Show Biz Bugs is a Warner Bros. animated short originally released to theaters on November 2, 1957. It is billed as a Looney Tunes cartoon and stars Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as its main characters. Show Biz Bugs is notable for portraying the modern interpretation of Daffy in a more sympathetic light: In this film, Daffy is a jealous and arrogant competitor to Bugs, but his shabby treatment by the theater management and audience is depicted as being unfairly out of proportion to the genuine talent he possesses.
The basic setting and conflicts of this film were reprised for the linking footage for The Bugs Bunny Show television series.
Plot[]
Arriving at the theater where he and Bugs are appearing, Daffy is furious to discover that the rabbit's name on the marquee is above his in much larger letters. Rebuffed by the unseen manager's claim that he gives his performers billing "according to drawing power", Daffy is determined to prove that he's the star of the show. That evening, Bugs and Daffy are performing an on-stage number to Tea for Two. Daffy, tired of Bugs hogging up all the cheering and applause (complete with top star billing) even though Daffy himself is genuinely talented, decides to try numerous numbers on his own in order to impress the audience. He begins on the spot with a backbreaking time step to Jeepers Creepers. After tons of failed attempts, Daffy is willing to risk everything in order to upstage Bugs, including sabotage Bugs' own act, playing the xylophone by sticking TNT in it (That the big bad wolf used from three little bops.), which he fails to do. Bugs does a sawing in half trick and Daffy is the volunteer. Daffy says that the thing is a fake. As Bugs saws him in half, the audience applauds. Daffy yells "Don't applaud him! Look! I'm not cut in half! Stop applauding! It's a fake!" When he lifts his torso, it is revealed that Bugs did saw him in half! Daffy says to the audience "Good thing I got Blue Cross." Finally, in order to impress the audience, Daffy performs a deadly stunt (which he refers as "an act that no other performer has dared to execute!"), by drinking some gasoline, some nitroglycerin, some gunpowder, and some uranium 238, "shake well," and swallowing a lit match ("Girls, you better hold onto your boyfriends!"), causing him to explode. The audience loves the performance, but Daffy (now a transparent ghost and ascending to heaven like the big bad wolf from hell from Three little bops ) "can only do it once."