There are a number of iconic moments from classic cartoons, and Rabbit Fire has a lot of them.
This month marks the 75th anniversary of the first time Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd began a feud in this Warner Bros. short that has gone down in the annals of animation history.
Rabbit Fire opens with one of those iconic moments, as Elmer Fudd carefully makes his way through the forest, shotgun in hand, and turns to the camera to inform the audience, “Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting rabbits.”
Tracks lead to the rabbit hole of one “B. Bunny” (stated on his mailbox), but it turns out that Daffy Duck is making the tracks with a pair of fake rabbit feet.
Elmer tries to hunt Bugs who is trying to convince Elmer that he should instead be hunting Daffy, in the now iconic “Duck Season! Wabbit Season!” exchange between the two. This results in Daffy getting blasted by the shotgun and his bill being shifted in hilarious, precarious positions (more cartoon iconography).
They dress up and imitate each other to throw Elmer off, and Bugs dresses in drag (another iconic gag used in this and future shorts) as a female hunter with Daffy as his dog. When Elmer eventually sees through this, Bugs and Daffy begin tearing “Rabbit Season” and “Duck Season” posters off a nearby tree (again, iconic), eventually revealing one that reads: “Elmer Season.”
With a vicious glare, the two turn the tables and begin hunting the hunter, ending the short by stating: “Be vewy, vewy quiet. We’re hunting Elmers.”
Rabbit Fire came to be courtesy of the genius of two legends, who teamed up quite a bit at Warner Bros.: director Chuck Jones (billed here as “Charles M. Jones”) and writer Michael Maltese. Jones and Maltese created memorable sight gags, slowing the animation down for pauses, and allowing the audience to anticipate the laughs.
All of it delivered perfectly by Mel Blanc as Bugs and Daffy and Arthur Q. Bryan as Elmer.
In one sequence, Bugs tries to get Elmer interested in sports other than hunting, at which point, Daffy emerges, dressed in whites with a racquet in his hand, asking, “Anyone for tennis?” Elmer immediately shoots him, the smoke clears, and a scorched Daffy wearily declares, “Nice game!”
The comic timing in Rabbit Fire rivals anything seen in live action.
Adding to the brilliance of the short are backgrounds by Phillip DeGuard, and animation from Lloyd Vaughan, Ken Harris, Phil Monroe, and Ben Washam.
Following Rabbit Fire’s success, Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer teamed up again for two more short subjects, Rabbit Seasoning (1952) and Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (1953). Collectively, these cartoons have become referred to as “The Hunting Trilogy.”
The second of these, Rabbit Seasoning, came in at number 30 in our own Jerry Beck’s 1994 book, The 50 Greatest Cartoons. In it, author Joe Adamson notes: “The dialogue in these cartoons, savored by connoisseurs for years, was an element singled out for praise by Boxoffice as soon as the first of the trilogy appeared. Since Carl Stalling wrote the scores, there are now published pieces of music entitled ‘Rabbit Season,’ ‘Duck Season,’ ‘Elmer Season,’ and ‘Pronoun Trouble.’
The levels of irony, role-playing, role reversal, and slapstick that rebound, highlight, overlap, intensify, and ricochet off each other in all three of these cartoons have been the subject of endless analysis.”
Released on May 19, 1951, Rabbit Fire remains a shining moment in the Golden Age of Looney Tunes.
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 formed an early appreciation for the vocal talents of Mel Blanc due to the ubiquity of his name in cartoon credits. What always impressed me about “Rabbit Fire” was that he not only voiced two characters with distinctive voices, he voiced both of them imitating each other. This is real next-level stuff. No question about it, Mel was the greatest.
A classic, and a childhood favourite that never grows old, “Rabbit Fire” is a Jones/Maltese masterpiece that can only be described as — what’s that word again? — oh yes: iconic!
Despite an abundance of gunplay and the detachable quality of Daffy’s beak, there is such a playful mood about this cartoon that it never feels like anybody actually wants to kill anybody. The gags are built more around doing things by the book–if it’s duck season, hunt ducks and if it’s rabbit season, hunt rabbits. This playfulness is what makes the characters so endearing–there really is no villain nor protagonist. Although it is very funny toward the end to see Bugs and Daffy who have been antagonistic toward each other suddenly united in a common cause. These three cartoons–for a long time I thought there was only one–never fail to make me laugh out loud.
In an article or interview I once read, Chuck Jones stated that these films were intended as a counterpoint to Disney. When Disney combined three characters in one cartoon–such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Dippy/Goofy–the three characters would go their separate ways and each have his own problem or adventure, only coming together at the end. Jones wanted to demonstrate how effective it could be to keep the characters in proximity throughout the cartoon, with their back and forth interplay as the main ingredient.
But that said, the premise of “Rabbit Fire” wouldn’t work half as well with any other set of characters. This cartoon shows how these particular characters had developed their unique personalities over the preceding years and were ripe for this kind of bantering. It’s a tour-de-force any way you look at it!
My only gripe with this trilogy, and this is not so much about the cartoons themselves, is that networks overplayed them to the point where certain very casual viewers thought that the Looney Tunes series was nothing but variants of this routine. It certainly didn’t help that some modern shorts and movies leaned into “wabbit season!/duck season!” again.
But yeah, they’re landmarks for a reason.
“For shame, Doc. Hunting rabbits with an elephant gun.”
How much 75-year old media holds up better than this short? Very little if any, IMO!
The recipe sequence is also perfectly done, and especially that Bugs has a pinky out. Chuck once said to draw Bugs, you draw a pinky and attach a rabbit to it.
By the way, another great example of Blanc is Bugs imitating Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, in “Hare Brush.”
The number three has long held some mystical significance in human culture. I don’t know why this is true, you’d have to ask a professor of metaphysics. It does suggest “completeness,” as with the triangle, a tripod, or, on a higher plane, the Holy Trinity.
Which, as we all know, consists of Moe, Larry, and Curly. Or Moe, Larry, and Shemp— a theological dispute that has yet to be resolved.
But, getting back to this unique cartoon “cycle,” it’s one of those rare story arcs that seems to have “written itself,” as it does exhibit a sense of completeness. The behavior of the three characters is very consistent from one film to the next, and so the results should become predictable after only a short time, but Chuck and his team keep pulling more laughs out of this starkly simple basic premise, like a magician’s tricks of producing all kinds of unlikely objects from under his coat.
The many ways in which Daffy’s beak can be dislodged or destroyed is a prime example of this principle. We know that Daffy is going to be flummoxed by Bugs every time, but the real “payoff” to this inspired running gag is visual— what will the beak look like THIS time?
It’s really tempting to over-analyze these three cartoons, and I probably just DID…
i think Rabbit Fire is head and shoulders above the others in terms of historical impact, relevance , memorability and humor. Rabbit seasoning and Duck Rabbit Duck have their moments, but they are more like annexes to Rabbit Fire, while this is more like a self contained storytelling, matched only by a few, like Feed the Kitty or One Froggy Evening.
To be honest, “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!” (1953) is my favorite of the trilogy. I really like the winter setting.