cream cheese quiche (or was that bacon, caramelized onion, Rogue Cheddar and Monterey Jack quiche?) washed down by Bing Crosby's favorite, "a bit of the bubbly" or some Dansk Påskebryg and Påskebockbryggeri (no My Dinner With Andre Cold Duck, please), followed by watching the 1948 MGM musical Easter Parade on 21st century big screen TV and Blu-ray.



Yes, there will be Easter services without congregations today. Andrea Bocelli will sing to an empty cathedral. Late-night television hosts Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Fallon, Samantha Bee, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden and Bill Maher are all doing their shows from home.

We can Zoom, Facetime or Skype, tell jokes and swap shamelessly salacious showbiz stories via our newfangled 21st century devices!

Between ribald, apocryphal and entirely unsubstantiated showbiz anecdotes, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog post animated cartoons on Easter. The temptation is to post Bugs Bunny in Easter Yeggs EVERY YEAR.



The gold standard of Easter cartoons, arguably one of the very best ever helmed by director Robert McKimson, can be seen in its entirety here and on Volume 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection. It never fails to get big laughs from me!



During a global pandemic, this animation aficionado is more than happy to check his brains, cynicism, tendency to criticize and snotty bad attitude at the door and just ENJOY an ultra ultra ultra cute cartoon, so this year's Easter selection is a Walt Disney Silly Symphony from 1934. Let Jon Lovitz be The Critic - dig some Funny Little Bunnies!



Was that Silly Symphony unbearably cutesy? This animation buff does not think so, not at all - far from it! Found this Easter-themed cartoon pleasant, fun, likable, charming and far superior by efforts by all the other animation studios efforts to emulate it back in the mid-1930's.



The Disney cartoons were released on DVD and are still available on that format, albeit a tad pricey.



Many of us classic movie buffs at would love to see the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony series released on Blu-ray, even if it's just by single volumes arranged chronologically (1928-1931, 1932-1934, etc.).



While there are a slew of terrific books about the Walt Disney Studio and its history, here are three we love at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog. All take a deep dive into the studio's animation and are highly recommended.

The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 1921–1968 by multiple authors

Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman

Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman




Very much hoped to find an anti-Easter cartoon comparable to Small Fry (1939), the Max Fleischer Color Classic starring a juvenile delinquent fish who smokes cigarettes and hangs out at the undersea pool hall, to no avail.



The Color Rhapsody cartoon titled The Foolish Bunny, directed by the formidable Arthur Davis, produced by the Charles Mintz Studio and theatrically released on March 13, 1938, stars a cheeky bounder of a juvenile delinquent rabbit prankster who never graduated from bunny kindergarten; Van Eaton Galleries found production drawings from the cartoon. It is, uncharacteristically restrained, tame and (horror of horrors) not in bad taste.



Rather unbelievably, story man Sid Marcus, the same guy responsible for the extremely wacky and uninhibited classic pre-Code cartoons The Beer Parade and Fare Play, as well as the zany early 1940's Color Rhapsodies The Mad Hatter and Red Riding Hood Rides Again, did not go for broke with crazy ideas here. Unfortunately, the delinquent rabbit in The Foolish Bunny doesn't smoke cigarettes, blow up buildings, wear women's clothing and talk like a cross between Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Stander and the Dead End Kids! While there's a bit involving the ill-fated school headmaster and a beehive, in general, this is one of the tamer cartoons to emerge from the Mintz Studio crew led by Art Davis and Sid Marcus. Makes one wonder if Harry Cohn called Sid Marcus personally and asked him not to make weird sick cartoons!



Back to Bugs Bunny, everyone's favorite Easter Rabbit, a couple of years after Art Davis and Sid Marcus made The Foolish Bunny (and a few years before they joined the Warner Brothers cartoon studio, Davis as a top animator for Frank Tashlin and Friz Freleng), Tex Avery's crew got the character of a wascally wiseguy rapscallion rabbit right. With key assists from the brilliant animator Robert McKimson and ace character designer Robert Givens, Bugs Bunny was redesigned with a touch of Max Hare, a touch of Brooklyn and more than a touch of cool. Add Mel Blanc's inspired voice acting and . . . both bingo and VOILA, behold the star of the Oscar-nominated A Wild Hare (1940).



There had been several previous unsuccessful attempts at a proto-Bugs Bunny - Hare-Um Scare-um, directed by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway and using the early, unrecognizable and irritating "scwewy wabbit" prototype in Hardaway's 1938 Looney Tune Porky's Hare Hunt. While the character was indeed first known as "Bugs' bunny", the Hardaway version of the Oscar-winning rabbit in Porky's Hare Hunt and Hare-Um Scare-Um seems much more akin to the character Ben helped develop subsequently for the Walter Lantz Studio, Woody Woodpecker.

Chuck Jones' first fledgling efforts with the character, Elmer's Candid Camera and Elmer's Pet Rabbit, were false starts and over a year away from his stylistic breakthrough as a director, The Draft Horse. These two cartoons were closer to hitting the bull's eye with the scwewy wabbit than Hare-Um Scare-Um, but Bugs lacks charm, good looks, élan and savoir faire. At least Jones and crew, to their credit, got the character of Elmer Fudd exactly right.



Curiously, the magician's hat rabbit in an earlier Merrie Melodie cartoon, Prest-O Change-o, also directed by Chuck Jones, is a lot more elegant than the aggressively goofy rabbit in the Ben Hardaway & Cal Dalton cartoons and gets closer to what would be Bugs Bunny than the chortling bucktoothed variation in Elmer's Candid Camera is.



Directors Avery, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett would put their spin on the character seen in A Wild Hare over the next year. The cartoons aren't all brilliant - All This & Rabbit Stew is a turkey of turkeys and one of the worst cartoons ever made at Warner Brothers - but the Groucho-seque wiseguy quality of Bugs, understood and expressed by the animators and voice artist supreme Mel Blanc, was established and would carry the day for Warner Bros. cartoons right up to the early 1960's. Bugs was the face of 1940's silver screen comedy and Hollywood cartoons.

Closing today's discussion of Easter bunnies and Oscar-winning rabbits in Cartoonland, we wish all of you a Happy Easter 2020! Enjoy the family and friends one CAN'T spend in-person time with because of the need for social distancing. Cocktail parties, toasting each other via Zoom? Sure! Talk on the cell phone, wiped down with 100% isopropyl? Go for it! Quality time via Facetime or Skype? Absolutely! Swapping shamelessly salacious showbiz stories? You bet!