Shrinking Pupil Take

Chuck Jones liked employing a take where a character’s pupils grow wide then shrink to tiny dots. It happens twice in the Bugs Bunny/Wile E. Coyote cartoon “Operation: Rabbit” (released by Warner Bros. in late 1951, regardless of what web sites say).

Here’s one of them. The smug coyote thinks he’s thwarted a dynamite explosion by putting out a fuse only discover the stick has a fuse on the other end, too.



And here we are later in the cartoon when Super Genius realises a steam locomotive is headed directly toward him.



I am likely in the minority, but I love the Bugs vs. Wile E. cartoons. The Roadrunner vs. Wile E. shorts bored me as a kid and they were a cue to go the kitchen and get something. The Roadrunner was a nothing. Who cares about him? Bugs, on other hand, was battling intellectual snobbishness. You wanted to see Bugs win over the patronising jerk. And the dialogue helped because it took the sameness out of the “plan-fail-stare-boom/splat” that happened again and again in the silent Roadrunner pictures.

Lloyd Vaughan, Ben Washam, Phil Monroe and Ken Harris are the credited animators on this.