The Bugs Bunny Show

It is 'Reading Out Loud Night', and Bugs selects a book from a shelf and walks into a backdrop leading into the first cartoon feature for this fairy tales and legends installment, comprised of Bugs' initiative to save the lives of Hansel and Gretel from Witch Hazel, Daffy's pratfalls as an accident-prone Robin Hood, Porky Pig's performance as a laughing Friar Tuck, and Sylvester's raid of an enormous, Tweety-inhabited castle at the top of a certain beanstalk.

Yosemite Sam dies after being crushed by a falling safe during his evil scheme to matrimonially divest a widow of her money- and he goes to hell, where the devil promises to release Sam's spirit and give to Sam a new lease on life, provided that Sam bring to the devil a certain rabbit whom the devil has been trying for a long time to entrap in Hades. Sam is returned to Earth on a movie set, where a dictatorial director, who looks and talks like Emperor Nero, orders stagehand Sam to find a victim to feed to a hoard of lions. Sam dies again when he is feasted upon by the lions, and the devil allocates to him one more miscarried chance to catch the bunny, in the midst of the Sahara Desert.

Daffy outwits Bugs for the position of emcee, Sylvester and a brawny, stupid sidekick hunt mice in a warehouse, the Goofy Gophers find that their lumber- harvested home tree has been converted into human furniture, and Foghorn Leghorn's mid-winter fun is fettered by the arrival in his barnyard of a hungry, chicken-craving weasel.

Bugs Bunny lectures about cats, describing with visual aid an alley cat (bowling, that is!), a Bob Cat greeting a Tom Cat, a pole cat (sitting atop a pole), two Persian cats talking on the telephone "making a Persian-to-Persian call"- to which Bugs replies, "I don't write this stuff, I just say it." Three cartoon features depict Sylvester and Sylvester Jr. in a museum as Sylvester combats a baby kangaroo believed by him and by his son to be a giant mouse, a bulldog named Marc Antony striving to prove that his kitten friend, Pussyfoot, is capable of ridding their master's house of its rodents, and Pepé Le Pew's search for love on the French Riviera and, as usual, his lust for a cat whose back is striped white from exposure to paint of that color.

Bugs Bunny gives a lecture on birds, showing the repulsive vulture (who replies to Bugs' description of his repulsiveness by saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones..."), the Blue "J" (a capital letter "J", painted blue), a troublesome mockingbird, who repeats everything that Bugs says and does- including a mallet strike on the head, Tweety Bird in a precarious predicament as Granny's pet trapped with Sylvester in a snowbound mountain cabin, a pair of Mexican crows desiring without avail the capture and eating of a grasshopper, and the Road Runner as fallibly pursued by Wile E. Coyote with a rocket, a dynamite lasso, glue, and a female Road Runner disguise, in the U.S. southwestern desert.

Bugs Bunny lectures about dogs, but first must struggle with a projectionist who, when Bugs says that the lecture is about man's best friend, shows a picture of a tarantula and then a Whistler's Mother portrait, presumably because, "A man's best friend is his mother." When Bugs clearly states that he intends to talk about dogs, the projectionist flashes a picture of a wiener (a hot dog). "The domestic dog," retorts Bugs, and a picture of a wiener in an apron instantly appears. Finally, the projectionist does something right, and Bugs' requested pictures of dogs are shown: the sheep dog, as seen in a cartoon defending a flock of sheep from lambchop-desirer Ralph Wolf and Ralph's smoke bomb, rock disguise, and underwater unicycle; and the bulldog, willing in one cartoon to resort to any deception to attain meat and acting in another cartoon as protector of his scrappy baby son against a conniving Sylvester.

Red and black dancing pens, named Penelope and Penbroke, perform like figure skaters on paper provided by Bugs. Due to Bugs and Daffy's efforts to direct hunter rifle fire toward each other, Elmer is confused as to what hunting season it really is. Porky Pig and Sylvester are tenants at the haunted Dry Gulch Hotel, and then Porky has a secret house guest- Daffy Duck, seeking shelter from a blizzard and a constant supply of food.

