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For years I’ve been trying to make the case for The Bugs Bunny Show. This was the original ABC TV series which first brought the post-1948 Looney Tunes to prime time (and later Saturday morning) television. The original bridging material was directed by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson and featured all the Looney Tunes stars with voices by Mel Blanc.

The show was never syndicated, and though prints of the original series exist (mainly in original broadcast black and white) they are scarce. The clever bridges were cut up and reused, for decades, on Saturday morning reruns. The problem is that the film editors at Warners cut up the original negatives for this purpose. We are able to present some of these bridges on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection dvd sets as bonus material, in a Frankenstein-like hybrid of black and white and color footage.

Matthew Hunter over at the Misce-Looney-ous blog has just started to post some of these lost bridges – including my favorite, the first one produced by Chuck Jones (this was the fifth episode aired, in November 1960). If you are a Looney Tunes fan, these are certainly worth a look. And until Warners greenlights a full restoration of the series, this is all we’ve got.

Jerry Beck

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