Haredevil Hare (1948) and Marvin the Martian Part 1

Spirit with its patch!

Summary. Bugs Bunny is dragged kicking and screaming towards the moon rocket, but when he sees a load of carrots being dumped into the rocket, he changes his mind and becomes the first rabbit shot into space. No sooner does he arrive on the moon than a rocket emblazoned with "Mars to Moon Expeditionary Force" lands nearby. It so happens that the odd little pilot of that ship is unhappy that the Earth blocks his view of Venus, so he intends to blowup the Earth with his Uranium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Bugs foils this plan by inadvertently blowing up the moon instead.

Comments. Marvin the Martian was born nameless in 1948; it would be almost thirty years before any sort of name applying to him became known to the public—not until 1979, which begs the question: what did the Warner Bros. animators call him behind the scenes during all that time?

The title card from the iconic Looney Tunes short.
© Warner Bros. Pictures

Marvin debuted in the Looney Tunes cartoon Haredevil Hare in July 1948. He played opposite Bugs Bunny. We know he’s from Mars because his spaceship is labeled the Mars to Moon Expeditionary Force. Unlike Walt Disney cartoons, which have usually been fun and/or artistic, cartoons from Warner Bros. Pictures have usually been fun and/or satirical. Satire implies the intent of “poking fun” at someone, something, or some institution, or turning any of those things into jokes. So how is Marvin, as he debuts in Haredevil Hare, a joke?

The power of Marvin is clearly in how he looks. His voice is quiet but squeaky and a bit irritating, but it’s his appearance that captures our imagination. He wears the uniform of the Roman army 2,000 years ago—a uniform very familiar to us because of the dozens of epic films we’ve seen set during that era—that is us of the 21st century. What about the audiences of 1948? Jones et al. were clearly depending on their audiences being familiar with the likes of The Last Days of Pompeii and The Sign of the Cross and other Hollywood Roman pageants of the era. Part of the joke of Marvin depended on audiences knowing that Roman centurions were always serious. And this particular uniform was chosen because Marvin was a Martian from the Planet Mars, and Mars was the Roman god of war.

“I patterned him after the god Mars,” claims Chuck Jones as quoted in That’s All Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation by Steve Schneider “That was the uniform that Mars wore—a helmet and skirt. We thought putting it on this ant-like creature might be funny.”

But the “ant-like” creature also wore sneakers. Serious centurions do not ever wear sneakers. That is a hilarious juxtaposition.

OK, we have a handle on the centurion uniform part of the joke. What about the Martian part? Why would Bugs Bunny’s antagonist be a Martian in 1948?

“Director Chuck Jones noticed that Bugs Bunny soon began to outwit Yosemite Sam,” explains looneytunes.wikia.com, “so he decided to create the opposite type of character; one who was quiet and soft-spoken, but whose actions were incredibly destructive and also suitably dangerous.” OK, but that’s a far cry from explaining why he was specifically a Martian. Jones himself explained his creative process, as reported on chuckjonescenter.org:

30 seconds introducing Marvin in Haredevil Hare (YouTube)
© Warner Bros. Pictures

"Marvin is one of those mysterious creatures that comes out of the sky or up the stairs late at night.... He is a Martian, and you cannot expect to find much personality in there ... My first step in creating the character was ... to draw the curiously tufted helmet worn by Mars, the Roman God of War.... Then I figured, black ants are scary, so I put an ant-black face and a couple of angry eyes inside his helmet."

Still, we haven’t gotten any further in answering the question: Why would Bugs Bunny’s antagonist be a Martian in 1948? Outer-space topics would be all the rage two years afterward, from 1950 onwards when the movies, TV, and magazines had all gone “space happy”—but 1948? And how about the rocket to the moon? That seems to me almost scarily prescient. Why would any outer space topic be worthy of the Looney Tunes’ brand of satirization in 1948? Typically, things that are satirized are commonplace, like celebrities or causes or the news.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that something was in the air circa 1948. Not only did Captain Video appear in 1949, that very year George Pal’s Destination Moon began shooting, though it didn’t appear until mid–1950 and the sweep of promotion attending its release didn’t begin until early 1950. Plus Rocketship X-M, the quick and much cheaper knockoff of Destination Moon, was also shot in 1949.

