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Easter Sunday Special: "Funny Little Bunnies" (1934)
🕑 Added 2021-04-04 16:41:38 +0000 UTC
Click here to watch the video.
For Easter Sunday, here is an animator breakdown video of Funny Little Bunnies! This information is courtesy of JB Kaufman/Russell Merritt’s Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series.
Under its tentative working title “The Funny Bunnies,” the story outline for Funny Little Bunnies was approved in October 1933. The musical score for the cartoon utilized the talents of both Frank Churchill and Leigh Harline. Churchill wrote the main title music including its song “See the Funny Little Bunnies” (with lyrics by Larry Morey), while the remainder of the score was written by Harline.
In this cartoon, director Wilfred Jackson gives the main animators their own individual set of rabbits—e. g. Dick Huemer is assigned to the elderly rabbit and cross-eyed bunnies and Dick Lundy animates the bunnies sculpting a “nude” model out of chocolate, a direct takeoff on Don Graham’s life classes conducted in the studio. This cartoon also marks the earliest known animation by Wolfgang (Woolie) Reitherman, as part of a group of junior animators supervised by Ben Sharpsteen.
Released March 24, 1934, this cartoon received the Gold Medal for Best Animated Film at the Venice Film Festival. This version seen here is the theatrical re-issue, released April 21, 1950.
One slight note: there is one shot of the film that has been left unidentified in the animator breakdown video. JB had mentioned the animator draft did not give an assignment to this shot and exposure sheets could not be located in the Archives.
Happy Easter, everyone!
Comments
John Veitch
This is the type of bland cutesiness that detractors accuse all Disney cartoons of being. The limited scope of the cartoon means that there are fewer opportunities for inventive "industrious" gags than in Santa's Workshop or the first half of Father Noah's Ark. The repetitive nature of some of the scenes (like the artillery-style decorating the chocolate eggs) suggests they were struggling for enough material to fill the cartoon. The sculpting scene is kind of funny conceit, I guess, and I like the subtle touch that, besides the "ordinary" rabbits in the opening scenes, the model is the only one not to be wearing any clothes.
