Elmer's Pet Rabbit Elmer's Pet Rabbit Elmer's Pet Rabbit is a 1941 Merrie Melodies cartoon. The short was released on January 4, 1941. Starring Elmer Fudd and, ostensibly, Bugs Bunny, it is the first cartoon in which the name Bugs Bunny is given (on a title card, edited onto the end of the opening title following the success of "A Wild Hare"), but the rabbit is also somewhat the same as the one seen and heard in "Elmer's Candid Camera" and other pre-Bugs shorts. It was directed by Chuck Jones (his first cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny) and written by Rich Hogan. Voices are
Br'er Rabbit also attributed the birth name "Riley" to Br'er Rabbit. Harris heard these tales in Georgia. Very similar versions of the same stories were recorded independently at the same time by the folklorist Alcée Fortier in southern Louisiana, where the Rabbit character was known as "Compair Lapin" in Creole. Enid Blyton, the English writer of children's fiction, retold the stories for children. Although Joel Chandler Harris collected materials for his famous series of books featuring the character Br'er Rabbit in the 1870s, the Br'er Rabbit cycle had been recorded earlier among the Cherokees: The "tar baby" story was printed in an