Which still begs another question: Why did Jones produce this first Marvin cartoon Haredevil Hare at all? Though it was released mid–1948, the copyright year on the film itself says MCMXLVII (1947), which means that whatever was being satirized was already front and center in 1947. Here is my take on all this.

My sister-in-law used to work for a bank. One day she shared an anecdote about something that happened behind the scenes at a competitive bank. I asked her, how could you possibly know about that; that’s a different bank. She replied that the banking community is really very small, and everybody knows everything about what goes on within that community. That was an eye opener for me. Since then I’ve come to realize that nearly any field is actually a small community. So it stands to reason that the animation community is no different. The advent of anything new and different and worth talking about soon gets around.

Destination Moon was promoted as “Two years in the making!”
(Courtesy © Wade Williams Distribution)

The film Destination Moon dealt with such a new and cutting edge concept—rocketry—and producer George Pal knew that a certain amount of exposition was necessary to educate the audience. Given that he was first and foremost an animator, only having just shut down his Academy Award Winning Puppetoon animation department at Paramount Pictures, it was second nature for him to think that this exposition could be made palatable and even enjoyable if it was presented as a cartoon.

“We wanted to explain what rocketry was in an amusing way,” Pal explains in The Films of George Pal by Gail Morgan Hickman. “The idea of a cartoon came up, but we couldn’t afford Disney. Walter Lantz, the creator of Woody Woodpecker, is a dear friend of mine. He was one of the first cartoonists I met when I first came to Hollywood. So he made a first-class cartoon at a cut-rate price for his—pal, George.”

The entire Woody Woodpecker sequence from Destination Moon. (YouTube)
(Courtesy copyright holder © Wade Williams Distribution)

At what point this arrangement had been settled between Lantz and Pal is unknown. Destination Moon was promoted as “Two years in the making!” If we take that “two years” seriously, then Walter Lantz was probably preparing his cartoon for George Pal at least by early 1948, most likely in 1947. It was at this early point that Lantz’ Woodpecker-rocket-to-the-moon production could have become common knowledge within the animation community and sparked Chuck Jones and company’s already remarkable imaginations into action—with Haredevil Hare as the result.

Destination Moon (left), Haredevil Hare (right).

Distributor Eagle Lion’s promotion focused

on a number of digest magazines,

emphasizing its Technicolor and its cadre

of class-A consultants. For months the

film was constantly in the limelight and

soon its success seemed a forgone conclusion.

Some things that tend to back up my supposition above are the uncanny (or perhaps not so uncanny if my thesis holds water) resemblances between the two animated films. The story arc of the moon-bound rocket within each cartoon; the manner in which the rockets are first “revealed”.

The look/design of the two rockets; the appearance of the two rockets in flight through space, and so forth (all illustrated by the two rocket screen-grabs below from the two shorts.

If this scenario has validity, then the object of Chuck Jones’ satirization becomes clear. It was nothing immediately popular; it was something that would quickly become popular; and he was right about that. Lantz’ Woody Woodpecker cartoon was contained within a film that shook up and changed filmmaking forever, much as Star Wars did 27 years later.

All indications are that the little ant-like creature with the Centurion helmet that battled Bugs Bunny in Haredevil Hare was supposed to be a one-off appearance. I guess that didn’t work out!

Still, Marvin the Martian was given the grand honor of being the official NASA launch patch for Spirit, one of the two hugely successful Mars Exploration Rovers that landed on the Red Planet in 2004. How cool is that?

 

Visit Marvin and Woody Part Two. More Thoughts About Their Existential Reality

CREDITS

USA. Warner Bros. Pictures. The Vitaphone Corporation. C. 1.37:1. 7m.

CREW: Director Charles M. Jones. Script and Story Charles M. Jones, Michael Maltese. Producer Eddie Selzer. Score Carl Stalling.

CAST: All Voices Mel Blanc.

