Homeless Hare

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = "Homeless Hare"
series = Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies


caption =
director = Chuck Jones
story_artist = Michael Maltese
animator = Ken Harris
Phil Monroe
Lloyd Vaughan
Ben Washam
voice_actor = Mel Blanc
John T. Smith (uncredited)
musician = Carl W. Stalling
producer = Eddie Selzer
distributor = Warner Bros. Pictures
release_date = March 11, 1950 (USA)
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 7 min (one reel)
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0042573

"Homeless Hare" is a 1949 Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies theatrical animated short starring Bugs Bunny, released in March 11, 1950. It was directed by Chuck Jones. Bugs has to deal with an unruly construction worker after his home is destroyed.

Plot

Bugs wakes up after a long night to find that a construction worker (whom Bugs derisively refers to as "Hercules") has just shoveled up his rabbit hole near a skyrise being built. Bugs kindly asks the construction worker to put his hole back, but the worker simply dumps Bugs and the dirt into a dump truck. Bugs then informs the audience, reiterating his oft-cited Marx Brothers line, "Of course you know this means war!" and goes to work on the worker, dropping a brick on him (along with a telegram labeled "Eastern Onion"), then a steel girder, and then plays with the elevator controls while the worker is inside the elevator. The worker manages to get the better of Bugs, knocking him out temporarily and causing Bugs to sleepwalk through a harrowing series of moving girders and other objects. When Bugs recovers and sees the worker taking the lunch of a timid worker for himself and sending the hapless man back to work, this infuriates Bugs. Bugs takes a look at the floor plans for the skyrise, then drops a single red-hot rivet down a hole, which bounces around through an elaborate maze of objects, until it burns through a rope holding up a giant steel pipe. The pipe then falls on top of the worker. Bugs says, "Do I get my home back, or "do I have to get tough?"). The worker finally waves the white flag in defeat. The next shot is of the finished skyscraper, with a slight indentation in the middle. At the bottom, Bugs sits in his hole - the building has been built around it - and declares: "After all, a man's home is his castle."

Censorship

On ABC, the part where Bugs throws a brick to the construction worker's head with a message attached was edited to remove the brick actually making contact with his head and the shot of the brick on the construction worker's face before he rips the note off and reads it.

Other channels

For most of its playing on WNEW Channel 5, New York, (the predecessor to the current Fox network station), the audio was not synched with the video. Consequently, the sound came approximately 1.5 seconds after the action shown.

ee also

*List of Bugs Bunny cartoons