Bowery Bugs

Arthur Davis directed a humorous Bugs Bunny cartoon with the talents of Billy Bletcher (Steve Brody). It is worth noting that this is the only Bugs Bunny short directed by Arthur Davis.

I enjoy the scene in the cartoon where Steve believes everyone in town is turning into rabbits and jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge. This marks the end of the flashback portion and is quite humorous. Another favorite scene is when Steve seeks help from "Swami Rabbitina" to improve his luck streak after receiving the business card from Bugs. Then we heard a voice saying, "Enter, Oh seeker of knowledge." A punching-bag pendulum hits Brody across the head and... *WHOMP!* "THAT'S YOU, FATHEAD!"

In conclusion, this Bugs Bunny cartoon is another favorite of mine.

Bowery Bugs is a thoroughly enjoyable Looney Tunes cartoon, without it being the best. The music is as usual energetic and quirky, the sight gags are clever, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue a vast majority of the time is hilarious("that's you fathead"). The best part of Bowery Bugs though is the animation, it is brilliant with the colours especially impressive. Bugs is still rascally, arrogant yet likable, while Brodie is a good adversary who takes Bug's wisecracks well. And then there is the voice work from Mel Blanc and Billy Bletcher, which is nothing short of superb, then again that didn't surprise me as such as the voice work is always good in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Overall, hugely enjoyable and excellent cartoon, making the most of a slightly unexceptional story. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Steve Brody jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886. Bugs Bunny is talking to an elderly man and describes how he made Steve do it. Steve was hunting for a lucky rabbit's foot and Bugs turned it around on him.

There was a real Steve Brodie with a different spelling. Apparently, it was a dare and he survived. I do remember this cartoon especially the last minute or so. The middle part does not necessarily make sense to me. I would do different tricks to give Brody a Kafkaesque experience. Maybe, I would go too surreal for the regular audience. I'm just not in love with that part of the cartoon.

Bugs tells the story of the luckless Steve Brodie who, in 1886, decided he needed a good luck charm to break his run of bad luck. There is a plaque by Brooklyn Bridge to commemorate him jumping from there - an event, we learn, that was caused by Bugs outwitting him when Brodie decided he would adopt a rabbit's foot as his charm.

Bugs Bunny doing his well loved wise cracking, tricky stuff is always worth seeing and here it is pretty much the saviour of a cartoon that trades almost entirely on Bugs' New York mannerisms and con-appeal. The plot sets time back simply to set up the punchline (which works well so no problem), and the material is the usual stuff we've come to expect from Bugs. He dresses up, he is everywhere at once and he runs rings out the luckless Brodie. It is pretty funny but it doesn't quite have as much in the way of imagination as one would hope for from Bugs.

Bugs is the saviour here and he really carries the short himself. He is omnipresent, one step ahead and very funny. Brodie is OK as a big Irish thug but I prefer Bugs' partners to have a bit more to them that simply being a patsy.

Overall this is still worth seeing as Bugs is on good form - it's just a shame the material lacks the spark and imagination that so many of his cartoons thrive on.

To paraphrase what kev keefe has already observed in his comment, Art Davis's one Bugs Bunny cartoon is funnier than all of Bob McKimson's Bugs cartoons combined. It was one of the worst errors in judgment on the part of the people running Warner Brothers that, when the 50s started and they could no longer afford four animation units, they dissolved Davis's unit instead of McKimson's.

"Bowery Bugs" was one of the last cartoons Davis directed for Warners, and it shows that he was just starting to hit his stride. This cartoon is both hilarious and beautifully crafted. It's a darkly funny re-telling of a New York City urban folk tale about Steve Brody, an Irish roughneck whose run of bad luck led him to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge in the late 19th Century. In this version, Bugs Bunny gets involved after Brody threatens him, thinking a rabbit's foot will bring him good luck. Quick-thinking as ever, Bugs talks Brody out of it and sends him on a wild ride of deeper and deeper misfortune, with Bugs using his disguise abilities to pose as everyone from a Middle Eastern fortune-teller to a gambler to a lady to a baker to a gruff Irish cop. The suicidal implications (although in real life, Brody survived his jump) would make a cartoon like this impossible to get made these days, and that's a sad sign of how much this nation has lost its sense of humor.

Mel Blanc is in his usual fine form as Bugs, but a special mention must be made of the uncredited voice performance of Billy Bletcher as Brody. Bletcher is one of the unsung heroes of cartoons from the early-to-mid 20th Century, the voice behind countless ruffians with deep, loud, raspy voices, including Papa Bear from Chuck Jones's Three Bears cartoons from Warners and Peg-Leg Pete a.k.a. Black Pete for Disney cartoons.

The cartoon is filled with wonderful details, from Bugs narrating over imitation woodcuts, to a bouncer who's nickname is Gorilla because he really IS a gorilla, to a little puppy who licks Brody's face out of sympathy, but then acts disgusted. And overlying the cartoon is native New Yorker Davis's sincere but sardonic affection for his gritty hometown.

Davis never again directed a cartoon this good, but if he had been able to continue directing for Warners, I think he would have rivaled Chuck Jones as the studio's best cartoon director of the 50s. As reality turned out, Davis spent the 50s demoted to an animator for Friz Freleng's unit, but at least his final Warners' credit was as a director, for 1961's "Quackodile Tears." That one's nothing special, but it's good by Warners' early 60s standards. In the late 60s, Davis joined De Patie-Freleng as a director and made a couple of the best Pink Panther cartoons, "In the Pink of the Night" and "Pinkcome Tax", but "Bowery Bugs" will always be his finest achievement.