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http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-9914-4

Devil Girl from Mars (1954)

Devil Girl from Mars’ statuesque Patricia Laffan proudly sports Ronald Cobb’s amazing costume for the Martian woman Nyah, comprising black vinyl, leather, form-fitting dark stockings, stylish boots, a shiny black skullcap, a flowing cape, and George Partleton’s startling contrasting makeup with dark lipstick. Altogether, she is the very picture of patronizing contempt (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

I love this movie. If I had to choose a dozen movies to take to a desert island for the rest of my life, this would be one of them. Many will find this a disturbing admission. “How,” some people would wonder, “could a sane man, a competent author, say such a thing about this movie ... in public even?”

Those who are familiar with this film will remember that the story seems to revolve around the kidnapping of earthmen to take to Mars for breeding purposes—which nearly all the summaries of the film focus on right from the outset. This point seems totally puerile, the nadir of low-budget B movie, and utterly inexcusable in the minds of most critics.

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The spaceship from Mars.

Let me list some other reasons why some people loathe this movie:
• It is stage bound because it was adapted from a play, and nobody took the time to resolve that problem.

• The Devil Girl’s robot looks like a refrigerator, and her own costume looks like it might be a remnant from an S&M porn movie.

• The special effects are pure B-movie bologna.

• The characters are all stereotypes who do nothing but talk and talk and talk.

• The devil girl’s speeches are monotonous drivel delivered in a wearisome monotone.

• All the acting is second rate at best.

Needless to say, I disagree with all these arguments. In fact, I whole-heartedly believe they utterly miss the point.

This is a wonderful 2-minute condensation of Devil Girl from Mars found on YouTube. 
It shows all the saucer effects and all of Nyah's attitude.

First, for all practical purposes, that "collecting men" so-called plot is irrelevant. Little time and few sentences are spent on the business of collecting men. It is merely an excuse for the Devil Girl to act haughty and patronizing. This movie is important for its design—the way it looks. It must be watched with an open and inventive mind to be appreciated. Far be it from me to quote the blurb on the back of a DVD package, yet this one happens to be 100 percent accurate: “A beautifully crafted production, unique special effects, inspired production design....”

For instance, the shots of the exterior of the inn (probably a model) are evocative of the time and place and weather, all of which play important roles in the film. The interior of the inn is totally believable. The alien flying saucer, while in flight spinning impressively and also on the ground, is one of the best ever conceived for a science fiction film. Only Ray Harryhausen’s fleets of saucers for Earth vs. the Flying Saucers are better. (I’ve heard it said that Klaatu’s ship in The Day the Earth Stood Still is superior to Earth vs.; sure, on the ground it’s nice enough, but in the air it is only a blob of light.) Devil Girl’s exterior set on the moor in the yard in the neighborhood of the landed spaceship is breath-taking (combining a soundstage set and backdrop of a barren waste with a few twisted trees, a practical ramp, and a stunning matte painting of the bulk of the saucer), much as was so successfully accomplished in an equivalent scene in Forbidden Planet.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.
 On the left is a shot from Forbidden Planet. The foreground, the people, and the lower part of the spaceship (including the bottom half of the wide saucer) are real enough, but the entirety of the top half of the saucer and the night sky with two moons is a matte painting, On the right is a shot from Devil Girl from Mars which shows two people entering a spaceship by walking up a ramp; the ramp is real, as is the doorframe, but all the rest of the saucer is likewise a matte painting including the exterior walls surrounding the doorframe, the saucer element itself, and the down lights. (The Devil Girl saucer image courtesy Wade Williams Distribution.)

Then there is the Devil Girl herself!
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The screen has never seen such a being before or since. Bill Warren in his Keep Watching the Skies! ventures his opinion of her statuesque appearance, “Ronald Cobb’s costume for Nyah was supposed to seem futuristic and classy, but all the black vinyl, and leather, the stockinged legs, the stylish boots, the black skullcap, the dark lipstick and the flowing cape put her firmly in S&M territory.” As you’d expect, I disagree with Warren’s final evaluation, but the rest is true enough. To my mind, she looks very cool, futuristic, scary, and alien.

Then, of course, there’s her behavior. At all times she struts and marches and stands at attention with her head held high and stiff. She is never any less than haughty, firm, contemptuous, brash, sneering, condescending, arrogant, smirking, and patronizing. Her tone is entirely dismissive of these mere earthlings.