Bugs contends with an annoying fly in this musical show, featuring a mouse who can play a miniature piano, Bugs' conducting of an orchestra's performance of "Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna" by Franz Von Suppe, and a be-bop-jazzed version of the Big Bad Wolf and Three Little Pigs.

Bugs, dressed like the portly Alfred Hitchcock, lectures on crime. He talks about the seedy underworld of Victorian England, where master sleuth Dorlock Homes is trailing the notorious Shropshire Slasher, and then, standing outside of the laboratory of one Dr. Peabody, he speaks about mad scientists, specifically the meek inventor of a portable hole that is stolen by a shadowy bank robber. Next, he flips through a police record archive to find a dossier on Rocky and Mugsy, two criminals who have, so far- but not for much longer, managed to elude the law.

The subject for tonight's show is one that has always puzzled us little denizens of the woodland glades. In yet another lecture, Bugs talks about man. "You see, folks. Man is basically lazy. In order to keep from using his feet, he uses his brain." The lecture addresses human methods of conveyance, including the pogo stick, the Birdie-mobile (a seat carried in the air by a flock of birds), the horse, and the automobile in its many forms, then discusses the human need for companionship, hence the opposite sex and marriage, and then refers to the sprawling of human civilization, which encroaches upon nature- and upon the sanctity of Bugs' home, located in a site chosen by man for building a freeway.

Bugs has overslept. When the announcer summons him by hole-shaped elevator to the stage, either he is in his bathrobe, barely awake and brushing his teeth, or he is drying himself after a shower, or he is occupied with his vacuum cleaner. Cartoons therefore introduced by the announcer: Daffy Duck's refusal at any cost to receive a stork's delivery, the Road Runner's escape from Wile E. Coyote's explosive arrow and a huge, rolling boulder, and Pepé Le Pew's difficult wooing in the waters of southern France of a cat accidentally back-striped white.

Sylvester needs psychiatric help when his frustration at being unable to catch Tweety has him on the verge of mental collapse. So, Bugs obliges to be Sylvester's "head-doctor" and listens as Sylvester tells of his obsessive chase of the elusive canary in Granny's home and at a circus.

The Tasmanian Devil appears with Bugs on stage. Bugs tells of his first meeting with "Taz-Boy" in the jungle of Tasmania, and then he prescribes a carrot diet to Taz, demonstrating how an anemic weakling, Daffy Duck, supposedly became a super-heroic muscular powerhouse after submitting to a carrot diet. Foghorn Leghorn courts Miss Prissy and finds that he is the prospective father of a quiet genius.

Introduced by Bugs, Harry the Brush explains his role in the animation of cartoons wherein Claude Cat schemes to implicate bulldog Marc Antony in the confining by Claude of kitten Pussyfoot within a glass jug, a squirrel toils with a particularly tough nut to crack, and Daffy is at the mercy of the mischief of what he says is a "slop-artist".

In this spoof of This is Your Life, Bugs Bunny's life is reviewed, with visits from friends and foes. Yosemite Sam remembers his battles with Bugs in the Klondike and at a Wild West carnival, and Elmer Fudd shows to Bugs a photo album containing snapshots of some of Bugs' relatives, Flopsie, Mopsie, Cottontail, and Peter, and of a farm setting in Indiana, the locale of Bugs' tussle with Fudd and a robot.

Daffy Duck joins the trench coat crowd in a show that highlights some of his greatest detective roles, one of them set in Paris and the other located in an American metropolis to which Beveridge Hills is an affluent suburb. In another cartoon, Daffy is the wily proprietor of an inn with a multi-animal infestation problem.

