Daffy Duck & Egghead

Daffy Duck and Egghead
Merrie Melodies series
Title Card
Directed by	Fred Avery
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger
Story by	J.B. Hardaway
Voices by	Mel Blanc (uncredited) Cliff Nazarro (uncredited)
Music by	Carl W. Stalling
Animation by	Virgil Ross Irven Spence (uncredited)
Distributed by	Warner Brothers Pictures
Release date(s)	January 1, 1938 (USA)
Color process	Technicolor
Running time	7 min, 37 sec
Language	English
Preceded by	Porky's Duck Hunt (1937)
Followed by	What Price Porky (1938)

Daffy Duck & Egghead is a 1937-produced, 1938-released Warner Bros. cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series. It features the early, zany version of Daffy Duck, who spends the film harassing Egghead (later to become Elmer Fudd), marking the second appearance of Daffy Duck (after Porky's Duck Hunt, of which this cartoon is basically a reworking), his first in color, and first where he is given his current name. It includes a set-piece song-and-dance number by Daffy (shown with a blue band around his neck, instead of the usual white), doing his own variation of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down (the theme for Looney Tunes).

Plot

Daffy Duck and Egghead, two "nuts"

The story begins with Egghead (in a voice imitating radio comic Joe Penner) who is annoyed by a (rotoscoped) shadowman in the audience who doesn't sit down. Egghead shoots the audience member and the member falls after going through extended "death throes". Egghead hears a call from the grass, and out comes Daffy Duck biting his nose (just like he did to Porky Pig in Porky's Duck Hunt.) While fighting, a tortoise (with a voice imitating radio comic Parkyakarkus) comes and tries to give Daffy and Egghead new weapons. When the tortoise goes away, Egghead uses his real gun and Daffy tries to make him shoot the apple on his head. Egghead misses all the time, so Daffy puts a blind sign, a cup of pencils and, disguise glasses on Egghead. ("Too bad, too bad," as Daffy says.). Bugs Bunny from time to time says 'Too bad, too bad'.

Daffy then walks away and sings his own viriation of Merry Go Round Broke Down by himself five minutes into the cartoon, in a set-piece drawn in a different style from the rest of the cartoon, and also containing the subdued, early form of Daffy's lisp, which is absent in the rest of the film:

My name is Daffy Duck,

I worked on a Merry-Go-Round,

The job was swell

I did quite well

Till the Merry-go-round broke down.

(Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo-hoo!)

The guy that worked with me,

Was a horse with a lavender eye,

Around in whirls, we winked at girls

Till the Merry-go-round broke down.

(plays flute)

Up and down and round we sped,

That dizzy pace soon went to my head,

Now you know why I'm dizzy

And do the things I do

I am askew [or "a screw"] and you'd be too

If the Merry-go-round broke down.

(Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo-Hoo-hoo-Hoo-hoo-Hoo-hoo!)

If the Merry-go-round broooooooookkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeee (while stretching his neck) down (calmly; not singing)

Daffy then shakes hands with his reflection from the lake and they both dive back into the water.

Later, Egghead finally manages to capture Daffy by shooting a pair of gloves from his gun, knocking Daffy out and allowing Egghead to place him in a net. Just as Egghead celebrates, a duck from the mental ward comes to claim Daffy. He thanks Egghead for helping to catch Daffy, and tells him that Daffy is 100% nuts. "Yeah?" Egghead asks, "Yeah!" answers the duck warden. At that moment, both he and Daffy beat Egghead up before woohoo-ing out into the distance. Egghead becomes fed up with the antics and decides to join them as the cartoon ends. A similar joke would end 1940's Knock Knock, the debut of Woody Woodpecker, a character whose early behavior was similar to the early Daffy, and likewise voiced by Mel Blanc, who was then working for Lantz as well as Warner/Schlesinger.

Censorship

• On Cartoon Network and The WB, the scene where Egghead shoots an audience member after standing up from his seat numerous times is cut.^[1]

Availability

Daffy Duck & Egghead is available, uncensored and restored, on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3.

See also

• Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1929–1939)

References

1. ^ http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/ltcuts/d/

External links

• Daffy Duck & Egghead at the Internet Movie Database

Preceded by Porky's Duck Hunt

Daffy Duck Cartoons 1938

Succeeded by The Daffy Doc