Witch Hazel is a cackling witch who would very much like to cook Bugs Bunny. She flies off at top speed on her broom, scattering hairpins behind her, and laughs at her own jokes louder than anyone. Chuck Jones made her both menacing and oddly sympathetic: her biggest fear is not defeat but the possibility of becoming pretty.
| Species: | Witch |
|---|---|
| First appearance: | Bewitched Bunny (1954) |
| Created by: | Chuck Jones |
| Original voice: | Bea Benaderet (Bewitched Bunny, 1954); June Foray (from Broom-Stick Bunny, 1956) |
| Frequent co-stars: | Bugs Bunny |
Witch Hazel debuted in Jones’s Bewitched Bunny (1954), a fairy-tale parody in which she tries to add Bugs to her stew. The name echoes a Disney witch of the same name from Trick or Treat (1952); Jones’s version is a different character. June Foray, who voiced Disney’s witch, took over the role in Broom-Stick Bunny (1956). Jones also created her with a nod to the witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Hazel is gleeful, vain about her ugliness and surprisingly good company. Her flying hairpins were a deliberate flourish: in his writing Jones described them as a jab at the simple motion lines of cheaper television animation.
“I like Witch Hazel. She gets such a kick out of herself, laughing uproariously as she zooms away, leaving behind her a cluster of hairpins in midair. Hazel’s hovering hairpins were in fact a personal statement from me to the penny-pinchers at Hanna Barbera, who would have their characters leave only little linear whorls in the air when they zipped out at speed. I thought that if you were going to leave something, it should be something interesting, like hairpins or, if the bull in Bully for Bugs, horseshoes.”
– Chuck Jones, Chuck Reducks (1996)
