A Corny Concerto (1943)
Elmer Fudd, doing his best impression of Fantasia's Deems Taylor, introduces two mock tone poems: Bugs Bunny outwitting a hunting Porky Pig to 'Tales from the Vienna Woods,' then an unwanted duckling saving a family of swans from a vulture to 'The Blue Danube.'
A Corny Concerto is Bob Clampett’s note-for-note parody of Disney’s prestige picture Fantasia, arriving barely two years after the original and using Bugs Bunny’s own tutu-clad ballet to puncture its highbrow framing device from the inside.
Background
Bob Clampett directed A Corny Concerto for Warner Bros. in 1943 as a parody of Disney’s Fantasia, released a few years earlier with Deems Taylor as its on-screen narrator. The short mimics Taylor’s mannered introductions through Elmer Fudd, who presents two mock tone poems set to Johann Strauss’s music. The Fantasia-style framing is undercut by Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig in slapstick stories that refuse to stay refined. It is a Merrie Melodies short built as a spoof of prestige animation rather than a simple gag cartoon.
What to watch for
The two segments take the form of a classical concert piece. The first, set to ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’, features Bugs in a tutu as a ballerina, a send-up of Fantasia’s polished ballet staging. The second, set to ‘The Blue Danube’, is a rescue story centered on an unwanted duckling who saves a family of swans from a vulture. The animation matches the music closely, as Fantasia did, but the punchlines come from the character timing for which Bugs and Porky were known. Notice how the cartoon keeps its joke on the classical framing.
