Little Quacker

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Little Quacker
series = Tom and Jerry


caption =
director = William Hanna
Joseph Barbera
story_artist = William Hanna
Joseph Barbera
animator = Irven Spence
Ray Patterson
Ed Barge
Kenneth Muse
voice_actor = Red Coffee
musician = Scott Bradley
producer = Fred Quimby
distributor = Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
release_date = flagicon|US January 7, 1950
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 7' 07"
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0042682
preceded_by = "Tennis Chumps"
followed_by = "Saturday Evening Puss"

Little Quacker is a 1950 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 47th "Tom and Jerry" short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. It is the first Tom and Jerry short to be released in the 1950s. Little Quacker marks the debut appearance of the eponymous character, Quacker the duckling who would go on to appear in seven more shorts, making him one of the more enduring supporting characters in the Tom and Jerry cartoon series. The voice of Quacker was supplied by Red Coffee, though the voice has often been mistaken for Clarence Nash's, who was better known as the voice of Donald Duck.

Plot

On a farm, a momma duck goes out for a swim, leaving behind an egg in her nest. Tom craftily reaches into the nest and takes the egg for cooking. He rushes back to his kitchen and places a frying pan over the hob. However, when Tom breaks the egg open, instead of getting the albumen and yolk, he gets Quacker, a duckling. Not to be put off, Tom decides he will cook roast duck instead.

Tom feeds Quacker on plenty of bread to fatten and stuff him up, and while the duckling is not looking, Tom gets hold of a meat cleaver and attempts to chop Quacker up, but misses. Quacker escapes into Jerry's mouse hole and into his bed. Jerry uncovers Quacker, who informs Jerry of what Tom has tried to do to him.

Jerry emerges from his mouse hole cautiously, but Tom cuts him down with his meat cleaver...almost. Quacker, believing that Jerry has been beheaded, pulls at Jerry's legs, only for the camera to pull away, showing that Tom has only managed to catch Jerry by the whiskers. Jerry is set free and gets his revenge on Tom by placing Tom's tail outside of the hole, such that Tom ends up chopping his own tail and screaming in pain.

The chase continues outside, where Tom's efforts to chop away at Jerry and Quacker result in him being flattened by falling buildings or falling posts. Later on while Quacker & Jerry searches for his momma duck, Tom uses a duck call to lure Quacker, but Jerry is clued up to what Tom is doing, and substitutes his duck caller for a stick of dynamite which blows up in his face.Tom chases after Jerry and Quacker with a lawnmower, but ultimately ends up running over Quacker's mother, revealing her undergarments. Momma and baby are reunited, but Tom grabs Quacker off the momma duck & she grabs her baby back. After Quacker tells his momma what has happened, she demands to know what Tom thinks he's doing. Tom's only answer is scornful mimicry of her quacking. Outraged, the momma duck calls her husband (HENRY!) and tells him how she was minding her own business when Tom ran over her with the lawnmower, "and he got smart, too!". Henry, tattooed like a sailor and strong as an ox, snarls "He did?" before chasing after Tom and repeatedly running the lawnmower up and down his back as Tom is pinned face-first against a tree. The final scene has Momma Duck & Quacker swimming in the pond, with Momma duck towing Jerry on a little raft. Jerry uses the duck caller to attempt to sound like momma and baby.

Notes

*This short was the only appearance of Henry, the Poppa Duck, Momma Duck's only speaking episode as well.
*Little Quacker is the official billing name of the duckling in "Tom and Jerry comics" from Dell Comics and Gold Key Comics.