Her entrances are the stuff of legend. Many times she enters the barroom through the French doors leading to the yard and the saucer, and every time it is majestic, dramatic, and rousing. Part of this effect is due to camera angles that are mostly looking up at her. Part is due to Patricia Laffan’s strong performance.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.
 Two of Nyah's majestic entrances (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

Warren also says, quite correctly, that she “plays everything with a cocked, superior eyebrow, impatient with these dreary Earth people.”

All that said, the Devil Girl is stunningly picturesque. Barry Atkinson, in Atomic Age Cinema, describes her as “lofty” and “mouth-watering,” terms with which I cannot help but happily agree. Above, I mentioned the wondrous design of the picture. Clearly Laffan’s character and costume are at the very heart of that design. Laffan wearing Ronald Cobb’s almost unprecedentedly exotic costume and George Partleton’s fully appropriate contrasting makeup is a wonder to behold.

The fact that following a couple of these eye-opening entrances Nyah announces that she needs men to take to Mars seems hardly relevant and not worthy of all the critical bother that focuses on those silly statements (which inevitably end with the picture being dismissed out of hand). Otherwise the film is practically perfect. Frankly, all this seems perfectly obvious to me, and I am dumbfounded that certain critics (actually most of them) are so short-sighted that they spend so much energy deploring the entire movie because they object to a few lines of dialogue or because they simply don’t recognize the craft and value implicit in this picture.

As to the other characters, they are all quite fine and well-rendered except Hugh McDermott’s Michael Carter, who often seems hysterical. Plus I very much enjoy the amount of time spent on the barroom set, as I find it and its roaring fire in the fireplace calm and comforting (the antithesis of today’s omnipresent nonstop chain-reaction car crashes).

Devil Girl’s exterior set of the moor in the neighborhood of the landed spaceship is breath-taking (combining a soundstage set and backdrop painting, which together "sell" the feel of the moor as dark and unsettling. This photo clearly shows the care with which the yard outside the French doors was designed; plus Nyah's robot Chani is more large and menacing than not (courtesy of Wade Williams Distribution).

Though it is clearly a biting backhanded compliment, the reviewer for the British Monthly Film Bulletin (1954) wrote that the “settings, dialogue, characterization, and special effects are of a low order, but even their modest unreality has its charm. There is really no fault in this film that one would like to see eliminated. Everything, in its way, is quite perfect.” That reviewer couldn’t be more wrong about “settings ... characterization and special effects,” but the last half of his statement is true enough. As I said, the joy in this film is its production design, effects, and Patricia Laffan’s performance.

There are only two things about this movie that disappointed me: the weak main title sequence that features an airliner exploding in midair, a scene that has nothing to do with the film, and also the extended barroom-type brawl towards the end that goes on unnecessarily long.

One final point. Do you remember the trick that screenwriter Edmund H. North pulled on us all in The Day the Earth Stood Still wherein he introduced a spaceman named Carpenter, who performed apparent miracles, who was betrayed by a member of his inner circle, and who then rose from the dead? (A prank North readily shares with genre film authority Tom Weaver for It Came from Weaver Five: “It was my private little joke. I never discussed this angle with [producer] Blaustein or [director] Wise because I didn’t want it expressed. I had originally hoped that the Christ comparison would be subliminal.”) I think the same sort of thing is happening in Devil Girl from Mars, but Nyah here is an unexpected and unforeseen version of Mary. Nyah is one pissed off Mary, the polar opposite of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Nearly every image of Mary shows her wearing a scarf covering her head, but Nyah wears a shiny black skullcap. 
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Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

  (Nyah image courtesy Wade Williams Distribution. The Marian vision image is from The Song of Bernadette [20th Century Fox].)

