Friz Freleng | The Unmentionables / 1963 [animated cartoon]

the trouble with carrots

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Dunn (story), Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross, Bob Matz, Art Leonardi, and Lee Halpern (animators), Friz Freleng (director) The Unmentionables / 1963

 

In the 1920s Elegant Ness (aka Bugs Bunny) has just been appointed by the US government to gather up the members of the mob. In no time Ness has found them—or rather they have found him, taking him to their hideout and pouring cement into a basin in which they’ve place his legs in order to create “concrete shoes.” He’s tossed into Lake Michigan never to be seen again—or, at least, that was their intention. But clever Bugs uses a pipe as a snorkel and escapes.

    Meanwhile, just as in the film Some Like It Hot, mob members Jack Legs Rhinestone, Baby Face Half-Nelson, Pizza Puss Lasagna, Pistol Nose Pringles, and Teeth Malloy gather to celebrate Rocky’s birthday.

 

 

     Out of the cake springs a flapper, the ubiquitously resourceful Bugs, who dances up a storm before being perceived by the enthusiastic mob king with the memorable phrase: “That Dame’s not a dame.” Rocky picks up his gun and shoots wildly, accidentally killing everyone other member of the mob standing in line to take their turn with the flapper.

     As Rocky’s right-hand man Mugsy puts it: “Gee Rocky, you made a boo-boo.”

     Ness reenters to arrest Rocky for murder, as the mob king points his gun at the FBI agent, Bugs/Ness pulling his every-ready carrot, only to be mocked by Rocky until the carrot-tip drops open and Bugs lets the loose with the bullets. As Ness adds, however, “That’s the trouble with carrots; they’re only good once.”

      A mad chase follows, ending in the ACME Cereal Factory where Bugs, after some preliminary gun play in the dark, manipulates the factories machines to send Rocky and Mugsy into the mixer and packaging them ultimately into cereal boxes.

      The narrator, in the out-of-breath emphatic style of Walter Winchell in The Untouchables, announces that “On October 28th agent Ness slapped the handcuffs on Rocky and Mugsy and brought them to justice. They were sentenced to 40 years of hard labor, which was a little hard on agent Ness who was never able to find the key to his handcuffs.”

 

    That’s all folks.

 

Los Angeles, August 27, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).