Leopold! Leopold!
Long-Haired Hare is a 1949 Looney Tunes cartoon starring Bugs Bunny and directed by Chuck Jones.
Bugs is hanging out one day playing the banjo and singing "A Rainy Night in Rio," when his singing bothers Giovanni Jones, a pompous opera singer who is rehearsing his part in The Barber of Seville. When he finds himself absentmindedly singing along to whatever Bugs is playing, Jones storms outside to put an end to the disturbance by trashing the rabbit's instruments and then tying him painfully to a tree branch by his ears. Naturally, Bugs reacts to this by declaring it's on.
That night, at Jones' performance at the Hollywood Bowl, Bugs doles out some characteristically hilarious abuse before unleashing his finale: he enters the orchestra pit disguised as famed conductor Leopold Stokowski, takes over the orchestra and forces Jones to hold an ungodly long G that literally brings the house down.
"Long-Haired Hare" provides examples of:
- Bowdlerise:
- CBS did not like this cartoon because of its increasing violence in the beginning. The three times Giovanni Jones beats up Bugs (who keeps disrupting his opera practice by playing his own instruments) were cut when aired on CBS in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, they portrayed Bugs ruining Giovanni's opera for no good reason, making him look like a Jerkass.
- ABC was a bit more lenient with this cartoon. While it did cut out the part where Bugs dresses as a teenybopper looking for Giovanni's autograph and uses a dynamite pen to blow him up, the beginning was actually left intact.
- The song Bugs sings while playing the harp is "My Gal Is A High-Born Lady", a song with lyrics that were rather racist
even by the standards of the 1940s. Chuck Jones and Mike Maltese wrote tamer lyrics for Bugs to sing.
- Book Ends: The cartoon begins and ends with Bugs playing the banjo.
- Bullying a Dragon: Giovanni Jones had no clue that when Bugs declares war on those who wrong him, he means it.
- Cartoon Conductor: As "Leopold!" (Stokowski), Bugs has amazing control over the orchestra and Jones — and even the audience!
- Clothing Damage: Giovanni's opera tuxedo increasingly falls apart when Leopold Bugs makes him hold a high note for a long time, symbolizing the strain it's putting on him. The collapse of the Hollywood Bowl rips it completely to shreds.
- Death Glare: Jones three times in the beginning as he is enraged by Bugs' tunes. Later as part of his Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Leopold Bugs glares daggers through Jones before his performance, making it clear it won't be pretty.
- Disguised in Drag: Bugs as a teenybopper asking for an autograph. Of course, the pen is really a stick of dynamite.
- Disproportionate Retribution: While Jones's frustration at Bugs for disturbing his rehearsal is reasonable, Jones responds with increasing violence every time Bugs obliviously interrupts his rehearsal. After these get particularly vindictive, Bugs himself takes very elaborate measures to ruin Jones's performance.
- Explosive Stupidity: Jones experiences this when he tries to sign an autograph, unaware that he was using a stick of dynamite.
- Fangirl: Bugs disguises himself as a teenybopper asking Jones for an autograph. Giovanni gladly starts to sign the autograph book, unaware that he's signing with a stick of dynamite.
- The Flapping Dickey: The Clothing Damage Giovanni Jones suffers during his Incredibly Long Note includes the classic gag of his shirt front popping up to signify his punctured pomp.
- Goofy Print Underwear: As Giovanni Jones's clothing falls apart during his Incredibly Long Note, his pants fall down to reveal his blue underwear adorned with red flowers.
- Got Me Doing It: While trying to rehearse, Jones found himself singing along with whatever Bugs was playing, much to his ire.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Giovanni Jones displays severe anger management issues, since he immediately resorted to violence each time Bugs interrupted him.
- Having a Gay Old Time: "Long hairs" used to mean a term for conductors, due to the tendency for them to grow their hair longer than average, hence the cartoon's title despite Bugs not having long hair (save his Leopold wig).
- Help, I'm Stuck!: At one point during Jones' concert, Bugs' antics result in the singer losing his footing on the stage and falling into the bell of a tuba, where he gets stuck and calls for help. Bugs runs up to assist.Bugs: Ladies and gentlemen, there will be an unavoidable interruption in the program.
