The Bugs Bunny Show is an American animated anthology television series hosted by Bugs Bunny that is mainly composed of theatrical Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons released by Warner Bros. between 1948 and 1969. The show originally debuted as a primetime half-hour program on ABC in 1960, featuring three theatrical Looney Tunes cartoons with new linking sequences produced by the Warner Bros. Cartoons staff.
After two seasons, The Bugs Bunny Show moved to Saturday mornings, where it aired in various formats for nearly four decades. The show's title and length changed regularly over the years, as did the network: both ABC and CBS broadcast versions of The Bugs Bunny Show. In 2000, the series, by then known as The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, was canceled after the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies libraries became the exclusive property of the Cartoon Network family of cable TV networks in the United States.
Broadcast and format history
The Bugs Bunny Show in prime time, 1960–1962
The original Bugs Bunny Show debuted on ABC prime time in the United States on October 11, 1960, airing on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM ET, under the sponsorship of General Foods (Post cereals, Tang, etc.). Newly-produced linking segments were done for each episode by the Warner Bros. animation staff. Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng produced, directed and created the storyboards for the earliest of these, with Robert McKimson later taking over the direction while Jones and Freleng continued producing and writing. The wraparounds were produced in color, although the original broadcasts of the show were in black-and-white. A total of 52 episodes were made.
Rather than display the full Warner Bros. logo and opening title/credits sequence of each cartoon shown in each episode (as shown in the original theatrical versions and could take up to 20 seconds), new title cards were created to begin each cartoon and displayed for only about five seconds over a newly composed musical cue; the card omitted the Warner Bros. logo and any detailed credits of the animators, simply featuring the title of the cartoon in bold letters on a plain background, the main character of the cartoon standing off to one side and the copyright notice of the cartoon rendered in a smaller font at the bottom, before cutting directly to the opening scene of the cartoon. These cuts were sometimes awkward depending on how the original opening sequence was animated. A general credits line was shown at the end of each full episode: "Stories, Animation, layouts, and backgrounds: Members of Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839." (The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons syndicated to local stations as a package, beginning in the 1950s, generally retained the original opening title sequences as shown in theaters. The current revival of the show on MeTV also uses the original theatrical title cards.)
The show's theme song was "This Is It", written by Mack David and Jerry Livingston ("Overture/curtain, lights/this is it/the night of nights..."). The opening title sequence, animated by Freleng unit animator Gerry Chiniquy, features Bugs and Daffy Duck performing the song in unison. For the final chorus, a lineup of Looney Tunes characters joins Bugs and Daffy onstage (Porky Pig, however, is absent from the procession, although Porky had a spin-off show based on the original Bugs Bunny Show 4 years later titled The Porky Pig Show which aired on ABC from 1964 to 1967).
The Bugs Bunny Show proved beneficial to the Warner Bros. cartoon staff, as it allowed the studio to remain open despite the shrinking market for theatrical animated shorts. The final first-run episode of the original Bugs Bunny Show aired on August 7, 1962, and the Warner Bros. animation studio closed the following spring. The standard Bugs Bunny Show opening and the announcer's introduction of Bugs Bunny ("that Oscar-winning rabbit!") were directly followed by the rabbit's saying, "...and also starring my fast feathered friend, the Road Runner", after which The Road Runner Show's theme was played. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour combined re-edited bridging sequences from both shows to link the seven cartoons featured in each episode. The bridging sequences would be edited further in later versions of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.
In 1971, The Road Runner Show moved to ABC and a reconstituted half-hour Bugs Bunny Show aired on CBS, featuring re-edited versions of the bridging sequences and a different grouping of cartoons. Beginning with its third season, The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show was expanded to a full hour and the original "This Is It" theme was reintroduced with similar animation as the original, accompanied by the introductory sequence introduced in 1982. which Time Warner owned as part of the purchase of Turner Broadcasting in 1996. As a result, The Bugs Bunny Show ended its nearly four-decade-long network run, one of the longest runs in the history of United States network television.
The "This Is It" song's fame is such that it has been used elsewhere, such as in the Canadian province of Ontario where it was used in a TV commercial promoting the various performing arts tourist attractions, where artists of various disciplines sing separate lines of the song.
When Warner Bros. released their video series "Golden Jubilee" in 1985, featuring the classic cartoons, the opening sequence shows Taz maniacally riding a motorcycle down a city street chased by a police car. He makes a sharp turn into a theater, where the rest of the Looney Tune Characters are performing to the Bugs Bunny Show tune.
