Show Biz Bugs

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Show Biz Bugs
series = Looney Tunes/Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck


caption = Bugs and Daffy perform a dance number to entertain the audience.
director = Friz Freleng
story_artist = Warren Foster
animator = Gerry Chiniquy
Arthur Davis
Virgil Ross
voice_actor = Mel Blanc
layout = Hawley Pratt
backgrounds = Boris Gorelick
musical_direction = Milt Franklyn
studio = Warner Bros. Cartoons
distributor = Warner Bros. Pictures
release_date = November 2, 1957 (USA premiere)
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 7 min (one reel)
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0050965

"Show Biz Bugs" is a Warner Bros. animated short originally released to theaters on November 2, 1957. It is billed as a "Looney Tunes" cartoon and stars Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as its main characters.

ummary

Bugs and Daffy are performing an on-stage number. Daffy, tired of Bugs hogging up all the cheering, complete with Bugs getting top star billing, decides to try numerous numbers on his own in order to impress the audience. After tons of failed attempts, Daffy is willing to risk everything in order to upstage Bugs, including sabotage Bugs' own acts and try a number that can only be done once: a suicide act, of all things.

Censorship

Almost every TV airing of this cartoon edits the same scene, but in different ways. This involves the final scene where Daffy performs his ultimate act by drinking dangerous chemicals:
*Cartoon Network used to air the original ending, but edited it by replacing the shots of Daffy drinking gasoline, nitroglycerin, and gunpowder with a shot of Bugs holding his straw hat from his juggling act and staring in shock before it cuts back to Daffy swallowing the uranium 238, shaking well, and striking and swallowing a match before exploding. In 2003, this cartoon was shown again, but this time, the entire ending with Daffy's deadly act omitted altogether and the cartoon ended with the shot of Daffy black and smoldering after getting tricked into playing the booby-trapped xylophone. (Interestingly, Friz Freleng directed an earlier cartoon, 1950's "Ballot Box Bunny", wherein Bugs tricks his opponent into playing a similarly booby-trapped piano; the foe in "Ballot Box Bunny" was the strictly Freleng character, Yosemite Sam.) The CBS version in the 1970s and 1980s also aired the cartoon akin to the way CN did in 2003.
*The syndicated Merrie Melodies version, local station airings, and the version that aired on ABC's "Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show" left in the ending, but cut Daffy drinking the gasoline, so that way it looks as if he drinks the nitroglycerin first.
*Nickelodeon's version aired the original ending, but cut the part where Daffy strikes the match, asides to the audience "Girls, you better hold on to your boyfriends," and swallows the match (making it seem as if he exploded from shaking well after swallowing the uranium 238).
*When "The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie" (which includes clips from this cartoon as the climax) aired on The Disney Channel, Daffy's death defying act was edited so severely that the only scenes left were Daffy holding the bottle of nitroglycerin and the explosion from after the match swallowing (making it seem as if Daffy holding the nitroglycerin caused the explosion).

References to previous films

The xylophone gag was previously used in the Private Snafu short "Booby Traps" and the Bugs/Yosemite Sam short "Ballot Box Bunny", only in both cases the instrument used was a piano.

This final act has been used in an earlier Porky Pig cartoon called "Curtain Razor" in which a fox does the same act Daffy does attempting to show Porky he is a star, and, much like "Show Biz Bugs", the final act in "Curtain Razor" has been censored on Cartoon Network to remove him ingesting gasoline (the Merrie Melodies show also cuts the gasoline-drinking and edits it even further by cutting out the fox swallowing a match).

On DVD

*"" (Uncut and restored)