The Bugs Bunny Show (1960)

Bugs introduces Porky Pig as the host for the show. Porky is pestered by Charlie Dog, who is looking for a master. Following the dramatization of Claude Cat's own problems with a dog, Frisky Puppy, with Claude being stuck in a fish bowl and "pickled" in a water cooler and crashing into the concrete at the bottom of a waterless swimming pool- all because of Frisky's sudden and startling barking, Charlie does his all-breeds-in-one routine for Porky and is the principal character in a cartoon located in Dixieland. Porky turns red from rage at Charlie's interference with his emcee tasks and himself moves to forcefully remove Charlie from the studio, requiring Bugs to fill show time by telling the story of the Tasmanian Devil's arrival in America and fateful visit to a woodland rabbit hole.

After starring in a cartoon as the temporary straw-and-wood-house-buying dupe of Three wolf-wary and dishonest Little Pigs, Bugs lectures about dogs, but first must struggle with a projectionist who, when Bugs says that the lecture is about man's best friend, shows a picture of a tarantula and then a Whistler's Mother portrait, presumably because, "A man's best friend is his mother." When Bugs clearly states that he intends to talk about dogs, the projectionist flashes a picture of a wiener (a hot dog). "The domestic dog," retorts Bugs, and a picture of a wiener in an apron instantly appears.

After a cartoon wherein Bugs is the victorious protagonist in a pre-1900 San Franciscan gambling casino confrontation with the ruffian who stole his gold and Bugs has next presented to the audience the tale of a little chicken hawk who caught for his personal consumption the husky rooster who had been lecturing him about "starting small", Daffy disguises himself as Bugs to host the show, but a sheepdog, on a day free from his work, walks into the studio, hoping to catch the bunny-rabbit (Bugs) that he saw on television on the previous week. Daffy, in his rabbit suit, is accosted by the dog, while Bugs, off stage, introduces a cartoon with Sylvester, whose human masters depart for a two-week California vacation and have left him alone in a locked-and-sealed house.

Having been the humble lead character in an epic about the discovery of America, Bugs appears on stage to demonstrate how to draw an animated cartoon character. He decides to use Daffy Duck as an example and draws Daffy from a dumbbell. Then, he directs an animator to draw a line that becomes the wagging tail of a dog in a sad story of canine misery. The animator follows this by sketching a pair of speedy legs- those of the Road Runner, far a cartoon depicting Wile E. Coyote's elaborate attempt to utilize a World War I aircraft in his continuing bid to capture the high- octane fowl.

The Tasmanian Devil receives explosive medical care from Bugs in a jungle medical clinic, and Bugs next lectures about cats, describing with visual aid an alley cat (bowling, that is!), a Bob Cat greeting a Tom Cat ("Hello, Tom. "Hello, Bob."), a pole cat (sitting atop a pole), two Persian cats making a Persian-to-Persian telephone call, the relationship between a father cat and his son- to introduce Sylvester and Sylvester Jr.'s meeting in their own home with a baby kangaroo believed by them to be a giant mouse, and the existence of cats, including one with painted white back stripe, in exotic places like the French Riviera, as visited by Pepé Le Pew.

A lecture on birds from Bugs, after a cartoon with Bugs on Mars in a close encounter with Marvin Martian. Bugs shows the repulsive vulture (who replies to Bugs' description of his repulsiveness by saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones..."), the Blue "J" (a capital letter "J", painted blue), and a troublesome mockingbird, who repeats everything that Bugs says and does, including a mallet strike on the head. Sylvester intrudes upon the shipboard vacation of Granny and Tweety, and Wile E. Coyote is so desperate for water that he has hallucinations of the Road Runner swimming in an oasis pond.

Yosemite Sam expects to be emcee for the show, but Bugs instead selects Pepé Le Pew for this honor. A furious Sam tries to eliminate Pepe, but the bullets from his guns are repelled by Pepé Le Pew's odor and retreat straight back into the nozzles. Pepe introduces cartoons with himself in the French Foreign Legion and Bugs on a Mississippi river boat.

Together with Porky Pig, who descends on a parachute to stage level, Bugs- as Super-Rabbit, defender of the defenseless, buddy of the buddyless- announces cartoons with Bugs combating Marvin Martian on Earth near Bugs' hole home and in space, both on Marvin's spaceship and space platform. Bugs also travels to Baghdad with the genie of Aladdin's Lamp, which a greedy sheik will stop at nothing to acquire.

