“Bugs Bunny at the Symphony” tour celebrates 35th Anniversary and “Wild Hare’s” 85th birthday with shows at the Palladium
By: Kevin Vickery
I’ve been a fan of Bug’s Bunny for as long as I can remember. Growing up I watched him faithfully after school and on Saturday mornings along with all the other classic Looney Tunes characters like Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester & Tweety, Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, Speedy Gonzalez and Pepe Le Pew.
Sure, I also watched classics like “Scooby Doo”, “The Flintstone’s” and “The Jetson’s” along with the other greats like “Popeye”, “The Pink Panther”, and “Tennessee Tuxedo”.
Of course I can’t forget “Yogi Bear”, “Super Chicken”, “Hong Kong Fuey”, “Tom Slick”, “Huckleberry Hound” and “George of the Jungle”.
Oh and did I almost fail to mention “Tom and Jerry”, “Rocky & Bullwinkle” and “Fat Albert”?
Oh yeah, then there was “Underdog”, “Quick Draw McGraw”, and School House Rock.
Wow, I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid.
Have you ever started “accidentally” collecting something? It happened to me as it was known by my family and friends that I was a Bugs Bunny fan. Whenever any of them saw a Bugs collectible they’d buy it and give it to me for Christmas, Birthdays or whatever other occasion. Before I knew it, I had a fairly massive collection of Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes memorabilia that included coffee mugs, canister sets, figurines, VHS tapes, wall hangings, Christmas decorations, and even a framed original set of cartoon cells from, “The Rabbit of Seville”. Some of those items I still use daily while others are squirreled away in boxes stored who-knows-where.
I don’t think I ever outgrew cartoons and was lucky to be of the generation that as we made our way into our college years, shows like “The Simpsons”, “Ren & Stimpy”, and “Beavis & Butthead” were making their debuts and appealing to young adults who still had a craving for cartoons.
Even now as a bonafide grown up I can still get my fix with edgier animated shows like “Family Guy”, “South Park” and “Squidbillies”.
During my Nashville years my friends and I watched, “Johnny Bravo”, “Dexter’s Laboratory”, “Cat-Dog” and “The Tick”.
Also, when they were a bit younger, my own kids enlightened me to their favorites like, “PBS Kids” and all things Disney.
As they’ve grown we now watch, “The Loud House”, “Big City Greens”, and “SpongeBob SquarePants who has always been a favorite at our house.
With all that said, it still most definitely started for me with that ‘wascally ‘wabbit, Bugs Bunny. Nothing kicked off a Saturday better than watching that “rackin’ frackin’ varmint” outwit Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam while I stretched out on the brown shag living room carpet, wearing my Spider-Man Underoos and wrecking the roof of my mouth with a bowl of Cap‘n Crunch cereal.
Back then I was drawn to the slapstick style humor that was prevalent in all the other aforementioned cartoons or, “shorts” as they were commonly known. This term comes from the fact that each individual short had to fit on a single 6.5 minute reel of film to be played in the movie theaters before the feature presentation. This is how America was introduced to cartoons.
Movie theaters were first present in the late 1890s in New Orleans and Buffalo. Then more appeared in the early 1900s in Pittsburgh and New York City. This is when America first saw the animated shorts as television didn’t make its way into homes until a few decades later when they first became available to elite consumers in the late 1930s and 1940s but weren’t commonplace. Post World War II saw developments in technology and changes in social climate that lead to about half of US homes having televisions by 1955 but a jump to 90% by 1960 when it then became considered a central part of American life.
The “whizz, boom, crack” of slapstick started during the silent movie era with artists such as, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and The Keystone Cops then continued into the mid-20th century with performers such as The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, and The Marx Brothers who carried the tradition forward into sound films.
The cartoon shorts that played before these features and on early television followed suit with their own slapstick style including the one and only Bugs Bunny. Those traditional elements of physical comedy are still featured heavily in cartoons today. Since they are drawn rather than filming an actual actor, the only limitations or restrictions are in the mind of the artist. It’s still the easiest way to have a piano fall out of a skyscraper window, land on a guy’s head and then have him simply shake it off and be as good as new for the next scene.
Looney Tunes and the creative time behind it were masters of this art form. How many times did Elmer Fudd’s gun blow up in his own face? How many times did Wile E. Coyote fall from a cliff or detonate some Acme TNT to what would otherwise be a certain death? I don’t know either but I know it was a lot and I loved every second of it.
The earliest version of Bugs Bunny first appeared in Ben Hardaway’s, “Porky’s Hare Hunt” in 1938 and a few subsequent shorts before his definitive character traits debuted in Tex Avery’s, “A Wild Hare” in 1940. Bob Givens, Chuck Jones, and Robert McKimson are credited for defining Bugs’s visual design while his distinct voice came from Mel Blanc.
Blanc voiced Bugs Bunny for 52 years through the golden age of animation until his death in 1989. He is credited for developing Bugs’ signature flippant and fast talking, city slicker sound. He draws from both Brooklyn and Bronx style accents creating a “New York Irish” style that he got from the character, Oscar Shapley in the 1934 film, “It Happened One Night” which also starred Clarke Gable who munched carrots while talking.
