Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid

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Bugs Bunny Gets The Boid Merrie Melodies/Bugs Bunny series
Title card of Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid.
Directed by	Robert Clampett
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger Productions
Voices by	Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny Kent Rogers (Beaky Buzzard) Sara Berner (Mama Buzzard)
Music by	Carl Stalling
Animation by	Rod Scribner Robert McKimson Virgil Ross
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	July 11, 1942
Color process	Technicolor
Running time	7 mins
IMDb profile

Bugs Bunny Gets The Boid is a 1942 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Bob Clampett, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres by Warner Bros. Pictures. It marks the first appearance of Beaky Buzzard in a Warner Bros. short.

The title is a Brooklynese way of saying "gets the bird", which can refer to an obscene gesture; in this case, it is also used metaphorically, as Bugs "gets" the bird (a buzzard) by playing a trick.

[edit] Plot

The cartoon begins with a mother buzzard instructing her children to go out and catch something for dinner (horse, steer, moose, and cow, respectively). Three out of four agree to their mom's food choices and take off right away. Then Mother notices one of her kids remaining with his back turned. This is where we meet Beaky (called "Killer" in this short, presumably as a pet name or nickname), painfully shy and a little on the slow side. Against his will, his mother kicks him out of the nest with instructions to at least catch a rabbit. Beaky spots Bugs Bunny and soars down to catch him. Bugs makes like an air-traffic controller and "guides" Beaky to the ground with a crash. Upon getting up, he is greeted with the familiar "Eh, what's up Doc?"

A chase ensues ending with Bugs crashing into the ground underneath the skeleton of a dead animal. He cries because he thinks he's dead, then laughs it off when he realizes otherwise, but then breaks the fourth wall by looking at the audience and says that he knew it all the time. Beaky ends up the same way, and just as he begins to call for his mother in panic, she shows up. At first the mother buzzard thinks Bugs did something to her son. Bugs pulls Beaky out of the ground; at which time the mother buzzard kisses Bugs, causing him to blush and say "nope, nope, nope" just like Beaky.

[edit] Cultural references

The part where Bugs and Killer are temporarily fooled into thinking that the bones are theirs is a reference to a Harold Lloyd film, The Freshman.
At one point in the cartoon, Bugs Bunny half-mutters the then-popular song, Blues in the Night, changing the lyrics to, "My mamma done told me, a buzzard is two face..."
Beaky Buzzard is a caricature of Edgar Bergen's character, Mortimer Snerd. The voice used by Blanc is also similar to that of Cecil Turtle, although Cecil is much smarter than those characters (smarter than Bugs, even).