Hare Trigger

Hare Trigger
Merrie Melodies (Bugs Bunny) series
Lobby card
Directed by	I. Freleng
Produced by	Edward Selzer
Story by	Michael Maltese
Voices by	Mel Blanc
Music by	Carl W. Stalling
Animation by	Manuel Perez Ken Champin Virgil Ross Gerry Chiniquy Jack Bradbury (unc.)
Layouts by	Hawley Pratt
Backgrounds by	Paul Julian
Studio	Warner Bros. Cartoons
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date(s)	May 5, 1945 (USA)
Color process	Technicolor
Running time	8:00
Language	English

Hare Trigger is a 1945 Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies cartoon short starring Bugs Bunny directed by Friz Freleng. It marks the first appearance of Yosemite Sam, who appears as a train robber. Mel Blanc does both characters' voices.

The title is a play on "hair trigger", referring to any weapon or other device with a sensitive trigger.

This is the first cartoon with a shorter version of the Merrily We Roll Along music.

This is also the first cartoon to credit all of the animators and use a "Direction" credit.

Plot

After opening credits underscored by a lively instrumental of "Cheyenne", an old-fashioned train is seen rolling along through the desert. It passes another train going around a utility pole, and voices are heard repeating "Bread and Butter".

Bugs is riding in the mail car of a train, singing a nonsense song called "Go Get the Axe", when a pint-sized bandit attempts to rob the train (with the underscore playing stereotypical "villain music"), only to have it pass clear over his head. He then calls for his horse, which he needs a rolling step-stair to mount. He catches up and boards the train and begins to rob it while the mail clerk wraps himself in a package marked DON'T OPEN 'TIL XMAS. The bandit accidentally throws Bugs Bunny in his sack. Bugs assumes he's Jesse James. The bandit scoffs and tells him (and the audience) who he actually is: "I'm Yosemite Sam, the meanest, toughest, rip-roarin'-est, Edward Everett Horton-est hombre what ever packed a six-shooter!" (This pattern of Sam introducing himself to Bugs and the audience would continue in other cartoons.) Bugs tells Sam that there is another tough guy in the train packing a "seven-shooter", and Sam goes looking for him – and he is actually Bugs in disguise.

Various fights ensue, as each character temporarily gets the upper hand for a while. In one scene Bugs dumps red ink on Sam, compelling him to think he's been shot; he collapses but eventually gets the joke. Sam then pushed his face furiously into Bugs', then pulls back and with a quiet, offended tone asks "Why did you pour ink on mah haid." . After another skirmish, Bugs tricks Sam into dashing into a lounge car in which a horrific fight is occurring, actually stock film footage of a stereotypical western saloon fight, taken from the Warner Brothers western Dodge City. With the sounds of crashes and bangs in the background, Bugs calmly sings "Sweet Georgia Brown" to himself. Sam emerges tottering, banged and bruised, to a comical instrumental of "Rally 'Round the Flag", and a race-based gag occurs that is subtle enough it is usually left intact in network showings: Bugs affects the stereotyped voice of an African-American train porter, and has the dazed Sam convinced he's supposed to disembark the train, piling him up with luggage; Sam even hands Bugs a silver coin as a tip, and Bugs says, "Thank you, suh!" As Sam steps off the moving train, the mail-drop hook grabs him and temporarily whisks him off the train. Bugs thinks he has vanquished Sam, and yells "So long, screwy, see ya in Saint Louie!" in a line that will be echoed in Wild and Woolly Hare and A Feather in His Hare. But he gets back on board somehow. Bugs and Sam start a fight on top of the passenger train.

Finally, Sam has Bugs tied up, dangling from a rope, weighted down by an anvil, and fiendishly cutting through the rope, while the train is passing over a gorge. The screen fills with the words the narrator (also Mel Blanc, in pretty much his natural voice) is saying, "Is this the end of Bugs Bunny? Will our hero be dashed to bits on the jagged rocks below?" and so on. Then Bugs walks across the screen, dressed in top hat and tails, carrying a bag full of gold (reward money), and dragging the tied-up villain behind him, mocking the on-screen words ("Is he to be doomed to utter destruction? Will he be rendered non compos mentis?"). Bugs closes by turning to the audience and repeating a popular radio catch-phrase from Red Skelton's "Mean Widdle Kid": "He don't know me vewy well, do he?" as a bar of Kingdom Coming plays on the track at iris-out.

Cast

• Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam and Narrator

Trivia

The engines on both trains are 4-4-0s or American type locomotives, which were the most common wheel arrangements for locomotives, during the 1800s on American railroads, despite the engine being a 2-4-0, converted to a 2-4-0.

See also

• Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1940–1949)
• List of Bugs Bunny cartoons
• List of Yosemite Sam cartoons

External links

• Hare Trigger at the Internet Movie Database
• Hare Trigger at The Big Cartoon DataBase