Studio: Warner Bros. Cartoons
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Short Synopsis
A newsreel-style voice reports that Germany has been battered and wonders where the Nazi leaders, and "Fatso" Göring in particular, have gone. In the Black Forest, Hermann Göring, in lederhosen covered with medals, is soothing his nerves by hunting. Bugs Bunny pops up from his tunnel, looks at his map and realises he must have taken a wrong turn: "I knew I shoulda made dat left toin at Albakoikie!" He asks Göring the way to Las Vegas, and Göring nearly gives him directions before he realises there is no Las Vegas in Germany and opens fire. The chase that follows lets Bugs ridicule the Reich: he bends one of Göring's medals with his teeth, and Göring, bending one himself, declares them fake and mutters about hating "that Hitler swine". Bugs disguises himself as Hitler, scolds Göring in mock German, strips off his medals and his belt, and has him kiss his hand. When the trick is discovered, Bugs rides in on a white horse dressed as the Wagnerian heroine Brünnhilde. Göring finally captures him in a sack and takes him to Hitler himself. Hitler opens the sack, and out steps Bugs, disguised as Joseph Stalin. Hitler and Göring flee in terror.
Why It Matters
- Bugs as Brünnhilde, riding a white horse to Wagner, is the first version of a gag that Chuck Jones would make immortal in What's Opera, Doc? (1957). The film also introduced Bugs's famous wrong turn at Albuquerque, a line that became one of his signatures.
- It was released less than four months before Victory in Europe Day and was the next-to-last of Warner's wartime cartoons. Its mockery of Göring's vanity and Hitler's paranoia, and the Stalin punchline, show how directly American cartoons engaged with the war's leaders in its last months.
Notes and Trivia
- The narrator's voice parodies the newscaster Walter Winchell.
- Göring's line "I'm a bad flooten-boy-glooten!" plays on the comedian Lou Costello's catchphrase "I'm a baaad boy!".
- See also: Daffy - The Commando (1943), Falling Hare (1943).