Where Mary endlessly expounds about faith, love and compassion, Nyah is more interested in disintegrating poor specimens, kidnapping, and the destruction of the innocent. Where Mary is often surrounded by angels, Nyah has her enormous robot protector Chani. If wings are important to your image of angels (or of fallen angels), Nyah’s rippling cape calls to mind the giant wings wrapping the devil of Bald Mountain at the end of Disney’s Fantasia. Mary is soft and modest. Nyah is hard and flamboyant. As another point of interest, let’s not forget her flying saucer is made of organic metal that miraculously heals itself. I am not saying that the writers, producers, or director consciously or even unconsciously created this anti–Mary, but it is nonetheless interesting to me that such an interpretation is so easily possible. Also, while yes, I have specified strongly that the “snatching men for breeding purposes” plot element is irrelevant and ought to be ignored; still, if one were to give any credence to that notion, then Nyah, rather unvirgin-like, was collecting men to inseminate her and all her sisters on Mars.

Short summary: It is a cold wintry night, and in the large barroom of an isolated inn, the Bonnie Charlie, on the Scottish moors, a radio announcer explains that a meteor has fallen nearby. This is heard by a small boy, Tommy, and Doris, an employee of the inn. Tommy asks, “What’s a meteor?” and Doris responds, “I don’t know, Tommy.” We also hear that a world-famous scientist is on his way to examine the phenomenon. The elderly proprietress of the inn, Mrs. Jamieson, enters and curtly dismisses any idea that a meteor might be either interesting or important and tells Doris to get to work and Tommy, Mrs. Jameieson’s nephew, to get to bed. The professor, along with a reporter, Michael Carter, drive up to the inn helplessly lost and bitterly cold. Even though the inn is closed for the winter, they ask for and are granted accommodations. A white hot flying saucer, making a great deal of noise, lands in the inn’s backyard. They all busy themselves trying to understand what is happening while the saucer cools down. Then with a dramatic and stirring entrance, Nyah, an aloof picturesque woman from Mars in a minuscule black shiny skirt and a flowing cape, suddenly appears at the open French doors of the inn, startling everyone. She announces that her spaceship, which was bound to London, had a mishap and she needed to land here so the ship can repair itself. She also explains that her mission is to take back to Mars healthy earthmen to help propagate the Martian species, because the inhabitants of Mars are only women. She then busies herself by strutting around for a while, placing an invisible dome around the property, making threats, showing off her robot and its destructive rays. Eventually, the mere earthlings succeed in destroying Nyah and her spaceship.

The standard half-sheet poster (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution)

Devil Girl from Mars (1954)

UK. Danziger Productions, Spartan Productions, Gigi Productions. BW. 1.66:1. 76m.

CREDITS: Director David MacDonald. Producers Edward J. Danziger, Harry Lee Danziger. Script James Eastwood. Based on a Play by James Eastwood and John C. Mather. Score Edwin Astley. Director of Photography Jack Cox. Special Effects Jack Whitehead. Special Visual Effects Bob Cuff. Editor Brough Taylor. Sound Editor Gerald Anderson. Art Director Norman Arnold. Production Manager Jack Martin. Miss Laffan’s Costume Designer Ronald Cobb. Sound Special Effects Bert Ross. Makeup George Partleton.

CAST: Nyah Patricia Laffan. Michael Carter Hugh McDermott. Ellen Prestwick Hazel Court. Robert Justin/Albert Simpson Peter Reynolds. Doris Adrienne Corri. Professor Hennessey Joseph Tomelty. Mr. Jamieson John Laurie. Mrs. Jamieson Sophie Stewart. Tommy Anthony Richmond. David James Edmond.

Post Script Re: Desert Island

In the first paragraph above, I said that Devil Girl from Mars would be among the dozen films I'd take to a desert island for the rest of my life. Here are my two lists. The first is drawn from all movies; the second is from science-fiction movies only.

From all movies:

Muppet Christmas Carol

Groundhog Day

Lifeforce

Final Countdown

Zulu

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris

War of the Worlds (1953)

Lawrence of Arabia

Spartacus

Quatermass and the Pit

Devil Girl from Mars

My Fair Lady

From science-fiction movies only:

X the Unknown

Dune

Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Lifeforce

Final Countdown

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris

War of the Worlds (1953)

Quatermass and the Pit

Devil Girl from Mars

Predator

The Crawling Eye

The Terminator

These are all chosen because I NEVER tire of watching them!

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Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.