Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Saturday Morning's Greatest Hits: Skip To My Lou, a la Bugs Bunny (1950)

I've been waiting a long time to post this one. Until tonight, every time I wanted to pull this classic piece from 1950's "Hillbilly Hare", embedding was disabled per the request of the posters on YouTube who uploaded this hilarious sequence. Well, the ironically monickered "Mickey Mouse" didn't mind having the embedding codes used, so it's finally here.

In "Hillbilly Hare", Bugs Bunny is in the Ozark mountains, running afoul of the Martin brothers, Curt (Mel Blanc) & Pumpkinhead (Stan Freberg, uncredited). It all leads to Bugs donning a transparent disguise as a backwoods maiden inviting the brothers for an impromptu square dance. "Skip To My Lou", a traditional square dance number, plays on the jukebox (John T. Smith is heard here), until Bugs sheds his disguise, dons a hat, and takes up the fiddle himself. You can guess the rest.

When "Hillbilly" aired on ABC, it was edited to pieces due to the violent nature of the square dance sequence. Not so on Cartoon Network and elsewhere (Thank God!). Parents groups don't understand slapstick comedy anymore.

In the early 90's, more than 40 years after "Hillbilly" was made, a local band in my area created their own version, parodying Madonna's "Vogue" rap with references to country stars such as Ricky Skaggs, while mixing in some square dance, though not specifically "Skip To My Lou". The crowds ate it up, and it quickly became a popular request.

The lyrics are printed on screen, mostly for the benefit of karaoke fans. Enjoy.


2 comments:

magicdog said...

I always enjoyed this era of Bugs Bunny!

I can't see how this short could have been edited to exclude the "violence". It wouldn't leave much of the cartoon to view! The squaredance sequence is the best part after all!

hobbyfan said...

Censors. What do they know, right?

Problem with network execs & censors is that they kow-tow to parental focus groups and other allegedly know-it-all types, and that takes away a lot of the classic humor. I guess in a way it's better that the toons on Saturdays now (CW, CBS, NBC)are outsourced from elsewhere....