Case of the Missing Hare

Case of the Missing Hare
Directed by	Charles M. Jones
Story by	Ted Pierce
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger
Music by	Carl W. Stalling
Animation by	Ken Harris
Color process	Technicolor
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corp.
Release date	December 12, 1942 (1942-12-12)
Running time	8:11
Country	United States
Language	English

Case of the Missing Hare is a 1942 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Bugs Bunny.^[1] The short was released on December 12, 1942.^[2]

A bald magician named Ala Bahma nails self-promoting posters everywhere, including a tree in which Bugs is living. Bugs protests having his home encroached and his right to private property compromised, until the magician apologizes and offers Bugs a blackberry pie. After Ala Bahma magically brandishes the pie from underneath his cloth and splatters it in Bugs's face, Bugs vows revenge.

At the Bijou theater, Bugs disrupts Ala Bahma through a series of public humiliations: replacing himself with a carrot and repeating Ala Bahma's hat-trick, and later grabbing another carrot after hitting Ala Bahma with his own mallet. Eventually, the magician barricades his own hat with wood planks and nails to make sure that Bugs does not get out.

Later, Ala Bahma performs an Indian basket trick with Bugs posing as a volunteer. During his trick, he puts the swords in the basket. When Ala Bahma discovers that Bugs has snuck out from behind him while feigning pain, Bugs tries jumping into his hat but hits it on the barricade. Ala Bahma charges at Bugs to kill him, but Bugs plays a statues game on the magician. Once Ala Bahma gets close enough, Bugs dresses up as a fencer for Ala Bahma to fight him. Bugs escapes to the balcony to heckle Ala Bahma ("What a performance, D'Artagnan, what a performance!"). Realizing his mistake, Ala Bahma fires a shotgun at Bugs. However, Bugs swiftly places an explosive cigar in Ala Bahma's mouth and the magician is blown up leaving him messed up and burned and his clothes is also burned from the fiery explosive blast as well, then Bugs finally finishes him off as he splatters the pie in Ala Bahma's face as Bugs finally has his revenge against the magician. Bugs performs "Aloha 'Oe" on a ukulele as he descends into the hat.

This is one of the few cartoons where Bugs Bunny does not say his catchphrase, "What's up, Doc?",^[3] though he does address the magician as "Doc" early in the film. It is also one of few cartoons in the character's filmography to fall into the public domain in the early 1970s due to the failure of the last copyright holder, United Artists Television, to renew the original copyright within the allotted 28-year period.

Background artists Gene Fleury and John McGrew reduced most of the backgrounds to the film to patterns (stripes, zig-zags, etc.) and colored cards. The result was outlandish but Fleury recalled Leon Schlesinger congratulating them. In the theater setting of the film, these backgrounds could be rationalized to represent stage flats.^[4]

Michael S. Shull and David E. Wilt consider it ambiguous if this cartoon contained a World War II–related reference. Bugs Bunny pronounces the phrase "Of course you realize, this means war" in a gruff voice that may have been intended as an imitation of Winston Churchill,^[5] though it was also used several times in Duck Soup.

• List of Bugs Bunny cartoons

• Barrier, Michael (1999), "Warner Bros., 1941-1945", Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199839223
• Shull, Michael S.; Wilt, David E. (2004), "Appendix E.", Doing Their Bit: Wartime American Animated Short Films, 1939-1945, McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-0786481699

• Complete film with closed captions
• Case of the Missing Hare at IMDb
• Watch Case of the Missing Hare in fully restored HD at Laugh Bureau Vintage
• The Case of the Missing Hare on the Internet Archive