Anvils, Mallets & Dynamite by Jaime Weinman

Author:Jaime Weinman [Weinman, Jaime]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sutherland House Inc
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Daffy, 2.0

IT’S DIFFICULT TO FIND measurements of Daffy Duck’s popularity. He must have been popular to have all the Warner Bros. animation units making cartoons with him every year. He was also one of only three major characters, along with Porky and Bugs, to get a special version of the Looney Tunes opening with his face in it,1 and he got a novelty record, “Daffy Duck’s Rhapsody,” with new lyrics set to yet another rendition of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody. But his pop culture footprint was never large, and he seemed to be viewed by theater owners and audiences as just another character from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, not a star who could transcend them the way Bugs did.2 Bugs and Porky were stars of the Looney Tunes comic books, which didn’t get around to adding Daffy for many years. Daffy cartoons didn’t get nominated for Academy Awards, either. One of the most famous Daffy cartoons today is “Duck Amuck,” where Daffy is tormented by an unseen animator who is constantly erasing and re-drawing his entire world. But while Warner Bros. submitted it for Oscar consideration, it wasn’t nominated; the fifth nominee that year was a National Film Board of Canada short titled “The Romance of Transportation in Canada.”3

The lack of Daffy Duck documentation has created a mystery around his famous personality change. As late as 1950, the studio was still releasing cartoons where he was “daffy” in personality, but two years later, that was all over. He changed, and nobody seemed to notice at the time, so it’s hard to know why he changed.

The explanation you hear most often is that Chuck Jones adjusted the character. Jones was the director most closely associated with bitter loser Daffy. He was also the first director to make Daffy a foil for Bugs. And his version of Daffy was successful enough that the other two directors began cribbing from Jones when they worked with the duck. Jones had Daffy say, “You’re despicable!” and get his beak shot off, so McKimson also made films where Daffy says, “You’re despicable!” and gets his beak shot off. Jones made some cartoons where Daffy constantly loses to an unflappable Bugs, so Freleng made a few cartoons with the same idea.

It’s unlikely, though, that anyone would have changed the character if he’d been fine as he was. Jones seems to have been reacting to a sense at the studio that “daffy” Daffy had become stale and desperately needed a new approach to keep him going. Again, it’s hard to quantify Daffy’s popularity, but the studio output seems to tell the tale: he was increasingly rare in solo cartoons. Screwball characters, once the new and fresh alternatives to everyman characters like Porky (who was also on the wane), were becoming old-fashioned. Woody Woodpecker, the most famous Daffy imitator, was making a similar journey away from screwiness. Maybe it was a chance in public mood after the Second World War. Or maybe it was just the problem of finding stories for characters who are too crazy to follow normal story logic.

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