Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is a fictional cartoon character created by animators Tex Avery and Bob Clampett for Leon Schlesinger Productions. Styled as an anthropomorphic black duck, he has appeared in cartoon series such as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, in which he is usually depicted as a foil for either Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, or Speedy Gonzales. He was one of the first of the new "screwball" characters that emerged in the late 1930s to replace traditional everyman characters who were more popular earlier in the decade, such as Mickey Mouse, Porky Pig, and Popeye.
Daffy starred in 130 shorts in the golden age, making him the third-most frequent character in the Looney Tunes/''Merrie Melodies cartoons, behind Bugs Bunny's 168 appearances and Porky Pig's 153 appearances. Virtually every Warner Bros. cartoon director, most notably Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones, put his own spin on the Daffy Duck character.
He was ranked number 14 on TV Guide''s list of top 50 greatest cartoon characters.History
Origin
Daffy first appeared in Porky's Duck Hunt, released on April 17, 1937. The cartoon was directed by Tex Avery and animated by Bob Clampett. Porky's Duck Hunt is a standard hunter/prey pairing, but Daffy was something new to moviegoers: an assertive, completely unrestrained, combative protagonist. Clampett later recalled:
This early Daffy is less anthropomorphic and resembles a normal black duck. In fact, the only aspects of the character that have remained consistent through the years are his voice characterization by Mel Blanc; and his black feathers with a white neck ring. Blanc's characterization of Daffy once held the world record for the longest characterization of one animated character by their original actor: 52 years.
The origin of Daffy's voice, with its lateral lisp, is a matter of some debate. One often-repeated "official" story is that it was modeled after producer Leon Schlesinger's tendency to lisp. However, in Mel Blanc's autobiography, That's Not All Folks!, he contradicts that conventional belief, writing, "It seemed to me that such an extended mandible would hinder his speech, particularly on words containing an s sound. Thus 'despicable' became 'desth-picable.'"
Daffy's slobbery, exaggerated lisp was developed over time, and it is barely noticeable in the early cartoons.
In The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Daffy has a middle name, Dumas as the writer of a swashbuckling script, a nod to Alexandre Dumas. Also, in the Baby Looney Tunes episode "The Tattletale", Granny addresses Daffy as "Daffy Horatio Tiberius Duck". In The Looney Tunes Show, the joke middle names "Armando" and "Sheldon" are used.Golden Age Years
Daffy's early years, 1937–1940
Tex Avery and Bob Clampett created the original version of Daffy in 1937. Daffy established his status by jumping into the water, hopping around, and yelling, "Woo-hoo!" Animator Bob Clampett immediately seized upon the Daffy Duck character and cast him in a series of cartoons in the 1930s and 1940s. The early Daffy is a wild and zany screwball, perpetually bouncing around the screen with cries of "Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!"Daffy would also feature in several war-themed shorts during World War II, remaining true to his unbridled nature. He battles a Nazi goat intent on eating Daffy's scrap metal in Scrap Happy Daffy, hits Adolf Hitler's head with a giant mallet in Daffy the Commando and outwits Hitler, Goebbels and Goering in Plane Daffy. Oddly enough, it was only after these wartime escapades that Daffy is actually subject to conscription into military service, in the form of "the little man from the draft board", whom he tries to dodge in Draftee Daffy.Evolving "Earlier" Daffy 1946–1950
For Daffy Doodles, Robert McKimson tamed Daffy a bit, redesigning him yet again to be rounder and less elastic. The studio also instilled some of Bugs Bunny's savvy into the duck, making him as brilliant with his mouth as he was with his battiness. Daffy was teamed up with Porky Pig; the duck's one-time rival became his straight man. Arthur Davis, who directed Warner Bros. cartoon shorts for a few years in the late 1940s until upper management decreed there should be only three units, presented a Daffy similar to McKimson's. McKimson is noted as the last of the three units to make his Daffy uniform with Jones's, with even late shorts, such as Don't Axe Me, featuring traits of the "screwball" Daffy. Starting in You Were Never Duckier, Daffy's personality evolved to be less loony and more greedy.Experimenting with Daffy 1951–1964