Beginning in January 2021, the original "This Is It" opening sequence was included in Bugs Bunny and Friends, part of MeTV's Saturday Morning Cartoons block.
In the Seinfeld episode "The Opera", as Jerry and Elaine are waiting outside the opera house, Jerry starts singing "This is it" to pass the time to which Elaine laments to him by saying, "You know, it is so sad that all of your knowledge of high culture comes from Bugs Bunny cartoons."
Animated sequences produced for the show
A series of short animated scenes were produced for the show, featured "linking" moments during the main theater setting of the show. Some of these scenes included:
- The opening teaser showed Bugs and Daffy performing a duet about the start of the cartoon show; as they sing it, in the background marching and crossing the stage are some of co-stars' regulars: Tweety; Speedy Gonzales; Pepé Le Pew; Sylvester the Cat; the Road Runner; Hippety Hopper; Yosemite Sam; Elmer Fudd; Wile E. Coyote; Foghorn Leghorn.
- A frustrated Daffy bickering on stage with Bugs. Daffy declares, "Last week you said you were going to introduce me next week!" Bugs replies, "Right...but this isn't next week, is it?" Daffy trips himself up and replies, "You're doggone tootin' it isn't! This is this week! And next week is uhhh...ummm...sheesh!"
- A barking sheepdog wanders into the theater, saying "Which way did he go? Where's the little bunny I saw on TV last week?" Daffy, at this time, has dressed up in a rabbit costume and is on stage pretending to be Bugs. The sheepdog pounces upon Daffy and exclaims, "At last, at last! I have caught a bunny rabbit!"
- Bugs entertains the audience by playing a guitar. An angry Yosemite Sam barges in the theater shouting, "Can't ya see I'm tryin' to sleep?!?", snatches the guitar from Bugs, and snaps all of its strings but one.
- Bugs demonstrates some cartoon physics, including slow-motion, fast-speed and "vibrating to a stop."
The show's title sequences and some of these linking material scenes from the original Bugs Bunny Show are included as bonus features on each volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD collection (with the exception of Volume 6). As the original color negatives were cut up by CBS and ABC to create later versions of the show, the linking sequences are presented on DVD using a combination of footage from both what's left of the color negatives (some of which were used in later incarnations, thus helping to preserve them) and the black-and-white ABC broadcast prints prepared in the early 1960s.
On the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, the opening to the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (with the announcer calling it the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour) and two openings to the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (the 1988 opening and the 1992 opening) were released as special features.
In 2009, an episode of the Bugs Bunny Show in color was released on the Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960s Volume 2 set. Saturday Morning Cartoons 1970s Volume 2 includes an episode of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show.
Historian George Feltenstein of Warner Archive confirmed on The Extras Podcast episode on March 20, 2025 that The Bugs Bunny Show is actively being restored and remastered by the Warner Bros. Preservation Department for a home media release in the future. Him and Jerry Beck are overseeing the preservation amongst the Looney Tunes Collector's Vault releases. Feltenstein describes the process as "starting with the black and white fine grains", which were already preserved, and then going over the camera negatives to "see what's missing" for the color negatives to preserve as much as possible despite being butchered years ago. While the cartoons have already been restored in the past, the bridging sequences are the main priority to recreate the half-hour show. It would take at least two years depending on the conditions of the film negatives and "micro surgery" process.
List of original primetime episodes
Season 1 (1960–61)
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! style="background:lightblue;" | #
! style="background:lightblue;" | 1st cartoon
! style="background:lightblue;" | 2nd cartoon
! style="background:lightblue;" | 3rd cartoon
! style="background:lightblue;" | Original air date
! style="background:lightblue;" | Directed by
! style="background:lightblue;" | Prod. No.
! style="background:lightblue;" position="center" | U.S. households (in millions)
|-
|1
|Rabbit Every Monday
|A Mouse Divided
|Tree for Two
|October 11, 1960
|Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng
|#1595
|
|-
| colspan="8" |
- Bugs introduces the Looney Tunes gang.
|-
|2
|Putty Tat Trouble
|Wise Quackers
|Speedy Gonzales
|October 18, 1960
|Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng
|#1589
|-
| colspan="7" |
- Bugs reads and reenacts fairy-tales.
|-
|2
|Satain's Waitin
|Hare Trimmed/Roman Legion Hare/Sahara Hare
|October 17, 1961
|Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng
|#1625