The Heckling Hare (1941)

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The Heckling Hare is a 1941 American animated comedy short film directed by Fred Avery. It is part of the Merrie Melodies series, the ninth cartoon to feature Bugs Bunny and the third cartoon to feature Willoughby. Its production was troubled, notoriously for causing a dispute between Avery and producer Leon Schlesinger, which motivated Avery to leave for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The last, All This and Rabbit Stew, was produced before this film.

Production

This is the cartoon that led to Avery leaving Warner Bros. and moving to MGM. The final gag of this cartoon originally had Bugs and Willoughby falling off three cliffs, with Bugs telling the audience "Well! Here we go again!" during the pair's second and third trip down. Schlesinger intervened, for reasons which are not known with certainty.

According to Martha Sigall, Schlesinger found the second fall to be too repetitious and objected to its inclusion on those grounds. He instructed Avery to cut it, but Avery insisted that it should remain. Schlesinger simply overruled him as the boss, resulting in the ending being cut down regardless to Avery's insistence. Karl F. Cohen also suggests that Schlesinger found it inappropriate of an ending which suggests that Bugs gets killed.

It was also claimed that Bugs' line was "Hold on to your hats, folks. Here we go again!", referring to a dirty joke that was then in circulation. However, this line does not appear in the film's dialogue transcript; a similar line had been used in Daffy Duck and Egghead (1938, coincidentally also directed by Avery) where Daffy Duck tells the audience, "Hold your seats, folks, here we go again!" just before launching into his own take on The Merry…

The film was edited so that the characters only fall off a cliff once. After Bugs and Willoughby fall through the sky in a lengthy sequence, they "put on the brakes" and make a soft, feet-first landing on the ground. Bugs says to the audience, "N'yah, fooled you, didn't we?!" The dog follows with, "Yeah!" just as the cartoon fades out.

The Heckling Hare was not the only subject matter Avery feuded with Schlesinger over at the time, as Schlesinger also rejected his idea to create a series of shorts featuring live-action animals with animated mouths. Avery was promptly suspended for four weeks with no pay, resulting in a disgruntled Avery to walk out from the studio for good.

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