While Daffy's looney days were over, McKimson continued to make him as bad or good as his various roles required him to be. McKimson would often have Daffy play the role of a salesman who pushes a potential customer into buying something, such as Fool Coverage where Daffy succeeds in selling Porky Pig a $1,000,000 accident policy which only works under impossible conditions, and The High and the Flighty where Daffy intervenes in Foghorn Leghorn and the Barnyard Dawg's usual antics by selling them novelty joke items to get back at each other. His marks eventually catch on and team up against Daffy to trap him in one of the prank kits he sold to them. McKimson would use this version of Daffy from 1946 to 1961. However, even McKimson would follow in Jones' footsteps in many aspects with cartoons like People Are Bunny and Ducking the Devil. Friz Freleng's version took a hint from Chuck Jones by making the duck more sympathetic, as in Show Biz Bugs. Here, Daffy is overemotional and jealous of Bugs, yet he has real talent that is ignored by the theater manager and the crowd. This cartoon finishes with a sequence in which Daffy attempts to wow the Bugs-besotted audience with an act in which he drinks gasoline and swallows nitroglycerine, gunpowder, and uranium-238, jumps up and down to "shake well" and finally swallows a lit match that detonates the whole improbable mixture. When Bugs tells Daffy that the audience loves the act and wants more, Daffy, now a ghost floating upward, says that he can only do the act once. Some TV stations, and in the 1990s the cable network TNT, edited out the dangerous act, afraid of imitation by young children.Pairing of Daffy and Porky in parodies of popular movies, 1951–1965
While Bugs Bunny became Warner Bros.' most popular character, the directors still found ample use for Daffy. Several cartoons place him in parodies of popular movies and radio serials; Porky Pig was usually a comic relief sidekick. For example, Daffy in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery as "Duck Twacy" by Bob Clampett; in The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Daffy was the hero and Porky Pig was the villain. Drip-Along Daffy, named after the Hopalong Cassidy character, throws Daffy into a Western with him labeled "Western-Type Hero" and Porky Pig labeled "Comedy Relief". In Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, a parody of Buck Rogers, Daffy trades barbs with Marvin the Martian, with Porky Pig retaining the role of Daffy's sidekick. In Rocket Squad, a parody of Dragnet and Racket Squad, Daffy and Porky Pig pair up once again. Daffy also played Stupor Duck, a parody of the Adventures of Superman television series. Robin Hood Daffy casts the duck in the role of the legendary outlaw Robin Hood with Porky Pig as Friar Tuck. China Jones named after China Smith, has Daffy in Hong Kong playing the role of a private investigator.Bugs's ascension to stardom also prompted the Warner Bros. animators to recast Daffy as the rabbit's rival, intensely jealous, insecure and determined to steal back the spotlight, while Bugs either remained cool headed but mildly amused and/or indifferent to the duck's jealousy, sometimes using it to his advantage. Daffy's desire to achieve stardom at almost any cost was explored as early as 1940 in Freleng's You Ought to Be in Pictures, but the idea was most successfully used by Chuck Jones, who redesigned the duck once again, making him scrawnier and scruffier. In Jones' "Hunting Trilogy" of Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning and Duck! Rabbit, Duck!, Daffy's attention-grabbing ways and excitability provide Bugs Bunny the perfect opportunity to fool the hapless Elmer Fudd into repeatedly shooting the duck's bill off. Also, these cartoons reveal Daffy's catchphrase, "Youuu're deththpicable!". Jones' Daffy sees himself as self-preservationist, not selfish. However, this Daffy can do nothing that does not backfire on him, more likely to singe his tail feathers as well as his ego and pride than anything. It is thought that Chuck Jones based Daffy Duck's new personality on his fellow animator Bob Clampett, who, like Daffy, was known as a loud self-promoter. In Beanstalk Bunny Daffy, Bugs and Elmer are once again teamed up in a parody of Jack and the Beanstalk ; in A Star Is Bored Daffy tries to upstage Bugs Bunny. In the spoofs of the TV shows The Millionaire and This Is Your Life, Daffy tries to defeat his arch-rival Bugs Bunny for a $1,000,000.00 prize given out by his favorite TV show in The Million Hare and in This Is a Life?, Daffy tries to upstage Bugs Bunny in order to be the guest of honor on the show; in all four of these cartoons Daffy ends up a loser because of his own overemotional personality and his craving for attention. By Daffy's own admission he is extremely greedy: "I can't help it, I'm a greedy slob. It's my hobby!" Ali Baba Bunny and "I may be a coward, but I'm a greedy little coward" Ducking the Devil.Solo Daffy
Film critic Steve Schneider calls Jones' version of Daffy "a kind of unleashed id." Jones said that his version of the character "expresses all of the things we're afraid to express." This is evident in Jones' Duck Amuck, "one of the few unarguable masterpieces of American animation" according to Schneider. In the episode, Daffy is plagued by a godlike animator whose malicious paintbrush alters the setting, soundtrack, and even Daffy. When Daffy demands to know who is responsible for the changes, the camera pulls back to reveal none other than Bugs Bunny. Duck Amuck is widely heralded as a classic of filmmaking for its illustration that a character's personality can be recognized independently of appearance, setting, voice, and plot. In 1999, the short was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.