Release date: January 1st, 1938
Series: Merrie Melodies
Director: Tex Avery
Starring: Mel Blanc (Daffy, Turtle, Duck), Danny Webb (Egghead)
Starting off the new year with a bang—the first cartoon of 1938 is one of my favorites! Two Tex Avery creations, Daffy and Egghead, make their second appearances paired together.
Both characters have gotten a makeover, though Egghead’s is more drastic: he now has hair and talks in a dopey drawl courtesy of Danny Webb.
Daffy, on the other hand, now has blue irises and a matching ring around his neck—this design would be exclusive to this short only. But, it IS the first cartoon to pen him as Daffy Duck! He’d appear in a number of looney tunes shorts with porky as the year would go on.
Like so many other “hunter vs. prey” shorts, Egghead is determined to hunt Daffy. Daffy, however, is prepared to do everything in his power to make egghead miserable.
Ben Hardaway, who would have been directing his own cartoons at the time of this cartoon’s release, is the writer, and it shows throughout. Ben is notable for his more hayseed sense of humor, relying on puns so corny you’ll be flossing your teeth for a week to remove the kernels. His punny touch is noticeable right at the start, with Daffy and Egghead bursting out of literal nutshells in an odd little introductory sequence.
Irv Spence does some nice animation here: Daffy shakes his fists in the glory, soon to be interrupted by the fire of Egghead’s gun. Egghead chases after a HOOHOOing Daffy, the smoke from the gun spelling out to the audience “DUCK SEASON STARTS TODAY”.
The scene is odd, but more so out of uniqueness rather than perplexity. One wonders how Tex really would have prefaced the cartoon if he were paired with another writer instead.
In a tradition that would carry out into Tex’s MGM days, one of our first impressions of the short is a facetious disclaimer:
A sense of tranquility is established through a soft, sweeping rendition of “Morning Song” from the William Tell Overture. Various gorgeously painted backgrounds fade into each other to convey the passage of time and rise of the sun, each background absolutely stunning in its own right. In a Tex Avery cartoon, such peace and harmony can only mean one thing: chaos is soon to follow.
Our eponymous hunter creeps onto the screen, remarking aloud on the eerie stillness of his surroundings. “I wonder if there are any more hunters out here this morning.”
Right on cue, a swarm of hunters pop out of the reeds, reciting a popular catchphrase from The Ken Murray Show reused in many a ‘30s WB cartoon: “Whoooooooooa, yeaaaaah!”
The sound of quacks ring out from the recesses of the reeds, turning Egghead on the alert. Just as he prepares to hunt his prey, a signature Avery gag of epic proportions interrupts the scene… literally.
Tedd Pierce’s silhouette darkens the screen as he makes his way to his movie seat--a latecomer. Egghead spots him and urges him to sit down and not scare away his prey. The latecomer does so, only to rise up again and change seats. Our frustrated sportsman urges the silhouette to sit down again, which he does so. The silhouette never utters a word, and that’s the best part. The matter of fact delivery of the gag, the control of it all is what makes the gag so funny. Such even temperament from the silhouette juxtaposes starkly with the wild nature of Avery cartoons. The normal is now the ridiculous.
When the silhouette snoops around for a better seat once more, Egghead loses all patience and fires his gun straight at the silhouette. Tedd Pierce’s theatrics are hilarious--he twirls around, clutching his heart, hamming up his injury to the last drop. The anticipatory drum-roll as Egghead looks on brings the entire act together. Finally, Pierce collapses, much to the contentment of Egghead. He merely rubs the dust off his hands in a job well done and continues where he left off.
Cartoon characters shooting audience members isn’t an alien move in Warner Bros. cartoons (Bugs in Rhapsody Rabbit, Daffy in The Ducksters), yet the inclusion of the silhouette and its subsequent dramatics brings a new level of inclusion with the audience. Imagine what an uproar this would get in a packed house! It’s a great way to break the barrier between cartoon characters and the audience. WB did a great job of making the audience feel included. Hell, a majority of Daffy’s character throughout the ‘40s hinges on this! But that’s an analysis for another time.
