Elmer Fudd


Elmer J. Fudd is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes/''Merrie Melodies series and the archenemy of Bugs Bunny. Elmer's aim is to hunt Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring himself and other antagonizing characters. He exhibits the speech sound disorder known as rhotacism, replacing his Rs and Ls with Ws thus referring to Bugs Bunny as a "scwewy" or "wascawwy wabbit." Elmer's signature catchphrase is, "Shhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits", as well as his trademark laugh.
The best known Elmer Fudd cartoons include Chuck Jones' work What's Opera, Doc?, the Rossini parody Rabbit of Seville'', and the "Hunting Trilogy" of "Rabbit Season/Duck Season" shorts with Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck. An earlier prototype of a character named Egghead had some of Elmer's recognizable aspects before the character's more conspicuous features were set.

Egghead

introduced a new character in his cartoon short Egghead Rides Again, released July 17, 1937. Egghead initially was depicted as having a bulbous nose, a voice like Joe Penner and an egg-shaped head. Many cartoon historians believe that Egghead evolved into Elmer over a period of a couple of years. However, animation historian Michael Barrier asserts that "Elmer Fudd was not a modified version of his fellow Warner Bros. character Egghead" and "the two characters were always distinct. That was evidenced by Elmer's early prototype being identified in a Warner publicity sheet for Cinderella Meets Fella as 'Egghead's brother.'" Barrier also said that "The Egghead-Elmer story is actually a little messy, my sense being that most of the people involved, whether they were making the films or publicizing them, not only had trouble telling the characters apart but had no idea why they should bother trying."
Egghead made his second appearance in 1938's Daffy Duck & Egghead and was teamed with Warner Bros.' newest cartoon star Daffy Duck. Egghead continued to make appearances in the Warner cartoons in 1938, such as in A-Lad-In Bagdad, and in Count Me Out. Egghead shifts from being bald, to having a Moe Howard haircut, and always has a huge egg-shaped head. Egghead returned decades later in the compilation film Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, while going back to being bald again and redesigned into looking like Elmer Fudd and wearing Elmer Fudd's Clothes and Derby Hat. More recently, he also made a cameo appearance at the end of Looney Tunes: Back in Action and was also given in his own story, which starred him alongside Pete Puma, in the Looney Tunes comic book. An animation historian suggested that the Egghead character was based on Ripley's Believe It or Not! cartoonist and entertainer Robert Ripley.
Egghead has the distinction of being the first recurring character created for Leon Schlesinger's Merrie Melodies series, which had previously contained only one-shot characters, although during the Harman-Ising era, Foxy, Goopy Geer, and Piggy each appeared in a few Merrie Melodies.
One of Egghead's final appearances is in Count Me Out.

Voice actors for Egghead

  • Mel Blanc.
  • Danny Webb.
  • Mark Kausler voices Egghead in Daffy Duck's Quackbusters.

    Elmer Fudd in his true early years

In 1937, Tex Avery created a very early version of Elmer Fudd and introduced him in Little Red Walking Hood, as a mysterious hero whistling everywhere he goes. In this cartoon, he had a derby hat, small squinty eyes, big reddish nose, a high collar around his neck, a green long sleeve shirt, green pants, and a bald circle-like human head. At the end of the cartoon, the character tells the villain, the big bad wolf, that he is "the hero in this picture" after he hits the wolf in the head with a mallet. He then continued to make more appearances in the Warner cartoons in 1938, such as in The Isle of Pingo Pongo , Cinderella Meets Fella, A Feud There Was , Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas, Hamateur Night, A Day at the Zoo and Believe It or Else, mostly as a "running gag" character. In A Feud There Was, Elmer made his entrance riding a motor scooter with the words "Elmer Fudd, Peacemaker" displayed on the side, the first onscreen use of that name. Elmer then appeared on early merchandise and of early Looney Tunes books in 1938 and 1939, and even on the lobby cards for "The Isle of Pingo Pongo" and for "Cinderella Meets Fella" with his name attached on them.
In the 1939 cartoon Dangerous Dan McFoo, a new voice actor, Arthur Q. Bryan, was hired to provide the voice of the hero dog character. It was in this cartoon that the popular "milk-sop" wabbit voice of Elmer Fudd was created. Elmer Fudd has since been the chief antagonistic force in most of the Bugs Bunny cartoons, initiating one of the most famous rivalries in the history of American cinema. Sometime later on in this year, some new drawings and redesigns of Elmer Fudd were being created by a character designer, Charlie Thorson.

