Robert Kimson | Hillbilly Hare / 1950

square dancing brothers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tedd Pierce (writer), Robert Kimson (director) Hillbilly Hare / 1950

 

Bugs is visiting the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, and truly enjoying the quiet, peaceful world he’s encountered until he meets up with a true hillbilly with a long rifle ready to shoot. “Be ye all

a Martin or be ye all a Coy rabbit. Bugs’ answer already suggests his gender fluidity: blinking his eyelashes madly he replies “Well, my friends say I’m ‘fairy’ coy.”

     As a McCoy he is immediately threatened by both Curt and Pumpkinhead Martin because the Martins are afeuding with the Coys. He ties up the barrel of one gun, then later leads them into an explosives shed, where Bugs hands them a lighter so they can see in the dark. The result is the inevitable explosion, with Pumpkinhead responding: “I think you’re all ausing too strong a fluid.”

      Soon the chase is on, but as they pass a community gathering spot announcing a square dance “tomorry night,” Bugs suddenly appears as a beautiful hillbilly gal, asking if the boys might practice with her for the square dance of the next day. Immediately taken with the temptress, they readily agree. And so begins the normal square dance patter:

“Bow to your corner. Bow to your host. Three hands up and round you go. Break it up with a do-se-so. Chicken in the bread pan, chicken hot toast. Skip-to-the-lou my darling.”

 

      But before they even know it, Bugs has bowed out of the dance and become the caller, suggesting now that the hillbilly brothers go through all shorts of self-destructive moves. This long scene is filled with some of the cleverest cartoon lyrics of all time. I’ll jut quote the first three stanzas:

 

“Promenade across the floor, dancing right out the door. And into the glade. Everybody promenade.”

 

“Step right up, you’re doing fine. I’ll pull your beard, you pull mine. Break it up with a tug of war.”

 

“Now into the brook. Fish for the trout. Dive right in and slap about. Trout, trout, pretty little trout. One more fish and come right out.”

     Obediently minding the music and the caller’s words, the two Martin brothers end up in the pig pen, clobbering each other over the head with fence posts, sticking their fingers in each other’s eyes, and eventually sending themselves through hay baler, where they come out as squares of toast, all before Bugs as caller sends them on a promenade over the edge of a cliff.

“Now bow to your partner. Bow to the gent across the hall. And that is all!

 

      This is classic Bugs Bunny, and again reveals his propensity for cross-dressing and changing genders at a blink of an eye, generally in order to survive.

 

Los Angeles, August 2, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2024).