Speaking of Daffy, he’s the perpetrator of those quacking sounds in the reeds. Egghead parts the plants to see if his prey is still there. He is—Daffy gives him a vicious bite on Egghead’s bulbous nose before going back into hiding.
“That duck’s craaaa-zy!” Daffy pops his head out of the reeds again, shrieking a reply of “You tellin’ me? WOO WOO WOOHOO!” Daffy’s voice is significantly more shrill than his dopey guffaws in Porky’s Duck Hunt. In fact, it’s so shrill that this could easily be considered one of his most annoying cartoons. Though his 100% screwy, totally out of his mind personality isn’t my favorite personality for him, it’s still pretty damn great! So if you like obnoxious Daffy (like me), this is a short for you. If you can’t stand him being a lunatic, beware!
With that, Daffy takes an exit, whooping and shrieking all the way in a direct throwback to his ecstatic exit in Porky’s Duck Hunt. This is a game-changer for the Merrie Melodies series—the screwy, lunatic antics were typically reserved for the black and white Looney Tunes shorts. And here we have Daffy, splitting the ears of his patrons and being a royal nuisance in the more expensive, esteemed Merrie Melodies, typically reserved for song and dance numbers! This ain’t your mother’s Merrie Melody.
When Daffy takes refuge within a cluster of reeds positioned in the middle of the lake, Egghead uses this as an opportunity to lure out his prey with a decoy. Specifically, ONE LOVE-LURE DUCK DECOY.
Egghead sends the obnoxiously feminine duck decoy out into the water, quacking in time to the beat of Carl Stalling’s “The Lady in Red” underscore. The decoy disappears into the reeds, and there’s a pause.
A flurry of aggravated, warbled quacking cues us in that Daffy is pissed off. The action is all hidden behind the plants, leaving details of their altercation is up to the audience’s interpretation. What we do see is Daffy’s physical anger: he pops out of the water at the bank of the lake, throwing the decoy down at Egghead’s feet. A makeshift sign cleverly held up by a cattail echoes a beloved catchphrase from the radio show Fibber McGee and Molly:
Daffy dives back into the water, but bubbles rippling on the surface indicate his presence. He pokes his head out to heave a teasing quack at the befuddled hunter before dipping back down again, prompting Egghead to stick his rifle in the lake. Cue a tried and true gag that was likely much funnier then than now: the ol’ tie-the-gun-into-a-bow trick.
The next gag is one that Tex Avery would refurbish in his MGM debut, The Early Bird Dood It!: Egghead physically lifts the lake up like a blanket, where Daffy appears just in time to give his nose another honk for good measure. Cue crazed laughter and intricate water aerobics. Daffy halts, addressing the audience directly with a flimsy reassurance: “I’m not crazy, I just don’t give a darn!”
Irv Spence takes the next showdown between hunter and duck. Look at how much more appealing Egghead is in his hands! Egghead leans down to retrieve his gun he tosses aside, when Daffy zooms into frame and fights him for it.
Daffy’s consistent smile as he and Egghead battle for dominance, both trying to reach higher and higher on the gun, is hysterical—he’s absolutely getting a kick out of Egghead’s frustration. Though it was clear he was reveling in Porky’s own anger in Porky’s Duck Hunt, here his enjoyment is much more blatant. He loves being a pest.
Daffy slides the rifle beneath his legs and out of sight, bopping egghead on the fist and causing him to slug a haymaker against his own head. Signature Irv Spence grawlixes add a nice level of two dimensional graphic design, like something straight from a comic.
Out of nowhere, a random turtle disrupts the altercation. The turtle is a parody of Parkykarkus from The Chase & Sanborn Hour, speaking in a thick accent and slightly butchered grammar. He opts to settle Daffy and Egghead’s fight once and for all, posing as a referee. “Just a minute, chums. Just a minute!”
