Nod to Silent Green

If anyone could rightly be expected to still yank a rabbit from his hat in his 80s, it’d be veteran animator Chuck Jones.

Indeed, the man who directed countless Bugs Bunny cartoons and other classics for Warner Bros., creator of the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote and Pepe Le Pew, has worked nothing short of a miniature miracle with the sequel to what may be his single most famous cartoon: “One Froggy Evening.”

Most Warners cartoons from the 1930s through the 1970s starred characters that came back in adventure after adventure. But “One Froggy Evening” was the only screen appearance for the frog who would croon one vintage ragtime tune after another--until he’s in front of an audience, at which point he promptly clams up.

Some 40 years later, Jones decided it was time for another look. Though he finished it in 1995, “Another Froggy Evening” has never been put into wide theatrical release, screening only in animation festivals and special events. It’s now part of the Bugs Bunny Film Festival touring the United States, with weeklong stops in various cities. It’s showing this weekend in Glendale, then moving on to Northern California.

Jones repeats the main gag of the original--the frog will sing only in the presence of one person, who foolishly anticipates reaping fame and fortune from his discovery--but puts a new spin on the idea by retelling the story through the ages.

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It opens with a caveman--obviously a distant ancestor of the 1950s demolition worker in the original--chasing down a chicken he’s hoping to club into an entree. During the chase, he unearths the same tin box out of which pops the frog, who slaps on a tiny top hat, grabs his cane and starts singing “Hello, Ma Baby.”

The caveman’s hunger quickly gives way to visions of profits as the world’s first entrepreneur is born.

Naturally, he needs a stage, and promptly sets out to single-handedly build Stonehenge (to the fitting orchestral accompaniment of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”). When the frog refuses to sing on cue, his Neanderthal buddies stone him.

The tale shifts to the rise of the Roman Empire. Jones’ comic timing is sharp as ever as the frog is catapulted into the air and stops his arc precisely in front of Emperor Saladus Caesar, long enough to let loose another hapless croak before a packed Coliseum. Of course Caesar turns thumbs down and lets loose the lions (don’t miss the cameo by two of Caesar’s modern-day descendants).

The frog turns up again centuries later causing grief for Paul Revere during the American Revolution, then on Robinson Crusoe’s island. There, he subtly illustrates the old saw about giving a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but give him a singing frog and he’ll be hungry but greedy forever.

The denouement is too sweet even to hint at. Let’s just say that Jones has crafted a stabbingly funny ode to the singing frog in Everyman, which yearns to crawl out of its box and be heard by the world, yet who reverts to his primal croak when pressured to sing for someone else’s supper.

And Jones gets his gentle message--about how creativity blossoms only when appreciated on its own terms--without ever resorting to overkill.

Greeeee-deeeeep!

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‘Another Froggy Evening’

Warner Bros. Pictures presents a Chuck Jones Film Production. Director: Chuck Jones. Producers: Chuck Jones and Linda Jones Clough. Associate producer: Stephen A. Fossati. Story: Chuck Jones, Don Arioli, Stephen A. Fossati, Stan Freberg. Art direction; Michael Breton. Original music score: George Daugherty and Cameron Patrick. Voices: Jeff McCarthy. Running time: 8 minutes.