“Hurdy-Gurdy Hare” Has Bugs Bunny Consulting A Newspaper Wanting White Employees

In these politically correct times even the smallest transgressions will be pointed out and removed by “cancel culture”.

Frequently in Warner Bros. cartoons the animators would superimpose whatever they wanted for a headline and visual in real newspapers. They would leave the rest of the page unaltered. The reason was that the audience would focus upon the mocked up headline which was on the screen for literally two or three seconds. On a theater movie screen, the audience would not be able to read the surrounding content in that brief amount of time.

That all changed with the advent of VCR’s DVD’s, streaming and the ability for a viewer to freeze images on their television or device. Of course this was completely unimaginable when Warner Bros. animators were creating these cartoons beginning in the 1930s.

Also what might be considered inappropriate, racist, or indecent today was not considered so back then.

In Hurdy-Gurdy Hare (1950), Bugs Bunny is living in New York’s Central Park. Bugs decides he needs a job. He looks at the want ads in the newspaper.

Though Bugs is reading the fictional New York Gazette, the actual paper used for the mock up was a real local Florida newspaper including Jim Crow-type advertisements. Before tightening the shot onto the hurdy-gurdy business ad, the other ads are briefly visible.

Two of the ads specify the applicants should be white.

One says “Orange Pickers – 20 white wanted”. The other says “Man – White, upholsterer.”

In recent television showings of Hurdy-Gurdy Hare the “offensive” ads are no longer visible. Digital altering solves the problem of how a sensitive generation might react to seeing the reality of 1950s segregated America.

TCM is now showing Warner Bros. cartoons. Fortunately these airings retain the original image. Hiding history does not change it.