He supplies the two with pistols, both fitted for their respective sizes. To Daffy, “turn around.” To Egghead, “now you turn around.” I love how Daffy’s curiosity with the turtle’s interruption is noticeable. So noticeable, in fact, that the turtle grows hostile, getting up in his face and shouting “KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES BUSINESS, AIN’T IT!” It’s rare to see Daffy lacking control of the situation, even this early on.
The two put their backs together per the turtle’s command, walking ten paces backwards in time to the turtle’s countdown. Just as the turtle reaches ten, Daffy jumps behind Egghead, who fires. A potentially gruesome conclusion is avoided as the bullet hits the turtle’s chest instead, causing his head to rocket upward, hit a branch, and shrink back into his shell. In a Hardaway-ian touch, Daffy hands Egghead a cigar, walking off screen, satisfied.
Random as the scene is (Hardaway’s influence seems to be particularly strong throughout this whole middle section), Irv Spence’s timing and appealing animation makes up for it. The switch to another animator entails an inevitable downgrade in draftsmanship.
After Egghead realizes he’s been duped, he retrieves his rifle and prepares to shoot Daffy. Though initially startled, Daffy thinks on his feet, and eagerly places an apple on his head for Egghead to aim at instead. Stalling’s fitting accompaniment of “William Tell Overture” raises in key each time Egghead fires (and subsequently misses), a pattern that sounds almost identical to Scott Bradley’s scores under the direction of Tex at MGM.
Egghead shoots a tree, the lake, a barn, and even straight past Daffy, who grows increasingly irritated at the hunter’s incompetence, moving closer to him with each effort. Hardaway’s influence is strong with the next gag, matched with Tex’s fast pace to prevent it from overstaying its welcome: Daffy thrusts pencils, sunglasses, and a sign that says BLIND on it before turning to the audience and tssking. “Too bad. Too bad!” Harsh indeed. I imagine this gag would have been prolonged had Hardaway directed this cartoon or wrote it under another director.
If anything, this cartoon certainly displays the importance of the relationship between director and writer. Writers have a much bigger influence on the cartoon than one might believe! There’s a reason as to why Chuck Jones and Mike Maltese are touted around as a dynamic duo. I wouldn’t call Hardaway a bad writer by any means, but his influence is certainly potent. Tex is a strong director, and thankfully he could cushion the blows of Hardaway’s corniness as much as he could, but it’s also evident that certain decisions were made that Tex wouldn’t have made in other circumstances.
Decisions, such as Daffy singing an entire ode to his lunacy as the cartoon’s song number. This is definitely a Hardaway-ian insert--a prototype, hayseed, screwball Bugs Bunny sings his own nutty anthem in Hardaway’s Hare-um Scare-um just a year later. Full song numbers have been making their way out the door in Avery’s cartoons, and by either this year or next they’d be absent in total from the Merrie Melodies series. It’s unlike Avery to write a whole song about characters explaining their nuttiness.
That is why I have qualms with the scene. At his zenith, Daffy never attempts to explain or justify his screwiness. Even in the mid-’40s, when he’s able to think and speak coherently and isn’t a mere caricature of his name, he showed no self awareness for his condition. The “look at me, ain’t I a crazy one?” jokes with him were out the door by 1939.
Half the fun with him is how unaware he is of his daffiness--he lives in it constantly, always zipping from emotional extremes, but never stops to tell the audience just how crazy and fun he is. Here, his self-awareness seems ingenuine and prideful. Daffy is my favorite character for his humanity and relatability (even--if not more so--when he’s a total loon). Here, he lacks that dynamism. He’s merely a stock reflection of his namesake.
With that said, Daffy’s rendition of “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” is my favorite Merrie Melody song number, period. I’m certainly biased due to my undying affinity with Daffy, but Irv Spence’s animation is genuinely fun to watch, and Mel Blanc does a wonderful performance. I know all of the words by heart!
