The Bugs Bunny Show
The Bugs Bunny Show is a long-running American television anthology series hosted by Bugs Bunny, that was mainly composed of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons made between 1948 and 1963. The show originally debuted as a primetime ABC program in 1960, with newly produced linking segments done by the Warner Bros. animation staff, including Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Robert McKimson, that would turn the three cartoons featured in that particular episode into one nearly continuous story. The wraparounds were produced in color, but the original broadcasts of the show were in black-and-white.
Broadcast History
The format and exact name of the show changed frequently after it began reruns on Saturday morning starting in 1962:
- The Bugs Bunny Show, October 11, 1960 - September 8, 1968 (In color starting September 11, 1965) (ABC)
- The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, September 14, 1968 - September 4, 1971 (CBS)
- The Bugs Bunny Show, September 11, 1971 - September 1, 1973 (CBS)
- The Bugs Bunny Show, September 8, 1973 - August 30, 1975 (ABC)
- The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, September 13, 1975 - September 2, 1978 (CBS)
- The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, September 9, 1978 - September 7, 1985 (CBS)
- The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour, September 7, 1985 - September 6, 1986 (ABC)
- The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, September 13, 1986 - September 2, 2000 (ABC)
In 2000, Warner Bros. made the Looney Tunes
and Merrie Melodies film library exclusive to the Cartoon Network, as it, along with parent Warner Bros. is owned by
Time Warner, and The Bugs Bunny Show ended its four-decade-long network run, one of
the longest runs in the history of United States network television.
Most incarnations of the show feature the same theme song, "The Bugs Bunny Overture (This is It!)", written by Mack David and Jerry Livingston ("Overture/curtain, lights/this is it/the night of nights..."). The opening title sequence features Bugs and Daffy (the latter's presence was especially inconsistent during the original prime time run) performing the song in unison. For the final chorus, a lineup of Looney Tunes characters joins the bunny and duck onstage.
When The Bugs Bunny Show ran as The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show [or Hour] the conclusion of the theme song was directly followed by Bugs Bunny's saying, "and also starring my fast feathered friend, the Road Runner" (lifted from the original ABC half-hour episode that featured cartoons starring the bird and his furry nemesis), after which The Road Runner song played. These one-hour or longer Saturday morning shows used bits of the ABC linking material as between-shorts filler, for decades the only way any of this highly-praised material[1] could be seen by the general public.
Title sequences and some linking material (using color footage where available) are included on each volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD collection. The song's fame is such that it has been used elsewhere such as in the Canadian province of Ontario where it was used in a TV commercial promoting the various performing arts tourist attractions where artists of various disciplines sing separate lines of the song.
This show is credited for keeping the Warner Bros. cartoons made during the Golden Age of American Animation a part of the American consciousness. Indeed, the show ran for more than four decades, and helped inspire animators, comedians, historians, and others who watched Saturday morning television.
References
- ^ Beck, Jerry and Will Friedwald, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: The Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons, Henry Holt, 1989
External links
- Lyrics to "The Bugs Bunny Overture (This is It!)"
- Looney Tunes on Television, a web page devoted to the various incarnations of the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies broadcasts on American television.
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