Bugs Bunny turns 75 this year. His first "official" cartoon, seen here, is titled "A Wild Hare." Watch as Bugs is pursued by Elmer Fudd for the very first time.
From Smithsonian:
"It was very important that he be provoked,” said Chuck Jones in a 1998 interview, “because otherwise he’d be a bully and we didn’t want that. We wanted him to be a nice person.”
They wanted him to be a nice person, but not a pushover. But for the directors and audiences alike, Bugs was more than just a cartoon character.
“[My father’s] attitude was that Bugs already existed and they were just writing about him,” said (Linda) Jones Clough. “He would come home in the evening and say to my mother, ‘You won’t believe what Bugs Bunny said today!’ ‘What do you mean?,’ she would say. ‘You wrote it.’ ‘No I discovered under the circumstances that this is what he would say.”
"What Gives Bugs Bunny His Lasting Power?"
