Frigid Hare

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Frigid Hare
series = Merrie Melodies (Bugs Bunny)

---

caption = The title card of "Frigid Hare".
director = Charles M. Jones
story_artist = Michael Maltese
animator = Phil Monroe Ben Washam Lloyd Vaughan Ken Harris
voice_actor = Mel Blanc
musician = Carl Stalling
producer = Eddie Selzer
distributor = Warner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
release_date = October 7 1949 (USA)
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 7 minutes
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0041391

"Frigid Hare" is a 1948 Warner Bros. "Merrie Melodies" short, released in 1949, and was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. The title can be seen as a simply play on "frigid air" and/or on the refrigerator brand called "Frigidaire".

ynopsis

While traveling to Miami Beach for an overdue vacation from Warner Brothers, Bugs Bunny mistakenly ends up at the South Pole, having yet again missed the left turn at Albuquerque. While there, he meets a young penguin being pursued by an Eskimo hunter. Bugs sends the hunter in the opposite direction but finds the penguin has grown attached to him. Wanting to get back to his vacation, Bugs distracts the penguin, then pushes him down a snowbank, only to see him land in the hunter's bag. Bugs starts to resume his journey but is overcome by his better nature and rescues the penguin. Although successful, Bugs grumbles that he only has four days of vacation left, only to learn from the penguin that, at the South Pole, the nights are six months long. Figuring this means he can stretch his four-day vacation until July 1953, Bugs dons top hat and tails and accompanies the penguin on "a nice long formal vacation."

Albuquerque

*This cartoon marks the third time that Bugs Bunny apparently took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. The first was in 1945s' "Herr Meets Hare" and the second in 1948s' "My Bunny Lies Over The Sea".

Censorship and alterations

*On the syndicated "Merrie Melodies Show", Bugs calling the Inuit hunter an "Eskimo pie-head" was muted out.
*This cartoon was initially banned from airing on the 2001 installment of Cartoon Network's "June Bugs" marathon due to the stereotypical portrayal of the Inuit hunter. The cartoon resurfaced on a February 2002 airing of "The Looney Tunes Show" on Cartoon Network (in an installment that showed nothing but Chuck Jones cartoons due to the director's then-recent death), with only one edit: After Bugs finds out from the penguin that the days and nights are six months long in the Arctic, Bugs' line about not having to return to work until July 1953 is edited. When the cartoon aired again on a 2002 "June Bugs", wherein all the Bugs Bunny cartoons are shown in alphabetical order, both the 1953 line that was cut when CN first showed this cartoon and the "Eskimo pie-head" line that was cut from the syndicated "Merrie Melodies Show" were edited out of the new CN version.
*On a 1965 telecast of "The Bugs Bunny Show", Blanc overdubbed Bugs' "July 1953" line as "July 1968", to put the date in the future again.

Availability

*"", uncut and restored.