Seeds of future animation greatness are planted in Elmer’s Candid Camera. The Warner Bros.“Merrie Melodies” short, which celebrates its 85th anniversary this month, features a redesigned version of Elmer Fudd and an early appearance of a troublesome rabbit who would later become Bugs Bunny.
Elmer’s Candid Camera is a time-capsule glimpse at what would become one of animation history’s greatest character relationships. It was also directed by the one and only Chuck Jones, who would go on to helm some of Bugs and Elmer’s greatest cartoon shorts.
As Elmer’s Candid Camera opens, we meet mild-mannered Elmer preparing his camera equipment for a trip into the forest and reading a book, “How to Photograph Wildlife.” In the next scene, in the forest, camera and tripod in tow, Elmer spots “wabbit twacks!”
Elmer spots a sleeping rabbit, but as he stops to set up the shot, the rabbit stands behind him, asks, “What’ya doin? Takin’ pictures?” and adds, “Nice hobby. Mind if I watch?”
Elmer soon realizes that the rabbit behind him is the one he was trying to get a photograph of, and that same rabbit would continue to taunt and torture Elmer for the remainder of the picture.
Pulling the camera lens back so that it snaps into Elmer’s face and playing dead after being caught in a net are just two of the rabbit’s stunts that infuriate Elmer as the short progresses. It eventually leads to a full-blown breakdown for Elmer, where he trashes his camera and equipment.
Elmer eventually jumps into a lake, and the rabbit rescues him, pulling him out of the water and repeatedly asking him if he is doing okay. When Elmer says he is, the rabbit kicks Elmer back into the water, laughs, and throws the wildlife book at him as the conclusion.
The short marked a turning point for Elmer, who had been undergoing a metamorphosis. With Elmer’s Candid Camera, he would become a character in design and personality that audiences would become most familiar with through the years.
Actor Authur Q. Bryan would voice Elmer here for the first time, providing the mild-mannered performance with the substitutions of “w’s” for “r’s,” which would become Elmer Fudd’s signature. At the time, Bryan was a popular actor on radio and a cast member on the hit series Fibber McGee and Molly and would go on to voice the character until his death in 1959.
Another familiar and renowned voice is also heard in Elmer’s Candid Camera. Mel Blanc provides the voice for the rabbit, who would be a prototype for Bugs. However, the voice Blanc provides sounds nothing like the familiar Bugs Bunny voice, but it is closer to Woody Woodpecker. Blanc had been providing Woody’s voice at this time, and in Elmer’s Candid Camera, the rabbit sounds like the famous Woodpecker and seems to break out into a version of Woody’s trademark laugh.
Director Jones has several of his other future collaborators on the short, including writer Rich Hogan and animator (and future director) Robert McKimson.
Elmer’s Candid Camera contains many elements that would become standards of Jones’ future work, including slow builds, pauses around jokes, and explosive animation (particularly during Elmer’s breakdown at the conclusion).
Interestingly, years later, Jones wrote in his 1989 book, Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, that he was not all that fond of this short: “It is obvious when one views this cartoon, which I recommend only if you are going to die of ennui, that my conception of timing and dialogue was formed by watching the action in the La Brea tar pits. It would be complimentary to call it sluggish.”
The legendary Jones may have been too hard on himself. Eighty-five years later, many feel that Elmer’s Candid Camera was planting those comedic seeds from which all the future Warner Bros animated gold would bloom.
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
I agree with Chuck. This cartoon is a real chore to sit through.
I agree that Chuck Jones was too hard on himself. This is a worthy effort, especially in light of what was to follow. I get the impression not only of two characters who are in process of development but also of a relationship between the voice artists, who also seem to be feeling their way toward their future chemistry. Certainly a large percentage of the charm of these characters derived from the quality of the voices. Mel even throws in the Woody Woodpecker laugh at the end!
Despite the prototypical nature of this cartoon as regards the two leads, this definitely seems to qualify as a Bugs vs. Elmer cartoon. It’s fascinating to observe the development of the classic characters as they morphed from design to design until they arrived at the version which is widely known today. Nearly all of the classic toons went through this process–Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and many others. As has been said many tines, life is more of a journey than an end result–and this can be witnessed in the development of our toon favorites.
Thanks for posting this! I have a new appreciation for this cartoon now!
This is Bugs Bunny as far as I’m concerned.
Watch carefully when Bugs saves Elmer from drowning. Elmer is briefly drawn like Egghead in 1939.
Jones famously said the rabbit was Bugs with umbilical cord in his hand looking for a place to plug it in.
Hmm! I knew about the quote, – the “umbilical cord” one – but I didn’t know it was Jones who said it. It certainly is a clever – and rather accurate – assessment!
One thing I’d like to mention is that Jones redesigned Fred “Tex” Avery’s character of Elmer Fudd – I assume with Avery’s permission – into _almost_ the definitive version of Elmer Fudd. Upon his return from his sentence at M-G-M, Isadore “Friz” Freleng put Jones’s Elmer Fudd to work right away, in “Confederate Honey” (a parody of “Gone with the Wind” – “Would you vawidate my parking ticket?”) and “The Hardship of Miles Standish.”
Avery put the final touches on Elmer in his famous cartoon “A Wild Hare” (July 27, 1940, four months after this one debuted).
In “A Wild Hare,” Avery used gags and scenes from three of the four proto-Bugs Bunny cartoons, including this one – in which Bugs kicks Elmer into the swamp. (In “A Wild Hare,” bugs kicks Elmer up a tree.)
Let’s give some credit to Jones – he created the near-final version of Elmer Fudd!
Some sources said that Confederate Honey and The Hardship of Miles Standish were planned by Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton and they were originally planning to use Egghead. But when Friz returned and took their unit, he replaced Egghead with Elmer, in his design in Elmer’s Candid Camera.
I always liked this cartoon and considered it a Bugs Bunny cartoon with a different Bugs Bunny voice, just like “Elmer’s Pet Rabbit”. The cartoon doesn’t seem slow to me, but I tend to like the early Chuck Jones cartoons. I hope to see more of them released on the Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault volumes.
What strikes me most about this cartoon is one minor scene in which the rabbit walks in the foreground, turns his head, sees Elmer, and says matter-of-factly “Oh, there you are.” It’s such a simple scene with simple music, but somehow it seems to raise the cartoon to a feature film level because of its reality, even if it is a talking rabbit walking on its hind legs and as big as the human.