All This and Rabbit Stew

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = All This and Rabbit Stew
series = Merrie Melodies/Bugs Bunny


caption = "All this and Rabbit Stew" title card.
director = Fred Avery (uncredited)
story_artist = Dave Monahan
animator = Virgil Ross
Robert McKimson
voice_actor = Mel Blanc
producer = Leon Schlesinger
distributor = Warner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
release_date = September 20, 1941 (USA)
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 7 min (one reel)
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0033324

"All This and Rabbit Stew" is a one-reel animated cartoon short subject in the "Merrie Melodies" series, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on September 20, 1941 by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation. It was produced by Leon Schlesinger and directed by an uncredited Tex Avery, with musical supervision by Carl W. Stalling and voices by Mel Blanc.

The cartoon was the final Avery-directed Bugs Bunny short to be released. Although it was produced before "The Heckling Hare" (after the production of which Avery was suspended from the Schlesinger studio and defected to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), it was released afterwards. The title is a parody of that of "All This and Heaven Too". Because the cartoon was released after Avery left Schlesinger, Avery's name does not appear in the credits.

ynopsis

"All This and Rabbit Stew" features Bugs Bunny being hunted by a slow-witted Black hunter, very similar in speech pattern and mannerism to Stepin Fetchit. After Bugs outwits the hunter several times, Bugs wins all of his clothing through a dice game.

The cartoon's central gag sequence, involving the hunter constantly ending up on the wrong side of a rolling log hanging over a cliff, was repurposed for Bob Clampett's 1946 "Looney Tunes" short "The Big Snooze". For that film, the animation of the Black hunter was redrawn into animation of Elmer Fudd.

Appearances

"All This and Rabbit Stew" has fallen into the public domain, and is available on many public domain home video collections.

This is the second appearance of the black hunter, who had appeared in a slightly different design in "Confederate Honey", and would reappear in "Crazy Cruise".

Censorship

*Due to the film's racial stereotyping, "All This and Rabbit Stew" has not been seen on television since 1968, and is one of the "Censored Eleven" group of banned "Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies" shorts. It is also the only Bugs Bunny cartoon in the Censored Eleven. The cartoon was scheduled to air as part of the "June Bugs" 2001 cartoon marathon on Cartoon Network, even appearing with a warning stating that "the cartoon may contain stereotypical depictions that may not be appropriate for some viewers", but at the last minute, this cartoon (along with eleven others) was pulled.

*After winning a dice game, Bugs wins the black man's clothes and then walks off wearing them, leaving the man with nothing but a leaf covering his crotch. In the course of the iris out, Bugs is seen reaching in and grabbing the leaf. This bit is edited from some versions of the cartoon.

External links

*imdb title|0033324
*google video|9220936675287808929|All This and Rabbit Stew
*youtube|Rok4Hfrt_sU|All This and Rabbit Stew