Essentially, Daffy’s justification for his daffiness is because the dizzy pace of the merry-go-round went to his head and made him nuts. While this sense of bragging is relatively out of character for him, it makes for a contagiously fun song, and also, this is his second film ever. They still had much to explore.
The scene concludes with Daffy shaking hands with his reflection in the water and diving back in. Fade out and in to Egghead still furiously attempting to pursue his prey. Cue a fun little Avery gag where our hunter nonchalantly opens the reeds he’s hiding behind like a pair of blinds. Daffy’s carefree quacking and swimming in the lake almost seems to mock him.
In a gag that would be reused in Avery’s Lucky Ducky over at MGM to a greater extent, Daffy puts on a mask to scare away the oncoming bullets. Indeed, the bullets retreat into Egghead’s gun, prompting befuddled stares at both the gun and the audience.
Daffy engages in another round of spastic water aerobics, HOOHOOing all the way. He only pauses to cling to a cattail, echoing an Avery-ian Daffy catchphrase that he would also shriek in Daffy Duck in Hollywood, “Ain’t I some cutie? Ahah! I think I’ll do it again! HAHAHA!”
A nice, jazzy score of “Bob White (Whatcha Gonna Swing Tonight?)” accompanies yet another endeavor by Egghead. He’s either stupidly bold or boldly stupid to keep up such a tiring charade--or both! Egghead loads a pair of gloves tied to a string into the barrel of the rifle, cleverly using a cattail as a bore brush.
And, despite the absurdity of his makeshift fishing pole, it works: one gloved hand grabs Daffy by the neck, the other konking him on the head and knocking him unconscious. Egghead reels in his prize, dumping Daffy into a net and letting out a handful of gleeful “WHOOPEE!”s.
Avery’s timing is succinct--immediately after Egghead snags his duck, the sound of a siren drowns out his celebration. A duck nearly identical to Daffy approaches the scene in an “Asylum Ambulance”.
“Gee, t’anks a lot for catchin’ dis goof!” Duck confiscates his fellow duck comrade. The decision to turn the conversation confidential, complete with the lowering of the voice and shifty-eyed glances is great. “Y’know, we been after dis guy for months!”
Despite everything that Egghead has endured, he seems genuinely shocked at the duck’s claim that Daffy is “100% nuts”. “Oh YEAH?” he echoes, daring to believe it. Duck nods. “Yeeeeah!” With that, he gives Egghead a honk right on the nose.
Daffy, completely unscathed, wastes little time in joining the festivities as both ducks beat the tar out of Egghead from both ends, literally kicking him in the arse and honking him on the nose. Both ducks head to the lake, HOOHOOing in shrill unison as they bound off into the horizon. Egghead only has one more option… to join them. Thus, we iris out on our brave hunter HOOHOOing into the horizon himself.
As I said at the beginning of this review, this cartoon is one of my favorites--for this era, anyway. Despite its imperfections, it’s still a rather fun and rousing cartoon. It’s exciting to see Daffy becoming more recognizable, in terms of voice, demeanor, and appearance. The same can be said for Egghead as well, though I doubt anyone has the same attachment to him as they do other characters. I certainly don’t.
Admittedly, Porky’s Duck Hunt is a more solid cartoon. This cartoon feels much more like a string of gags than anything, though I suppose that could be said for many a Tex Avery cartoon. He wasn’t known for his moving stories.
Hardaway’s corny, hayseed sense of humor serves as the biggest detriment to the cartoon, but luckily Tex is a strong enough director to try and work around those weaknesses as best he could. And even though I disagree with the reasoning behind the song number, the song number will always be my favorite Merrie Melody song.
I didn’t mention the backgrounds very often, but they’re STELLAR. The colorful, whimsical palette brings a lot of energy and vitality to the table. If you were to describe the cartoon in one word, “energetic” would certainly be it.
So, with that said, go watch it! This is a really fun cartoon that serves as an interesting look into early Daffy’s character, obnoxious as he may be.
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