A Coy Decoy

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = A Coy Decoy
series = Merrie Melodies/Daffy Duck/Porky Pig


caption =
director = Bob Clampett
story_artist = Melvin Millar
animator = Norman McCabe
voice_actor = Mel Blanc
musician = Carl W. Stalling
producer = Leon Schlesinger
distributor = Warner Bros. Pictures
release_date = June 7, 1941
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 8 min
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0033496

A Coy Decoy is a 1941 Warner Bros. cartoon, directed by Bob Clampett and featuring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. The film is set in a closed bookstore at night, when the many characters and elements featured within the books come to life.

Plot Summary

Porky Pig, featured on the cover of "The Westerner", comes to life and sings "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride." Across the way, Daffy Duck, featured on the cover of "The Ugly Duckling", comes to life and sings "Git Along, Little Dogies."

A wolf emerges from "The Wolf of Wall Street" and lures Daffy to him using a female duck decoy. Daffy follows and grabs what he thinks is the decoy but is actually the wolf's nose. Once he realizes he is in danger, Daffy tells the wolf that he is not worth eating and runs away.

Daffy uses the books to defeat the wolf. He opens a copy of "The Hurricane" to blow the wolf away, and lightning from the book "Lightning" strikes the wolf.

Daffy returns to the decoy. Porky berates him, saying they could never "mean anything to each other." Daffy sticks up his nose and swims away with the decoy, followed by four tiny decoys that look like Daffy.

Cultural References

*Many well-known books can be seen in the book store, including: "The Yearling" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, "Oliver Wiswell" by Kenneth Roberts, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe, "One Foot in Heaven" by Hartzell Spence, "Black Beauty" by Anna Sewell, "The Green Bay Tree" by Louis Bromfield, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder, and "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.

*"Ride Tenderfoot Ride", a film starring Gene Autry, was released in theatres one year prior to "A Coy Decoy." Here, Porky Pig is a caricature of Gene Autry. He sings "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride," which was the title song of the earlier film.

*"Git Along, Little Dogies" is a staple cowboy song. In Daffy's version of the song, the lyrics are: "I can't get a long, little dogie / I can't even get one that's small."

*While singing this song, Daffy enters the book "Black Beauty" and rides out on a large black woman. This is one of the many instances when racial caricatures were used in the early Warner Bros. cartoons (see "Censorship" note).

*"The Ugly Duckling" is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.

*While being chased, Daffy turns to the wolf and says, "You're a hard man, McGee." This was a catch phrase for The Great Gildersleeve, a recurring character on the classic radio show "Fibber McGee and Molly".

*At the beginning of the cartoon, the opening bars of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" can be heard in the score. This music is used to imply that the time is Night.

Censorship

*The FOX "Merrie Melodies Show", Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network (not counting airplay on The Bob Clampett Show) edited this cartoon to remove the part where after Daffy sings, "Get Along, Little Doggie", he leaps into a copy of "Black Beauty" and comes out riding on the shoulders of a black mammy-looking woman (though Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon cut the entire sequence while "The Merrie Melodies Show" left in the "Get Along, Little Doggie" part and cut out just before Daffy gets into "Black Beauty") [http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/ltcuts/ltcutsc.html] .

ee also

*List of cartoons featuring Daffy Duck
*List of Porky Pig cartoons

References