Mac and Tosh- the Goofy Gophers- are hosts. They spend their time politely arguing over who should introduce cartoon features of Bugs as a bullfighter and a jailbird and Claude Cat as a hopeful puppy evictor (each insists that the other do it); so, Bugs interrupts them and himself does the job.

Foghorn Leghorn is an inept soldier in the French Foreign Legion. Traveling across the Sahara Desert, Foghorn explains to his Sergeant about how his troublesome relationships with a prissy chicken and a genius boy chick caused him to leave America and join the French military. By dint of Bugs' ingenuity, Yosemite Sam is the repeating accidental performer in the same death-defying high diving act that he was violently resolved to see executed by Bugs in a Wild West carnival.

Bugs Bunny introduces the host for this show, Pepé Le Pew, who is in an apartment in Paris. Pepe steps onto his balcony and gestures for the viewer to gaze upon the romance-filled parks and streets of the city. "Yes, love is everywhere, even at the cinema." The cinema's feature, a love-story situated in a zoo, stars Pepé Le Pew. After next telling about a romance which he had in Casablanca, Pepe suggests that viewers "take a brief respite from romance" by joining Bugs Bunny, whose Miami Beach vacation went afoul when he mistakenly tunneled to Antarctica.

Gangsters Rocky and Mugsy are in their hideout, watching The Bugs Bunny Show. They see Bugs, in segues between cartoons with Bugs in a vampire's Transylvanian castle and Elmer Fudd's rooster's desperate effort to delay the time of his forecasted death, talking about the sponsors who pay substantial money to support his television program. So, the greedy Rocky decides to gain access to sponsorship dollars by going into the television business. They go to the studio where Bugs' show is being performed. Mugsy escorts Bugs off of the stage, and Rocky introduces a cartoon concerning a singing frog, which he shows from a film projector.

Elmer Fudd is host of this mainly music-oriented installment, opened by Bugs' antics as a tuneful barber. While on stage after cartoon one, Elmer tries to sing, but he is thwarted when the notes on his sheet music run off of their page, reminding Elmer of his July 4 life-or-death struggle against belligerent picnic ants. Sylvester, outside of the studio, spoils Elmer's endeavor to conduct an orchestra, by wearing boots and singing "tra-la-la" while noisily stomping up and down a wooden stairwell. The Goofy Gophers seek to regain their vegetable harvest, which has been moved to a food processing factory.

Bugs defeats Scotsman Angus McCrory in a golf game of very liberal rules prior to dressing like the portly Alfred Hitchcock to offer a lecture on crime. Standing outside of the laboratory of one Dr. Peabody, he speaks about mad scientists, specifically the meek inventor of a portable hole that is stolen by a shadowy bank robber. Next, he flips through a police record archive to find a dossier on Rocky and Mugsy, two criminals who have, so far- but not for much longer, managed to elude the law.

Yosemite Sam dies after being crushed by a falling safe during his evil scheme to matrimonially divest a widow of her money- and he goes to hell, where the devil promises to release Sam's spirit and give to Sam a new lease on life, provided that Sam bring to the devil a certain rabbit whom the devil has been trying for a long time to entrap in Hades. Sam is returned to Earth on a movie set, where a dictatorial director, who looks and talks like Emperor Nero, orders stagehand Sam to find a victim to feed to a hoard of lions. Sam dies again when he is feasted upon by the lions, and the devil allocates to him one more miscarried chance to catch the bunny, as a homeowner in the American Western frontier.

George P. Dog is introduced by Bugs as the emcee for this show, but Foghorn Leghorn decides that he would be a better emcee and pushes the dog aside. In the cartoons that follow, Wile E. Coyote consults an electronic brain for advice on how to snatch Bugs Bunny from his desert domicile, unaware that Bugs is the brain's one moving part, and a pair of suicidal mice bedevil Claude Cat with pleas that he eat them. Little Henery Hawk enters the studio on his unending hunt for chicken, and Foghorn uses a magic hat to make Henery disappear, before watching a televised interview with Bugs.

Ralph Wolf's Little Bo Peep ploy to remove a sheep from the field of ba-a-a-ing grazers overseen by Sam Sheepdog is quashed by Sam, who appears out of the carcass of the sheep that Bo Peep Ralph has selected. Daffy is so desperate to appear on the show as the feature performer that he dresses as a Hawaiian, a musketeer, and a knight, splendid garb but never appropriate or soon enough for Bugs to grant to Daffy a place in any of this episode's cartoons, one thereof set in medieval times as Bugs battles Black Knight Yosemite Sam for possession of a singing sword and the other transpiring in a French perfume shop, as Pepé Le Pew lusts for a cat whose back has been accidentally dyed white.

