Warner Bros. released A Wild Hare, a Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Tex Avery and produced by Leon Schlesinger. The film presented the first fully developed version of Bugs Bunny, although earlier Warner Bros. cartoons had featured unnamed rabbits that contributed to his evolution. A Wild Hare established the character’s recognizable appearance, controlled manner, comic intelligence, and conflict with the hunter Elmer Fudd. It also introduced the familiar encounter in which Bugs calmly asks, “What’s up, Doc?” while eating a carrot. These elements distinguish the film as Bugs Bunny’s recognized official debut rather than his earliest developmental appearance.
The short emerged during the Golden Age of American theatrical animation, when studios distributed cartoons as part of motion-picture programs. Warner Bros. competed with Walt Disney Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Fleischer Studios, and other producers for audiences and industry recognition. The Warner animation unit developed a comic identity based on rapid pacing, verbal humor, topical references, exaggerated action, and challenges to social authority. A Wild Hare gave that identity an unusually effective central figure. Bugs did not depend on physical strength or official power. He prevailed through timing, language, disguise, confidence, and an ability to control the situation around him.
Tex Avery’s direction was central to the film’s historical importance. Avery shaped a clear dramatic relationship between Bugs and Elmer. Elmer enters the story as an armed hunter pursuing a rabbit, but Bugs repeatedly reverses the expected balance of power. The rabbit remains composed while the hunter becomes confused, frustrated, and vulnerable to ridicule. This structure became a lasting formula for Bugs Bunny cartoons. Bugs often acted after another character threatened, insulted, or pursued him, which allowed the films to present his retaliation as a response to aggression. His cool behavior also contrasted with the frantic movement common among many earlier animated characters.
Mel Blanc supplied the voice of Bugs Bunny, while Arthur Q. Bryan performed the voice of Elmer Fudd. Blanc’s performance helped define Bugs through a distinctive accent, relaxed delivery, precise comic pauses, and abrupt shifts in tone. Bryan’s hesitant delivery established Elmer as an earnest but ineffective opponent. The short’s production also included story work by Rich Hogan and music directed by Carl W. Stalling. Their combined contributions demonstrate the collaborative production system behind American studio animation, in which directors, writers, voice performers, musicians, and animators created a unified screen character.
A Wild Hare received an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject, Cartoons, for the 1940 film year. The nomination placed the film among the animation industry’s recognized achievements and confirmed that Bugs Bunny’s developed screen personality attracted attention beyond routine theatrical exhibition. The award went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s The Milky Way, but the nomination marked an early institutional acknowledgment of the Warner Bros. cartoon style.
Bugs Bunny soon became one of the studio’s principal characters. He appeared in scores of theatrical shorts during the following decades under directors including Avery, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, and Bob Clampett. These films placed him in settings drawn from American history, opera, literature, sports, warfare, travel, and contemporary entertainment. His opponents included Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, and other recurring figures. Through theatrical rereleases and later television broadcasts, the cartoons reached audiences far beyond their original cinema engagements.
The character also participated directly in the national culture of the Second World War. Bugs appeared in Any Bonds Today?, a promotional film supporting United States defense-bond sales, and in wartime cartoons that referred to military service, rationing, enemy governments, and home-front concerns. Some wartime productions contained ethnic and national caricatures that reflected the propaganda practices and racial attitudes of their period. Their historical study therefore includes both their role in wartime mobilization and their offensive representations.
The significance of the July 27, 1940 debut rests on the durability of the character introduced in A Wild Hare. Bugs Bunny became a major Warner Bros. symbol, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and remained active across film, television, publishing, advertising, and licensed products. His success confirmed that an animated character could combine commercial longevity with a stable dramatic identity. A Wild Hare did more than introduce a popular rabbit. It established a model of the American comic trickster whose intelligence, verbal control, confidence, and resistance to intimidation influenced animated comedy for generations.
References / More Knowledge:
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “The Official Academy Awards Database.” Oscars.org. https://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/
Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “Bugs Bunny.” Hollywood Walk of Fame. https://walkoffame.com/bugs-bunny/
Library of Congress. “About This Collection: Origins of American Animation.” https://www.loc.gov/collections/origins-of-american-animation/about-this-collection/
Library of Congress. “Notes on the Origins of American Animation, 1900 to 1921.” https://www.loc.gov/collections/origins-of-american-animation/articles-and-essays/notes-on-the-origins-of-american-animation-1900-1921/
Texas State Historical Association. “Avery, Frederick Bean [Tex].” Handbook of Texas. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/avery-frederick-bean-tex
Waxman, Olivia B. “Bugs Bunny at 75: Watch the First-Ever ‘What’s Up, Doc?’ Moment.” Time, July 27, 2015. https://time.com/3967572/bugs-bunny-75/