Witch Hazel (Looney Tunes) - Character Biography

Character Biography

"Witch hazel" is a pun on the name of a North American shrub and the herbal medicine derived from it. Animator Chuck Jones, of his own admission, got the idea of Witch Hazel from the Disney cartoon Trick or Treat (1952), which featured a good-natured witch squaring off with Donald Duck. Enamored of the character's voice characterization, provided by June Foray, Jones developed his own Witch Hazel character for the Bugs Bunny short Bewitched Bunny (1954). The story retells the classic fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel", and Witch Hazel, naturally, plays the witch who tries to cook and eat the children. Bugs Bunny witnesses her coaxing the children inside and saves the youths from Witch Hazel's clutches. However, once the witch realizes that Bugs is a rabbit, she chases him to put him into her witch's brew. Bugs eventually uses Hazel's own magic against her and transforms her into a sexy female bunny, prompting the comment, "Oh sure, I know. But aren't they all witches inside?" As Jones was unable to get Foray to play the role, Bea Benaderet supplied the witch's voice.

Despite their common name, Jones' Witch Hazel is a much different beast from her counterpart in the earlier Disney film. The Looney Tunes character is highly stylized. Her rotund, green-skinned body is wrapped in plain, blue dress and supported by twig-like legs. She has wild black hair from which hairpins fly and spin in midair, whenever she zooms off on her broom or cackles in glee over her next evil scheme, and she wears a crumpled black hat. Her nose and chin jut bulbously from her face, and her mouth sports a single tooth.

She's a more villainous creature than Disney's witch, as well; in Bewitched Bunny the Looney Tunes Hazel lures children into her house to eat them, albeit in comically named recipes like "Waif Waffles" or "Moppet Muffins". Nonetheless, she is jovial and has a strong sense of humor; she frequently says things that cause her to break into hysterical, cackling laughter and can cackle at herself when she makes a blunder (i.e. when the broom she rides goes backwards and crashes into a wall: "Oh, we women drivers... I had the silly thing in reverse!") She also seems to have quite strong maternal instincts.

Jones finally succeeded in wooing Foray into taking on the role of Witch Hazel for the 1956 cartoon Broom-Stick Bunny. Foray had reservations about Jones "stealing" a character from Disney, but Jones knew that there was no way for Disney to establish ownership of the name since "witch hazel" is the name of an alcohol rub. Foray would perform the character for the final two cartoons in the series.

Broom-Stick Bunny is usually cited as Jones' funniest Witch Hazel outing. The cartoon begins with Hazel asking the genie of the magic mirror who's the ugliest one of all (a plot similar to the one in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves but the opposite). The scene cuts to Bugs trick-or-treating on Halloween as a witch. When he visits the isolated house of Witch Hazel, she mistakes Bugs-in-witch-costume for an actual witch. Jealous that this newcomer is uglier than her, Hazel invites the "witch" inside her strange home (beautifully rendered by layout artists Ernest Nordli and Philip DeGuard) for some "Pretty Potion" disguised as tea. Bugs removes his mask to drink, sending her into a frenzy and mad dash; it seems that a rabbit (clavicle) is the missing ingredient for her witch's brew. Hazel then chases Bugs and soon captures him by tricking him with a carrot. Hazel was about to kill Bugs, but when she looked into his big sad eyes, she cried and said that he reminded her of her pet tarantula Paul. Bugs then tried to calm her down with a beverage (the Pretty Potion from earlier). In the end, Hazel unknowingly drinks the Pretty Potion, a fate worse than death for a woman who relishes in her croneliness. The potion transforms her into a beautiful, pink-skinned redhead (with a hairdo that, according to Foray, matched her own in a tribute to the actress). Now with an hour glass figure, she is wearing a tight sea green/teal dress that showed off her legs and the top of her cleavage. Horrified at her appearance, she runs to the magic mirror and (in a newly softened voice matching her beautiful appearance) meekly asks if she is still ugly. The genie takes one look at her and does a Bob Hope-like "ROWR! ROWR!". The genie instantly falls in love with this new, sexier version of Witch Hazel and tries to grab her. Hazel then flies off into the night on her broom with the genie slowly gaining on her with his magic carpet. Bugs then calls "Air Raid Headquarters" about them. Critics have praised the film's witty dialogue, written by Tedd Pierce, such as Hazel's question to Bugs-in-costume: "Tell me, who undoes your hair?" and her response "Why, it's absolutely hideous!"

Bugs Bunny was pitted against Witch Hazel in one final cartoon, A Witch's Tangled Hare (1959), a parody of Macbeth. This short was directed by Abe Levitow, as Jones was probably off sick during production. Rabbit is once again the missing ingredient to Witch Hazel's brew, and Bugs happens to be in the area. Meanwhile, a William Shakespeare look-alike observes the action in search of inspiration.

The 1963 Bugs Bunny short Transylvania 6-5000 features a brief, silent cameo appearance from Witch Hazel (or a character very similar to her), as Bugs transforms Count Bloodcount, the cartoon's vampire antagonist, into her through the use of a magic spell.

Once production shifted to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Witch Hazel appeared in the 1966 cartoon A-Haunting We Will Go (1966 film), which also starred Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales.

Witch Hazel has since appeared in cameos in various Warner Bros. productions, such as the movie Space Jam (1996), the video games Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time (in which she appears as a boss and also appears on the cover of the game) and Looney Tunes Collector: Alert! (2000), and one episode each of Animaniacs (in a Rita and Runt episode), The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, Pinky & The Brain, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Duck Dodgers (which references Broom-Stick Bunny and where June Foray returns to do her voice). She was also featured as the lead antagonist in DC Comics' 3-issue Bugs Bunny mini-series from 1990 (though at the end of the storyline, her appearance there is actually revealed to be a disguised Wile E. Coyote). She even made a cameo in the deleted "pig head scene" in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, in which she can be seen flying around on her broomstick before she gets struck by lightning. She was used as an enemy in Scott Lowenstein's Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 4 and her silhouette can be seen on the cover of the game. Witch Hazel has a cameo in the video game adaptation of Looney Tunes: Back in Action as a painting parodying the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum. Witch Hazel was also spotted in a MetLife commercial in 2012.