You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Stan Freberg’ tag.
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: January 5, 1957
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
‘Three Little Bops’ retells the story of the three little pigs in a jazz style.
The film features voice actor Stan Freberg as a singing narrator. In the cartoon the three little pigs are jazz musicians who play jump blues (not bebop!). The wolf is a corny jazz cat, who wants to sit in, but whose trumpet playing is too amateurish to entertain. Only in hell the wolf learns that “you gotta get hot to play real cool”.
The film is unique within the Warner Bros. cartoon canon because it features neither voice work by Mel Blanc nor music by Carl Stalling/Milt Franklyn. It even lacks the ‘That’s All Folks!’ ending, showing a ‘The End’, instead. In the cartoon Stan Freberg does all the singing, while the swinging rhythm & blues music is provided by jazz musician Shorty Rogers and his combo. Together with ‘Rhapsody in Rivets‘ (1941), the cartoon is one of the best examples of director Friz Freleng’s perfect sense of musical timing. The result is one of the most entertaining animated cartoons of the late 1950s.
Watch ‘Three Little Bops’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: July 24, 1948
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Marvin the Martian
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Haredevil Hare’ Bugs opens with two headlines of the ‘Daily Snooze’: ‘Scientist to Launch First Rocket to the Moon’ and ‘Heroic Rabbit Volunteers to Be First Passenger’.
Cut to Bugs Bunny ‘volunteering’ (he’s literally dragged towards the spaceship by two men). Bugs changes his mind however, when he notices the supply of carrots dumped into the rocket. And so he’s off to the moon.
Bugs has a hard landing on the moon, which destroys his vesssel and leaves him in shock. But just when he’s adjusted to the fact that he’s alone on the moon, Bugs encounters Marvin the Martian (in his first screen appearance) and his green, talking Martian dog, who is designed like a green version of Charlie Dog and who speaks with the dumb voice of Junior Bear, provided by voice actor Stan Freberg.
The two Martians are on the first Mars-Moon expedition and want to blow up the Earth. But it’s Bugs who blows up the two and accidentally half the moon, too. In the end we see the three hanging on the left piece of the moon with bugs screaming to the control room: “Get me outa here!”.
‘Haredevil Hare’ is one of the first science fiction-themed films that flooded the post-war era. It even predates the first post-war live action features set in outer space, ‘Rocketship X-M’ and ‘Destination Moon’ by two years. In the 1950s outer space would become a popular film setting. Indeed, Chuck Jones himself would revisit outer space several times in his cartoons, most notably in ‘Jumpin’ Jupiter‘ (1955), ‘Rocket Squad’ (1956), and the greatest of all science fiction cartoons, ‘Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century‘ (1953).
The latter cartoon also features Marvin the Martian, who would reappear in three more Bugs Bunny cartoons: ‘The Hasty Hare’ (1951), ‘Hare-Way to the Stars’ (1958) and ‘Mad as a Mars Hare’ (1963). Of all cartoon villains, Marvin the Martian is the most extraordinary. He’s as gentle, polite and mild-mannered as he is destructive. Although he would never become a major star, he’s still popular today.
Apart from introducing Marvin, ‘Haredevil Hare’ is a notable cartoon because of some nice and weird animation by Ben Washam of Bugs being a nervous wreck after his voyage to the moon: we watch him changing from one bizarre pose into the other, almost without any animation in between. The scenes inside the rocket scene are reminiscent of Bob Clampett’s ‘Falling Hare’ (1943).
Watch ‘Haredevil Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/661/haredevil-hare.html
‘Haredevil Hare’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 51
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Bugs Bunny Rides Again
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hot Cross Bunny
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 