The Old Grey Hare

The Old Grey Hare is a 1944 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Bob Clampett. The short was released on October 28, 1944, and features Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

Plot
After Elmer Fudd starts crying over his failure to catch Bugs, the voice of God tells Elmer to keep trying to catch him and not give up. Being transported to the year 2000, Elmer finds a year 2000 newspaper, with pages revolving around Bing Crossby's horse, the replacement for television, etc. He and Bugs then continue their pursuit old and wrinkled, with the latter armed with a gun. In a brief chase, due to their ages, Elmer gets the upper hand, shooting Bugs with his weapon, with Pinball effects. A flashback sequence features Elmer and Bugs as babies with their possible first pursuit. After the flashback ends, with Elmer being equally emotional, he is buried alive by Bugs. As soon as Elmer raves for a brief moment, Bugs quips: "Well now I wouldn't say that," kisses the latter, hands him a firecracker, lights the fuse and quickly departs. When Elmer does not do anything, the screen irises out with the firecracker still hissing. A "That's all, folks!" title card appears, and the firecracker explodes off screen, shaking the title card, leaving Elmer's fate unknown.

Title
The title is a double play on words. One is the typical pun between "hare" and "hair", with the bunny (who was already grey-haired) rendered "old and grey" for this cartoon. The title also refers to the old song, "The Old Gray Mare". Some of the lobby cards for this cartoon gave the alternate spelling, The Old Gray Hare.

Reception
Animation historian Greg Ford writes, "In the last two or three years before Robert Clampett abruptly left the Warner Bros. cartoon studio in the mid 1940s, the renegade director surrendered an unwieldy bunch of late-blooming, oddly self-reflexive masterworks. Clampett's craving for summation reaches epochal proportions in The Old Grey Hare, as Elmer is fast-forwarded all the way to the year 2000 (gasp!). So comically premature is Clampett's yen for retrospection that he essays a cradle-to-grave biopic of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, reminiscing over their longstanding relationship, even though the pair had only existed onscreen for about four years at the time."

Home media

 * VHS – Viddy-Oh! For Kids Cartoon Festivals: Bugs Bunny Cartoon Festival Featuring "Little Red Riding Rabbit"
 * VHS – Viddy-Oh! For Kids Cartoon Festivals: Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd Cartoon Festival Featuring "Wabbit Twouble"
 * LaserDisc – The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 1, Side 10: The Art of Bugs
 * VHS – The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 10: The Art of Bugs
 * VHS – Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition Volume 7: Welcome To Wackyland
 * VHS – Bugs Bunny Superstar
 * DVD – Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4, Disc 2 (Bugs Bunny Superstar, Part 2) (Associated Artists Productions print)
 * DVD – Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5, Disc 3
 * DVD – The Essential Bugs Bunny, Disc 1
 * Blu-ray, DVD – Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1, Disc 1
 * Blu-ray - Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection

Censorship

 * When this cartoon aired on The WB, the part where baby Elmer points his toy gun at baby Bugs' face and baby Bugs cracks his bottle of carrot juice over baby Elmer's head was cut.