Elmer emerges

In 1940, the Egghead-like Elmer's appearance was refined, giving him a chin and a less bulbous nose and Arthur Q. Bryan's "Dan McFoo" voice in what most people consider Elmer Fudd's first true appearance: a Chuck Jones short entitled Elmer's Candid Camera, actually Elmer's ninth appearance, in which a rabbit drives Elmer insane; the rabbit was an early appearance of what would become Bugs Bunny, beginning their long-standing rivalry. Later that year, he appeared in Friz Freleng's Confederate Honey and The Hardship of Miles Standish where his voice and Little Red Walking Hood-like appearance were still the same. Jones would use this Elmer one more time, in 1941's Elmer's Pet Rabbit; its other title character is labeled as Bugs Bunny but is also identical to his prototype in Camera. In the interim, the two starred in A Wild Hare. Bugs appears with a carrot, New York City accent, and "What's up, doc?" catchphrase all in place for the first time, although the voice and physique are as yet somewhat off. Elmer has a better voice, a trimmer figure and his familiar hunting clothes. He is much more recognizable as the Elmer Fudd of later cartoons than Bugs is here. In his new appearances, Elmer actually "wikes wabbits", either attempting to take photos of Bugs, or adopting Bugs as his pet. The rascally rabbit has the poor Fudd so perplexed that there is little wonder as to why Elmer would become a hunter and in some cases actually proclaim, "I hate wittle gway wabbits!" after pumping buckshot down a rabbit hole.
Elmer's role in the two films: that of would-be hunter, dupe and foil for Bugs remained his main role forever afterwards and although Bugs Bunny was called upon to outwit many more worthy opponents, Elmer somehow remained Bugs' classic nemesis, despite his legendary gullibility, small size, short temper, and shorter attention span. In Rabbit Fire, he declares himself vegetarian, hunting for sport only.
Elmer was usually cast as a hapless big-game hunter, armed with a double-barreled shotgun and creeping through the woods "hunting wabbits". In a few cartoons, though, he assumed a completely different persona—a wealthy industrialist type, occupying a luxurious penthouse, or, in one episode involving a role reversal, a sanitarium — into which Bugs would, of course, somehow find his way. In Dog Gone People, he had an ordinary office job working for demanding boss "Mister Cwabtwee". In another cartoon he appeared to work in an office and had a dog he called "Wover Boy", whom he took hunting, though Bugs did not appear.
Episodes have featured Elmer in different ways several times. One has Bugs Bunny relating his life story to a biographer, and recalling a time which was a downturn for the movie business. Elmer Fudd is a well-known entertainer who, looking for a new partner for his act, sees Bugs Bunny. Elmer and Bugs do a one-joke act cross-country, with Bugs dressed like a pinhead, and when he does not know the answer to a joke, Elmer gives it and hits him with a pie in the face. Bugs begins to tire of this gag and pulls a surprise on Fudd, answering the joke correctly and bopping Elmer with a mallet, which prompts the man to point his rifle at Bugs. The bunny asks nervously: "Eh, what's up doc?", which results in a huge round of applause from the audience. Bugs tells Elmer they may be on to something, and Elmer, with the vaudevillian's instinct of sticking with a gag that catches on, nods that they should re-use it. According to this account, the common Elmer-as-hunter episodes are entirely staged.
One episode where Bugs "lost" in trying to hunt was Hare Brush. Elmer has been committed to an insane asylum because he believes he is a rabbit. Bugs Bunny enters Fudd's room and Elmer bribes him with carrots, then leaves the way the real rabbit entered. Bugs acts surprisingly naïve, assuming Elmer just wanted to go outside for a while. Elmer's psychiatrist arrives, and thinking Fudd's delusion has affected his appearance, drugs Bugs and conditions him into believing that he is Elmer Fudd, after which Bugs starts wearing hunting clothes and acting like Elmer, hunting the rabbit-costumed Fudd, who is in turn acting like Bugs. Their hunt is cut short when Bugs is arrested by a government agent as Elmer Fudd is wanted for tax evasion. After Bugs is hauled away trying to explain that the rabbit is Elmer Fudd, Fudd breaks the fourth wall and tells the audience "I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz" as he hops away as if he had planned the whole thing.
Elmer Fudd has occasionally appeared in other costumes, notably as Cupid, opposite Daffy Duck in The Stupid Cupid.
The Bugs–Elmer partnership was so familiar to audiences that in a late 1950s cartoon, Bugs' Bonnets, a character study is made of what happens to the relationship between the two when they each accidentally don a different selection of hats. The result is comic mayhem; a steady game of one-upmanship that ultimately leads to matrimony.