Daffy Duck

**Daffy Dumas Duck** (also known by **Sheldon**, **Idiot Eyes**, or **Armando**) is an animated cartoon character produced

## Interactions

### Voiced by

Richard Steven Horvitz

by Warner Bros. Animation. He has appeared in cartoon series such as *Looney Tunes* and *Merrie Melodies*, where he usually has been depicted as a rival and occasional best friend of Bugs Bunny. Daffy 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 and Popeye.

Daffy starred in 130 shorts in the Golden Age, behind Bugs Bunny's 175 appearances and Porky Pig's 162 appearances. Daffy was ranked #14 on *TV Guide'*s list of top 50 best cartoon characters of all time and was featured on one of the issue's four covers with Porky Pig and the Powerpuff Girls (all of which are Time Warner-owned characters).

## Origin

[1]Daffy Duck seen first time in "Porky's Duck Hunt"
Daffy first appeared on April 17, 1937 in "Porky's Duck Hunt", directed by Tex Avery and animated by Bob Clampett. The cartoon is a standard hunter/prey pairing for which Leon Schlesinger's studio was famous, but Daffy (barely more than an unnamed bit player in this short) was something new to moviegoers: an assertive, completely unrestrained, combative protagonist. Bob later recalled: "At that time, audiences weren't accustomed to seeing a cartoon character do these things. And so, when it hit the theaters it was an explosion. People would leave the theaters talking about this daffy duck."

This early Daffy is less anthropomorphic and resembles a "normal" duck, being short and pudgy, with stubby legs and a beak. The only aspects of the character that have remained consistent through the years are his voice (provided by Mel Blanc) and his black feathers with a white neck ring. Mel's voice for Daffy holds the world record for the longest voice-acting of one animated character by his original voice actor: 52 years.

The origin of Daffy's voice is a matter of some debate. One often-repeated "official" story is that it was modeled after producer 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 'dethpicable.'"

In "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" (1950), Daffy has a middle name, Dumas, as the screenwriter of a swashbuckling script, a nod to Alexandre Dumas.  Also, in the *Baby Looney Tunes* episode "The Tattletale", Granny addresses Daffy as "Daffy Horacio Tiberius Duck." In *The Looney Tunes Show* (2011), the joke middle names "Armando" and "Sheldon" are used.

Daffy's slobbery, exaggerated lisp was developed over time, and it is barely noticeable in the early cartoons. In "Daffy Duck & Egghead," Daffy does not lisp at all except in the separately drawn set-piece of Daffy singing "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" in which just a slight lisp can be heard.

In *Looney Tunes: Back in Action*, Daffy is put under a more sympathetic light where he feels underappreciated alongside his envy of Bugs' popularity, which gets him fired. He goes on an adventure with DJ to battle The ACME Company and save DJ's father, but his real purpose of coming is to get the Blue Monkey diamond.

## Different Interpretations

Virtually every Warner Bros. cartoon director put his own spin on the Daffy Duck character – he may be a lunatic vigilante in one short but a greedy gloryhound in another or an outright villain in another (particularly the 1960s shorts where he is paired with Speedy Gonzales). Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones both made extensive use of these two very different versions of the character.

### Daffy's Early YearsEdit

[2]Bob Clampett's concept for Daffy
Tex Avery created the original version of Daffy in 1937. Daffy established his status by jumping into the water, hopping around, and yelling, "Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! 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!" (In his biography, Mel Blanc stated that the zany demeanor was inspired by Hugh Herbert's catchphrase, which was taken to a wild extreme for Daffy). Bob physically redesigned the character, making him taller and lankier and rounding out his feet and bill. He was often paired with Porky Pig.

### 1941-1945Edit

Daffy would also feature in several war-themed shorts during World War II. Daffy always stays true to his unbridled nature, however; for example, he attempts to dodge conscription in "Draftee Daffy" (1945), battles a Nazi goat intent on eating Daffy's scrap metal in "Scrap Happy Daffy" (1943), and hits Adolf Hitler's head with a giant mallet in "Daffy - The Commando" (1943). Daffy was "drafted" as a mascot for the 600th Bombardment Squadron. "Plane Daffy" is also focused on WW2, focusing on Hitler and Daffy in a house.

### 1946-1952Edit

For *Daffy Doodles* (his first *Looney Tunes* cartoon as a director), 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 declared there should be only 3 directors (Robert McKimson, Friz Freleng, and Chuck Jones), presented a Daffy similar to Robert's. Robert is noted as the last of the three directors to make his version of Daffy uniform with Chuck's, with even late shorts, such as *Don't Axe Me* (1958), featuring the "screwball" version of the character. His persona also changed from a literal daffy character to that of a greedy, impatient and more intelligent character.

### 1953-1964Edit

[3]Daffy as "Stupor Duck".
While Daffy's looney days were over, Robert continued to make him as bad or good as his various roles required him to be. Robert would use this Daffy from 1946 to 1961. Friz Freleng's version took a hint from Chuck Jones to make the duck more sympathetic, as in the 1957 *Show Biz Bugs.* Here Daffy is arrogant 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 (in a greenish solution), jumps up and down to "shake well" and finally swallows a lit match that detonates the whole improbable mixture.

### Daffy parodies of pop cultureEdit

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. For example, "Drip-Along Daffy" throws Daffy into a Western, while "Robin Hood Daffy" (1958) casts the duck in the role of the legendary outlaw Robin Hood. In "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century" (1953), a parody of Buck Rogers, Daffy trades bullets with Marvin the Martian, with Porky Pig retaining the role of Daffy's sidekick. Other parodies were Daffy in "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" (1946) as Duck Twacy (Dick Tracy) by Bob Clampett and as "Stupor Duck" (Superman of DC Comics, now a WB property himself) by Robert McKimson.

### Pairing of Bugs and Daffy from 1951-1964Edit

[4]*Rabbit Fire's* lobby card.
[5]Rabbit Season! Duck Season! (meme)
Bugs' ascension to stardom also prompted the Warner Bros. animators to recast Daffy as the rabbit's rival, intensely envious and determined to steal back the spotlight, while Bugs either remained indifferent to the duck's envy or used it to his advantage. Daffy's desire to achieve stardom at 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' famous "Hunting Trillogy" (or "Duck Season/Rabbit Season Trilogy") of "Rabbit Fire" with "Rabbit Seasoning" and "Duck! Rabbit, Duck!," Daffy's vanity and excitedness 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, "You're despicable!" 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 dignity than anything. It’s thought that Chuck Jones based Daffy Duck’s new personality off of his fellow animator Bob Clampett, who, like Daffy, was known as a shameless self-promoter.

### Jones' Daffy and transformation to the present DaffyEdit

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* (1953), "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.