Though the earliest versions of Bugs were first created in 1938, his official birthday is July 27th, 1940 because of the release date of, “Wild Hare” making 2025 the year that he has turned 85 years old. After learning that I wondered what it would be like to be the same age as Bugs Bunny so I asked my favorite octogenarian, Carol Prosser of New Castle who was also born in 1940, just a couple months before Bugs and said, “Well he is sure a lot more spry for his age than I am since I’m stuck in this walker!” Laughingly she added, “I bet I say, ‘What’s up Doc?’ even more than he does, these days!”
Through his years of popularity, especially during the golden age of American animation, Bugs Bunny has became an American cultural icon and Warner Brothers’ official mascot. His cartoons have twice been nominated for Academy Awards, and won an Oscar for, “Knighty Knight Bugs” He has starred in four feature films in addition to his hundreds of animated shorts, 21 prime time television specials, comics and other media. Bugs Bunny has appeared in more films than any other cartoon character, and has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
His catch phrases like, “What’s up Doc?” and “Ain’t I a stinker?” are of course commonly associated with Bugs but you might not know his dialogue has even impacted terminology from The Bible. Yes, THAT Bible.
Not to get all relig-ical on you, but The Good Book tells the story of “Nimrod” who was a descendant of Noah. He was considered to be a “Great King and mighty hunter before the Lord”.
In slang terms, calling someone a “nimrod” means they are a fool or an idiot. This twist on the connotation originated from an ironically sarcastic, comment when Bugs Bunny mockingly called Yosemite Sam, “My little Nimrod,” as Daffy Duck had also said to Elmer Fudd, highlighting Fudd’s ineptitude as a hunter. This shifted the popularization of the word from a Biblical name to an insult converting it to modern slang.
Ok, maybe “modern” isn’t the correct way of describing it. After all, I do live with people who use terms like; “slay”, “six-seven”, “rizz”, “drip”, “mid” and say that everything is “low-key” even when it most definitely is not. Maybe modern by 1951 standards is a better way to describe “nimrod” as a hip slang term
Either way, Bugs Bunny had cemented his position as a cultural icon at a young age. Years later, to celebrate his 50th Birthday in 1990 he starred in, “Bugs Bunny on Broadway”, a concert musical conceived by by Pendleton Indiana native, George Daugherty, and co-creator, David Ka Lik Wong incorporating scores by Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn.
The musical, and its 2010 sequel Bugs Bunny at the Symphony, combines classic Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes cartoons projected on a large screen accompanied by a live orchestra performing the original score. This production has been touring the world continuously since 1990 and has played to a total international audience of nearly 2 million people. The current version of this production recently made its way to Indiana for a stop at Carmel’s Payne & Mencias Palladium at The Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts, commonly referred to as simply, “The Palladium”.
This seemed like a perfect opportunity for me to re-live some childhood memories of watching classic cartoons while my daughters could enjoy trying something new by seeing a live symphony performance at an upscale venue that none of us had ever experienced. So, we headed up to Carmel to do as my Grandpa used to say and “Go get us some culture”.
The show was excellent and featured George Daugherty as primary conductor and James Fellenbaum as guest conductor as they lead a live, full orchestra through 16 original, vintage Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts which feature music in their original scores from classical composers such as; Wagner, Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Mendelssohn, and many more.
Act I featured well known cartoons like; “Baton Bunny”, “A Corny Concerto”, “One Froggy Evening” and my personal favorite. “The Rabbit of Seville”. Act II showcased a new short entitled, “Happy Birthday Bugs” as well as standards like, “High Note”, and “What’s Opera Doc?”. The girls and I had a great time and enjoyed laughing our way through the cartoons set to a live soundtrack performed by excellent musicians.
Conductor George Daugherty is one of the classical music world’s most diverse artists. In addition to his 40-year conducting career which has included appearances with the world’s leading orchestras, ballet companies, opera houses, and concert artists, he is also an Emmy Award-winning creator whose professional profile includes major credits as a director, writer, and producer for television, film, concerts, and live theater.
Daugherty told the crowd from stage, “I’ve had a really great career and I’ve worked with a lot of very famous, wonderful celebrities like Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and people like that but I have to say that Bugs Bunny is the colleague that I’ve spent the most time with – 35 years and I actually look at the screen while I’m conducting and I have a tendency to think of him as being real”. Adding, “I think of his film persona as being totally here with us”.
What do you give to a world famous conductor at the end of a performance of “Bugs Bunny at the Symphony”?…. A bouquet of course – a bouquet of carrots, naturally.
I would imagine that after all that time Bugs would seem like a co-worker, a business associate, an on-screen talent, even an old friend and certainly much more than just a cartoon character.
Not to mention that after 35 years of working together with Bugs Bunny, I bet that George Daugherty’s Looney Tunes memorabilia collection is WAY cooler than mine.
If you are unfamiliar with The Payne and Mencias Paladium, it’s a beautiful venue located at 1 Carter Green in Carmel, Indiana. The 1,500 seat limestone landmark was first opened in October of 2011 as part of the Allied Solutions Center for the performing arts which also includes the Tarkington proscenium theater and the black-box Studio Theater. The nonprofit organization’s campus operates with the mission of “engaging and inspiring the Indiana community through enriching arts experiences.”
The was my first time attending a performance of any sort at the Palladium but with the line-up featured in their annual Center Presents concert season, I’m sure it won’t be the last.
For more information about the history of Bugs Bunny at the Symphony, the creative team behind it, and the tour schedule visit the official website at bugsbunnyatthesymophony.net
To keep up with events at Payne & Mencias Palladium at The Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts, go their official website at thecenterpresents.org.
Make Some Noise 