- Incessant Music Madness: Bugs drives Jones nuts.
- Incredibly Long Note: The climax comes when Leopold Bugs forces Jones to hold an absurdly long note, even while Jones thrashes around on the stage with his face changing colors, until the Hollywood Bowl collapses on top of him.
- Instant Home Delivery: In the middle of the high note, Bugs steps out and orders some earmuffs by mail. Seconds after Bugs puts the form in the mail, the earmuffs arrive, without the postman even picking up the letter first.
- Jerkass: Instead of asking Bugs not to interrupt his rehearsals (or better yet, just shutting his sliding glass door, which is visibly open), Jones breaks his instruments and beats him up. At first, Bugs is even uncharacteristically patient with him, and puts up with it three times before finally having enough of Giovanni's abuse.
- Knuckle Cracking: Bugs cracks his knuckles before having Jones hold a long note during the concert's finale.
- Loved by All: Leopold Stokowski is this for the entire band performing at the concert.
- Monumental Damage: At the end of the short, the Hollywood Bowl collapses onto Giovanni.
- Mythology Gag: Bugs-as-Leopold nonchalantly snaps the baton in half because Leopold Stokowski never conducted with one.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Bugs's ridiculous composer disguise is a parody of Real Life composer Leopold Stokowski, who was also the orchestra conductor in Fantasia and who conducted several concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.
- Offscreen Crash: The cartoon ends with a boulder falling on Giovanni, off screen.
- One-Book Author: Giovanni's singing is performed by Nikolai Shutorov, a baritone who had sung in Hollywood choruses but never received screen credit. This was his only solo work. He died before the cartoon's release.
- One-Shot Character: Giovanni, technically, as this is his only appearance in a Golden Age (1930-1969) Looney Tunes short. However, he does make sporadic cameos in later Warner Bros media, such as Carrotblanca, Animaniacs, and Space Jam.
- Overly Long Gag: Giovanni's G note is so long to the point where Bugs leaves the podium (with his glove still holding the note) to go get earmuffs...by mail.
- Paper-Thin Disguise:
- When Bugs disguises as a teenybopper, Jones doesn't see anything off, even as Bugs asks for an autograph.
- Everyone thinks Bugs is Leopold Stokowski even though he's only wearing a tuxedo jacket and a wig.
- Recitation Handclasp: Jones assumes this posture.
- Resized Vocals: This happens to Giovanni Jones after Bugs gives him alum to get the Helium Speech effect (it's in the "Figaro" rendition) while also causing his head to shrink.
- Rule of Three:
- Guess how many times Jones attacks Bugs before the counterattack begins.
- Bugs himself invokes this with his retaliations.
- Sesquipedalian Smith: "Giovanni Jones"
- Shout-Out:
- The opening "Rainy Night in Rio" number is a reference to the long-forgotten film The Time, The Place And The Girl, which was where the song originated.
- In the scene where Bugs disguises himself as an autograph-seeking teenybopper (an obvious disguise, of course), he says "Frankie and Perry just aren't it," referring to Frank Sinatra and Perry Como, two of pop music's biggest stars of the late 1940s.
- Standard Snippet: Besides all the songs Bugs plays and sings ("Rainy Night in Rio", "My Gal is a High-Born Lady", and "When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba"), he ends the cartoon by picking the standard vaudevillian tag "Good eve-ning, friiiieeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnds..." on the banjo.
- This Means War!: Not only does Bugs utter this phrase word-for-word, but it's also clearly indicated by his Death Glare.
- Vaudeville: Bugs ends the cartoon by playing the four-note Vaudeville tag "Good Evening, Friends" on his banjo.
- Vocal Range Exceeded: Leopold Bugs makes Jones sing a note far below his range.
- The Voiceless: Jones only speaks a couple of times in the short, but both times his voice is obscured, first when he's stuck inside the tuba and later when he whispers "Leopold!" to himself with the rest of the orchestra.
- Wag the Director: A minor In-Universe example. When Jones first steps out onto the stage and assumes the Recitation Handclasp, he lifts one finger to the conductor to indicate his readiness.
