Wishing all a Happy Easter with the usual blend of cartoons, clips, tunes, vintage TV ads and live-action comedy, starting with . . . Jerry Lee Lewis!
On yesterday's Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show on KFJC, host Robert Emmett played several ads for Easter Seals that were entirely unbeknownst to me. Having a developmentally disabled family member, I strongly support the organization and cause - and remain completely floored that Peter Falk did TV ads for them.
Peter Falk is a very good spokesperson for Easter Seals whether he is playing Columbo of not. A whole lot less successful at this, albeit equally enthusiastic, was. . . Joan Crawford.
More successful in his Easter Seals PSA than grande dame Joan: the excellent singer Tom Jones!
With that we turn to cartoons and watch Daffy Duck's Easter Special.
There won't be too many easter bunny cartoons in today's post, especially as Bugs Bunny in Easter Yeggs is not at the moment available online.
Only the briefest of clips from Easter Yeggs are available.
One assumes Easter Yeggs is on either a new or soon upcoming Blu-ray compilation of Warner Bros. cartoons.
In the past decade, New Looney Tunes produced by Warner Bros. Animation aired on Cartoon Network and Boomerang UK. The primary difference between these and the films of the Termite Terrace bunch is that the 21st century cartoons have a tendency to be very dialogue-heavy, even when old school slapstick gags are in the mix. Perhaps the consensus is that a modern audience cannot and will not sit through a cartoon that is primarily visual.
In our humble opinion, this approach has, many moons ago, worked extremely well in the era of made-for-TV limited animation, especially cartoons by Jay Ward Productions, Pantomine Pictures, and (at least in 1957-1962) Hanna-Barbera Productions. In the case of cartoons that utilize more full animation, this writer prefers less talk and more visuals (a.k.a. don't tell us, show us).
A particularly well-known Easter cartoon features Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, one of those characters (like Scrappy) that appeared in dozens of 1930's cartoons without ever quite finding the warm embrace of the mass audience. This Easter opus would be near the end of Ozzie's run as star of animated cartoons, first with Walt Disney Productions, then Winkler Pictures and Walter Lantz Productions/Universal.
This would be the last version of Ozzie for decades.
Walt Disney Productions brought him back, ever so briefly. Actually, this 21st century Oswald The Lucky Rabbit reboot sticks with the late 1920's design and works very well. . .
Ozzie (the Lucky Rabbit, not Osborne) did have cameo appearances in a latter-day series of Disney cartoons produced in 2013-2021.
Even as a middle-schooler in the late 1960's, this writer considered Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In entertaining but not nearly as good as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Get Smart and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Nonetheless, Laugh-In did pay enough to get tough guy John Wayne onstage in a rabbit suit. When it comes to Easter blog posts, big guys wearing bunny rabbit outfits works!
The Duke was very likely a pal of Laugh-In head writer Paul Keyes, profiled in Kliph Nesteroff's article The Comedy Writer That Helped Elect Richard M. Nixon.
After John Wayne in a rabbit costume, HOW can we finish up this Easter post? With comedian Bobby Moynihan wearing bunny ears as Drunk Uncle on Easter! Of the former SNL cast members, Bobby, Cheri Oteri from the very good mid-to-late 1990's cast and Bill Hader top the list of those I'd like to see return to host.
Happy Easter!
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