An installment distinguished by talent agent Porky Pig perusing several previously unknown acts of entertainment, Claude Cat going insane by the upside down room contrivance of two mice intending to inhabit Claude's home, and Bugs rescuing Hansel and Gretel from the clutches of urchin-baker Witch Hazel. On stage, Bugs gives yet another lecture on cartoon animation, confidentially stating that, "I do Mel Blanc's voice." Daffy Duck intrudes upon the lecture, insisting that he is a clean-up artist sent by a cartoon agency, and proceeds to redraw animation of Tweety by putting his own duck's beak and webbed feet on the canary.

Bugs has not fully awoken and is in no condition to host the show. So, the announcer introduces the individual cartoons: Bugs in a medieval jousting contest, Sylvester aiming to be Elmer Fudd's winter house cat, and Foghorn Leghorn playing golf, with the barnyard dog's nose as tee.

After a Klondike dispute with Yosemite Sam over entitlement to gold deposits- the first cartoon of this show, Bugs is on stage, imitating "Frankie doing an imitation of Rickie imitating Elvis." His music disturbs Yosemite Sam, who is in a neighboring building, trying to sleep. Sam angrily runs into the Bugs Bunny Show studio and destroys Bugs' guitar. Bugs recollects another instance of his music provoking violence.

Yosemite Sam is a Saharan land baron who disapproves of Bugs' presence on his desert sands and tries to kill the rabbit visitor to his arid estate, the Big Bad Wolf insists to his son that he was the victim of Three cruel Little Pigs who attempted to guillotine his tail and blew down his house, and an unseen animator sketches Foghorn Leghorn with Rock Hudson's body and then draws a broom's tail on Foghorn's backside, preceding a cartoon with Foghorn Leghorn's chickendom in question.

The Tasmanian Devil appears with Bugs on stage. Bugs tells of his first meeting with "Taz-Boy" in the jungle of Tasmania, and then he prescribes a carrot diet to Taz, demonstrating how an anemic weakling, Daffy Duck, supposedly became an energetic and versatile cartoon star after submitting to a carrot diet.

Foghorn Leghorn introduces Miss Prissy, who, Foghorn says, is an old-time actress. Foghorn reenacts some of Prissy's famous roles, including "Romeo and Juliet", in which she played both parts, and an act involving precarious balancing on a stack of chairs and juggling of bowling pins and hoops. Prissy initiates the cartoons by looking into a crystal ball, and she sees mirthful musical notes preparing for collective self-rendition of "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss and Bugs foiling a scientist's plan to transfer his consciousness into the feathered head of a chicken.

It is 'Reading Out Loud Night', and Bugs selects a book from a shelf and walks into a backdrop. The book is an album of photographs of Bugs' family and life experiences. Bugs and Elmer Fudd are the unwitting participants in a scientific study of the behavioral influence of headgear, and Bugs combats farmer Fudd's addled automaton. Sylvester is aided by a black panther in besting a swaggering bulldog.

When Bugs descends by his special, hole-shaped elevator from the stage to his dressing room there beneath, he finds that he has company- the show's viewer. So, Bugs as a dutiful host invites his guest to join him in watching a high-rated television show, a parody of The Beverly Hillbillies, with Bugs honing his square dance-calling talent, with agonizing consequences for a pair of rustics of the Ozark Mountains. In a mouse version of The Honeymooners, toy bus driver Ralph Crumden and kitchen sink worker Ned Morton strive to snatch a cupcake for a surprise birthday confection for Ralph's spouse, Alice, from the humans' kitchen in the Brooklyn apartment in which they and their whiskered wives have neighboring hole dwellings. However, a cat blocks their path to the refrigerator and the cupcake therein. So, Crumden and Morton plot to outwit their feline opponent.

The subject for tonight's show is one that has always puzzled us little denizens of the woodland glades. In yet another lecture, Bugs talks about man. "You see, folks. Man is basically lazy. In order to keep from using his feet, he uses his brain." The lecture addresses human methods of conveyance, including the pogo stick, the Birdie-mobile (a seat carried in the air by a flock of birds), the horse, and the automobile in its many forms, then discusses the human need for companionship, hence the opposite sex and marriage, with a family of bears portrayed in a cartoon as a parallel to this human tendency.