All this and Rabbit Stew: Bugs Bunny's Most Shocking Moment

Release date: 9/13/1941

AVAILABILITY: On many dollar-store VHS tapes and DVDs, and online, usually in atrocious visual quality.

You can view a better-than-average version of this cartoon HERE, but be aware it contains an appalling stereotyped black character.

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The first Avery cartoon released without a director credit, All this and Rabbit Stew is the lowest moment in the screen career of Bugs Bunny. Never re-issued, for reasons obvious the moment the credits end, the cartoon was pillaged for gags in later WB cartoons. Like Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944), it's a Bugs episode few have seen. The cartoon speaks well of no one involved, from the beloved series star to its writer and director. 

Making peace with the racism rife in classic animation is a cross its historians have to bear. Baked into America's collective consciousness in the 20th century, racial and cultural prejudice is the bleak flipside of the nation's all-inclusive ideal. Wars were fought, lives were lost and ill will flowed through the country's veins as non-Anglo-Saxon people were thought of as less than human or "not as good as us."

Porky the Wrestler: Minor but Meaningful Sports Shenanigans Welcome Mel Blanc to the Avery Universe

RELEASE DATE:
1/9/1937 (according to the Grand Cartoon Database, IMDb and most other Internet sources)

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
Porky Pig 101 (WHV 5-DVD set)

An as-good-as-it-gets version of this cartoon can be seen HERE (thanks for providing this, Devon Baxter!)

Avery and his unit continue to coast (but do so well) in this unaccountably rare and fairly minor cartoon. One deeply inspired sequence, worthy of a Jacques Tati, and an early vocal appearance by Mel Blanc--soon to finalize the Termite Terrace Dream Team with his great voice work and wit--makes this cartoon worthy of the name of Fred Avery.

This is one of the earlier Schlesinger cartoons to have been censored. One scene, or shot, was removed sometime in the 1940s. No one knows exactly why. Popular speculations include racial material (which seems unlikely, as racial stereotypes were vibrantly alive in the '40s) and a topical celebrity or sports caricature that no longer made sense, when and if this cartoon was reissued.

I'd Love To Take Orders From You: Avery's First Technicolor Cartoon, If Nothing Else...

RELEASE DATE:
5/25/1936

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
none at present

An on-line color version can be viewed HERE.

If you're not familiar with this cartoon, please watch it now before reading my analysis. Thanks!

Avery's sudden promotion to the Technicolor Merrie Melodies series shows that he had impressed Leon Schlesinger with his first three black-and-white cartoons. I'd Love To Take Orders From You completely suppresses the creative urges that shine through those first efforts.

Perhaps this was by choice. The stakes were higher for these larger-budgeted Technicolor cartoons. They typically flogged a recent song from the Warner Brothers popular music catalog. More attention was paid to the Merrie Melodies by the front office, and expectations for more crowd-pleasing (i.e., bland) content were perhaps encouraged.

The Blow Out: Toon Terrorism and the Emergence of an Unlikely Cartoon Star

RELEASE DATE:
4/24/1936

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
Porky Pig 101 (WHV 5-dvd set)

You can view this cartoon HERE.

The Blow Out is an impressive step forward for Fred Avery. Through 1938, Avery's cartoons would vacillate between significant advances and curious retreats.

Here, Avery introduces several essential items in his trick bag. Large comic "takes," colorful comedic villains and the nightmare of one character trying to escape from another--who turns up with supernaturally bad timing--are unveiled in The Blow Out.

Avery would perfect these tics by the time of his first few cartoons for M-G-M. The slow but steady development of these comedic facets becomes a point of fascination in his Warner Brothers efforts.

The Blow-Out also adds significantly to the personality of Porky Pig. Though the character won't be set in stone, er, pork for another two years or so, this cartoon helps to give him something like a personality.