''Baby Buggy Bunny'' is a 1954

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

Merrie Melodies ''Merrie Melodies'' is an American animation, animated series of comedy short films produced by Warner Bros. starting in 1931, during the golden age of American animation, and ending in 1969. Then some new cartoons were produced from the late 197 ...

'' animated short directed by

Chuck Jones Charles Martin Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, director, and painter, best known for his work with Warner Bros. Cartoons on the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of shorts. He wrote, produ ...

and written by

Michael Maltese Michael Maltese (February 6, 1908 – February 22, 1981) was an American story man for classic animated cartoon shorts. He is best known for working in the 1950s on a series of ''Merrie Melodies'' cartoons with director Chuck Jones, notably "Wha ...

. The cartoon was released on December 18, 1954, and stars

Bugs Bunny Bugs Bunny is an animated cartoon character created in the late 1930s by Leon Schlesinger Productions (later Warner Bros. Cartoons) and voiced originally by Mel Blanc. Bugs is best known for his starring roles in the '' Looney Tunes'' and '' ...

. The story is about a short gangster named "Babyface" Finster (based on gangster

Baby Face Nelson Lester Joseph Gillis (December 6, 1908 – November 27, 1934), also known as George Nelson and Baby Face Nelson, was an American bank robber who became a criminal partner of John Dillinger, when he helped Dillinger escape from prison, in Crown P ...

) who, after a clever bank robbery, loses his ill-gotten gains down Bugs' rabbit hole, forcing him to don the disguise of an orphan baby to get it back.

Plot

Baby-Face Finster (a.k.a. Ant Hill Harry), a 35-year-old man who resembles a baby, makes a successful robbery of the Last National Bank by the swift use of stilts, dark clothes, a pram and

baby clothing Infant clothing or baby clothing is clothing made for infants. Baby fashion is a social-cultural consumerist practice that encodes in children's fashion the representation of many social features and depicts a system characterized by differences ...

. With him dressed in baby attire, he easily evades the arriving police. Unfortunately for Finster, he loses his money down Bugs' rabbit hole (the pram rolls down a hill and hits a rock) and he gets himself unofficially adopted in order to gain it back. Multiple attempts to grab it (in one instance Finster whacks Bugs with the bag of money) are interpreted as a baby's typical grabbiness. Just as Bugs is putting the 'baby' to bed, Finster hits Bugs with a baseball bat and the words Bok, Pow, Bang and Boing appear; he assumes the baby is having a nightmare. A supposedly remorseful Finster grabs Bugs and hugs him saying: "da-da!" Later, Bugs is trying to watch TV, but gets static interference on the screen instead. Hearing a buzzing noise in the bathroom. Bugs peeks inside, and finds Finster is in the bathroom shaving himself, smoking a cigar, and wearing a tattoo (labeled Maisie,

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

, 1932), something which starts to disturb Bugs. All of a sudden, the TV connection comes back on and a brief news clip about the bank robbery and an APB for the robber is shown on screen; all this finally makes Bugs realize what is really going on (if the story is assumed to take place in 1954, the date of the cartoon's release, Ant Hill Harry would have been 13 years old when he got the tattoo. While this is possible, it is probably not what the makers of this short meant to imply). Bugs turns off the TV with an angry expression on his face and turns his eyes toward the living room, where he finds Finster going after the money again. He starts to play rough with Finster first by putting the bank robber in a washing machine and when Finster is washed up, Bugs takes him out and throws him up to the ceiling. Finster hits the ceiling and falls to the floor and Bugs picks him up. At this point, Finster tries to stab Bugs with a butcher knife, but misses and stabs himself in the rear. Rather than crying over his pain, Finster instead murmurs inaudible obscenities over it, causing Bugs to spank him, removing the weapons he has with each blow (a

pistol A pistol is a handgun, more specifically one with the chamber integral to its gun barrel, though in common usage the two terms are often used interchangeably. The English word was introduced in , when early handguns were produced in Europe, an ...

, a hand club, a

cleaver A cleaver is a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed hatchet. It is largely used as a kitchen or butcher knife and is mostly intended for splitting up large pieces of soft bones and slashing through ...

shotgun shells A shotgun shell, shotshell or simply shell is a type of rimmed, cylindrical (straight-walled) cartridges used specifically in shotguns, and is typically loaded with numerous small, pellet-like spherical sub-projectiles called shot, fired throug ...

, a

hand grenade A grenade is an explosive weapon typically thrown by hand (also called hand grenade), but can also refer to a shell (explosive projectile) shot from the muzzle of a rifle (as a rifle grenade) or a grenade launcher. A modern hand grenade genera ...

and a

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) a ...

). Bugs trusses Finster up in a basket like a baby and leaves him and the money at the police station. Finster does not take it well, throwing a wild temper tantrum while being locked up in a baby-sized playpen in the State Prison, and angrily claiming his innocence and that he has been framed. Bugs ends the cartoon, telling the angry bank robber: "Don't be such a crybaby. After all, 99 years isn't forever."

Legacy

Baby-Face Finister's mugshot appears as a background cameo in ''

Space Jam ''Space Jam'' is a 1996 American live-action/animated sports comedy film directed by Joe Pytka, with animation sequences directed by Bruce W. Smith and Tony Cervone, and written by Leo Benvenuti, Steve Rudnick, Timothy Harris, and Herschel We ...

'', along with other Bugs Bunny villains

Rocky and Mugsy The '' Looney Tunes'' and '' Merrie Melodies'' series of animated shorts released by Warner Bros. feature a range of characters which are listed and briefly detailed here. Major characters from the franchise include Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer ...

, in addition to ''

The Looney Tunes Show ''The Looney Tunes Show'' is an American animated sitcom produced by Warner Bros. Animation that ran from May 3, 2011, through November 2, 2013, on Cartoon Network. The series consists of two seasons, each containing 26 episodes, and features cha ...

'' episode "It's a Handbag". The plot of the critically panned 2006 comedy film '' Little Man'' was similar enough to ''Baby Buggy Bunny'' to earn a

Golden Raspberry Award The Golden Raspberry Awards (also known as the Razzies and Razzie Awards) is a parody award show honoring the worst of cinematic under-achievements. Co-founded by UCLA film graduates and film industry veterans John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy, ...

for Worst Remake or Rip-off. Animation blog Cartoon Brew noted at least three jokes from ''Baby Buggy Bunny'' used in ''Little Man''.

References

External links

* {{Chuck Jones 1954 films 1954 animated films 1954 short films Merrie Melodies short films Warner Bros. Cartoons animated short films Short films directed by Chuck Jones Films scored by Milt Franklyn Bugs Bunny films 1950s Warner Bros. animated short films Films with screenplays by Michael Maltese American gangster films Films about bank robbery 1950s English-language films