Bugs Bunny emerges from his hole on stage as Super-Rabbit, defender of the defenseless, buddy of the buddyless, to introduce science fiction cartoons. Intrepid interplanetary adventurer Daffy contends with Marvin Martian in claiming Planet X as home planet's rightful colonial territory, and Porky Pig and Sylvester are a Jupiter buzzard's selected Earthling subjects of study. Bugs is then joined on stage by a space suited Porky, who descends to stage level in a parachute and relates to the audience the story of Bugs' own experience in the cosmos, on a space platform controlled by Marvin with his apocalyptic Aludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

Sylvester recounts his recent travels through Europe, when his pursuit of Tweety became transoceanic and transcontinental. Relaxing in England, Sylvester was chased by two cockney canines and drank a certain concoction in a laboratory. Escaping the two dogs, Sylvester saw Tweety on a pier and traveled by boat, as an unwelcome passenger, to Italy, where he failed in several attempts to catch the bird. Then, on the Orient Express, Sylvester's pursuit of Tweety was thwarted by a bulldog.

Foghorn Leghorn is an inept soldier in the French Foreign Legion. Traveling across the Sahara Desert, Foghorn explains to his Sergeant about how his troublesome relationships with domineering chickens and cunning boys caused him to leave America and join the French military.

The art of cartoon drawing is demonstrated by an animator, whom Bugs directs to draw a line that becomes a dog's wagging tail for a story of canine mistreatment by an innocent, little girl, and then to sketch a pair of speedy legs- those of the Road Runner, as a start to a Road Runner cartoon containing Wile E. Coyote's dynamite stick on a lasso, giant coil spring, dehydrated boulders, and steam roller- all ineffective at ending the Road Runner's life in the fast lane. The animator next turns mischievous and puts Bugs through various indignities.

More dog tales. Charlie Dog chooses urban apartment owner Porky Pig as his master, whether Porky likes this or not. Daffy Duck rivals a barnyard dog for feeding by farmer Elmer Fudd. A middle-class man's shaggy dog, Robert, is determined to prove that he is a thoroughbred.

Pepé Le Pew recalls the results of broken romances in Africa. Midway through the show, he suggests that viewers "take a brief respite from romance" by joining Bugs Bunny, whose Miami Beach vacation went afoul when he tunneled to Antarctica by mistake and met a temperamental penguin.

Slowpoke Rodriguez and Speedy Gonzales are co-hosts, introducing cartoons in which Sylvester and the Big Bad Wolf team to stalk Tweety and Little Red Riding Hood in the house of Granny, Bugs coyly fleeces desperado and San Francisco casino owner Nasty Canasta of all of his ill-gotten gains, and Ralph Wolf schemes unsuccessfully with Little Bo Peep guise, bowling ball, cannon, and hair grower liquid strategically dripped on the already moppy follicles on Sam Sheepdog's forehead, to filch the flock of sheep in Sam's care.

When Bugs descends by his special, hole-shaped elevator from the stage to his dressing room there beneath, he finds that he has company- an off-camera reporter in there waiting to interview him (the reporter never says anything; Bugs does all the talking). So, Bugs, as a dutiful host, invites his guest to join him in watching a high-rated television show. Then Bugs turns on his TV set for a mouse version of "The Honeymooners." Toy bus driver Ralph Crumden and kitchen sink worker Ned Morton seek to acquire food from the humans' kitchen in the Brooklyn apartment in which they and their whiskered wives have neighboring hole dwellings, but a cat blocks their path to the refrigerator and the goodies therein. So, Crumden and Morton plot to outwit their feline opponent.

Bugs gives yet another lecture on cartoon animation, confidentially stating that, "I do Mel Blanc's voice." Daffy Duck intrudes upon the lecture, insisting that he is a clean-up artist sent by a cartoon agency, and proceeds to redraw animation of Tweety by putting his own duck's beak and webbed feet on the canary. Bugs walks over to a film projector and says, "While he's grinding out the clean-ups, let's take a look at a finished cartoon." After the show's audience views Tweety's ordeal as a hostage of gangster Rocky and another in the Road Runner's series of cartoons eluding the determined but woebegone pursuit of his would-be devourer, Wile E. Coyote, Bugs is interviewed by an adulating Hollywood reporter named Lolly, hence raising the ire of Daffy, who resolves to compete with Bugs in several productions by being Bugs' double.

Sylvester and his son discuss mice, including those native to Mexico and the "giant-size" kind of rodent encountered by Sylvester and son in an abandoned, decaying house and on a ship.