Rabbit redux

Today being Easter, I started to think about some rabbits in the movies. The most obvious example would be Bugs Bunny, although he was by no means the first animated rabbit. Walt Disney's animator Ub Iwerks created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit when the two were working at Universal in the late 1920s, and the rights to about two dozen of the Oswald cartoons were famously traded by NBC/Universal to Disney/ABC in order to let ABC's sports announcer Al Michaels move to NBC in order to do Sunday Night Football.

I was going to mention real rabbits, but my first movie selection was going to be Harvey -- who isn't an actual rabbit. Or is he?

The old joke about rabbits is that they reproduce like crazy, and this joke is referenced at the end of the nice Robert Montgomery movie Hide-Out. This movie also has a young Mickey Rooney crying when he finds out that one of his rabbits is the family's dinner.

If you prefer warm, cuddly bunnies to rabbits, try Bunny Lake Is Missing. Oops; that's only got a bunny in the title. And there's nothing warm and cuddly about the movie either.

Happy Easter to all our Christian readers.