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1944 film by Bob Clampett

The Old Grey Hare is a 1944 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Bob Clampett. The short was released on October 28, 1944, and features Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

After Elmer Fudd starts crying over his failure to catch Bugs, the voice of God tells Elmer to keep trying to catch him and not give up. Being transported to the year 2000, Elmer finds a year 2000 newspaper, with pages revolving around Bing Crossby's horse, the replacement for television, etc. He and Bugs then continue their pursuit old and wrinkled, with the latter armed with a gun. In a brief chase, due to their ages, Elmer gets the upper hand, shooting Bugs with his weapon, with Pinball effects. A flashback sequence features Elmer and Bugs as babies with their possible first pursuit. After the flashback ends, with Elmer being equally emotional, he is buried alive by Bugs. As soon as Elmer raves for a brief moment, Bugs quips: "Well now I wouldn't say that," kisses the latter, hands him a firecracker, lights the fuse and quickly departs. When Elmer does not do anything, the screen irises out with the firecracker still hissing. A "That's all, folks!" title card appears, and the firecracker explodes off screen, shaking the title card, leaving Elmer's fate unknown.

The title is a double play on words. One is the typical pun between "hare" and "hair", with the bunny (who was already grey haired) rendered "old and grey" for this cartoon. The title also refers to the old song, "The Old Gray Mare". Some of the lobby cards for this cartoon gave the alternate spelling, The Old Gray Hare.

Animation historian Greg Ford writes, "In the last two or three years before Robert Clampett abruptly left the Warner Bros. cartoon studio in the mid 1940s, the renegade director surrendered an unwieldy bunch of late blooming, oddly self reflexive masterworks. Clampett's craving for summation reaches epochal proportions in The Old Grey Hare, as Elmer is fast forwarded all the way to the year 2000 (gasp!). So comically premature is Clampett's yen for retrospection that he essays a cradle to grave biopic of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, reminiscing over their longstanding relationship, even though the pair had only existed onscreen for about four years at the time."

When this cartoon aired on The WB, the part where baby Elmer points his toy gun at baby Bugs' face and baby Bugs cracks his bottle of carrot juice over baby Elmer's head was cut.