Also Starring Porky Pig

Daffy-blogging, essay 12 of 15 blog entries on

Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century

Porky Pig in Drip-Along Daffy (1951).

Also Starring Porky Pig

The Space Cadet in
Duck Dodgers (1953).

In Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century (1953), Porky plays the “eager young space cadet,” looking very young for his years.  In his introductory shot, he looks downright baby-ish.

In reality, Porky was the oldest, most-seasoned member of the cast.  Marvin the Martian was a newcomer (first appearing in 1948), Daffy Duck was a long-term dependable star (first appearing in 1937), but Porky was the very first Warner Bros. cartoon superstar, with his initial screen appearance dating back to 1935.

Porky and Daffy as friends in Porky's Pigs Feat (1943).

Porky was an odd candidate for stardom.  His only distinguishing characteristic was his stutter.  Aside from that, his age varied, his weight shifted wildly, and his character changed to fit the short.  But, somehow, stardom was his destiny.  When the Warner Bros. team started having him stutter “Abba-de, abba-de, abba-de, Th-that’s All Folks!” at the close of every
Looney Tune, his immortality was assured.

Porky was always a different kind of star.  Both Daffy and Bugs could easily carry a picture—they had “leading man” personalities.  As parts for Daffy and Bug grew, Porky receded into supporting roles under directors Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, and Bob Clampett in the 1940s.

Chuck Jones struggled to find a comic personality for Porky that he could identify with.  Through trial and error, Jones eventually decided to stress the role of Porky as an “observer.”  Jones explained this new identity for Porky in his book Chuck Reducks:

“The role became significant in Duck Dodgers, in which (Porky) acts as Daffy’s assistant.  The film’s leading man could not appear heroic unless he had somebody to bounce off of, and a character such as Daffy required someone relatively meek for the role.  Porky, responding on behalf of the audience, makes us realize the true craziness of what we are seeing.”

Marvin the Martian meets his match in Duck Dodgers.

While Daffy and Porky were sometimes teamed as partners in the 1940s, Porky’s new role as a wiser observer appears to have debuted in Drip-Along Daffy in 1950.  Daffy plays the western-type hero and Porky is the stubble-bearded comic relief, riding behind on a donkey.  As with his space cadet in Duck Dodgers, Porky plays the character who can actually read the unfolding situation correctly and win a confrontation with the villain.  In Drip-Along Daffy, Porky defeats villain Nasty Canasta by sending a toy soldier out to fire a gun at him.  In Duck Dodgers, Porky hands a stick of dynamite to Marvin the Martian and the ruse works.

The new Daffy-Porky relationship continued to develop through at least two more excellent Jones Unit cartoons, Deduce, You Say (1956) with Daffy as Dorlock Holmes and Porky as Watkins and Robin Hood Daffy (1957) with Porky as Friar Tuck.

Daffy and Porky in Deduce, You Say (1956).

Daffy and Porky in Robin Hood Daffy (1957).

Reference Sources

Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones

Chuck Reducks by Chuck Jones

Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier

Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide by Jerry Beck

Warner Bros. Animation Art by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald

7 Minutes by Norman M. Klein

That's All Folks by Steve Schneider
Stepping Into the Picture by Robert J. McKinnon

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set, Duck Dodgers commentary by Michael Barrier

Friends at the IMDb Classic Film message board including Rollo Treadway, Chloe Joe Fassbender, Illtdesq, and Fish Beauty

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch Duck Dodgers...

Purchase Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent Disc Two of Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2011 Lee Price

Crazy Colors and Designs

Daffy-blogging, essay 11 of 15 blog entries on

Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century

Crazy Colors and Designs

These aren't crazy colors and designs.  This particular background,
from Chuck Jones' Old Glory (1939), shows the Disney-influenced
realistic approach, with landscape details delicately rendered in
watercolor.  The stylized backgrounds discussed here were a
reaction against this approach to animation.

Space column in
Duck Dodgers (1953).

Watching Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century (1953), few people complain that the ground of Planet X is pink and purple.  Or that the sky is more green than black.  We sense that Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Marvin the Martian naturally fit into this off-kilter world and we go with it.  It took time for Hollywood to realize that audiences would accept a non-realistic approach to cartoon backgrounds.  More than anyone, Maurice Noble pushed background stylization into the mainstream.

The characters of Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer were well-understood by the time that Noble arrived at the Warner Bros. Studio in mid-1950.  But while the characters were fully formed, the background landscapes that they moved through were less firmly established.  At first, Warner Bros. strived for the realism of mid-1930s Disney backgrounds, albeit with fewer resources and lower budgets.  Then, in the 1940s, 

Planet X in
Duck Dodgers.

Chuck Jones and others began experimenting with more stylized backgrounds.

In his essential book Hollywood Cartoons, Michael Barrier recalls the instructions that Chuck Jones issued to his background artist Earl Klein in the mid-1940s.  According to Klein, Jones requested the following approach toward background art:  “Look, use exaggerated perspective, and think of it as a flat two-dimensional design instead of trying to get fake aerial perspective.”  Furthermore, Klein said that Jones encouraged the use of “way-out color.”

In later years, Noble would sometimes downplay the influence of previous Warner Bros. animators and the UPA cartoons on his work.  However, his boss Jones was always keenly aware of innovations emerging both within their own studio and at their rivals.  Jones embraced the idea of greater abstraction and he hired Noble because he sensed that Noble could do these new striking backgrounds better than anyone.

Great artist though he was, Maurice Noble didn’t arise from a vacuum.  Artists were putting their unique signatures on backgrounds since the beginning of animation.  Experimentation bloomed in the 1940s, with some of the most envelope-pushing ideas arising from the Chuck Jones’ unit.

Here’s a selection of some great backgrounds from cartoons of the 1940s and early 1950s that paved the way for the work of Maurice Noble at Warner Bros.

Note the stylized mountains, clouds, and cliff face in Chuck Jones'
The Dover Boys (1942), with background work by John McGrew
and Eugene Fleury.

Yellow sky, pink ground, and purple tree:  Chuck Jones plays with
color in The Case of the Missing Hare (1942), with background
work by John McGrew and Eugene Fleury.

Eugene Fleury left Warner Bros. for military service and his wife
Bernyce Polifka filled in, quickly and radically widening the palette
of the background artist.  In Wackiki Rabbit (1943), Polifka liberally
uses fabric patterns, bright colors, and all sorts of strange designs.

Former Warner Bros. animator Robert Cannon helped launch United
Productions of America (UPA) and made his mark there with the
extremely stylized Gerald McBoing Boing (1951), with backgrounds
by Bill Hurtz.  It received the Academy Award for best Animated
Short and was very influential on subsequent animation. 

John Hubley's UPA production Rooty Toot Toot (1952) pushed
background stylization even further.  The background art was by
Paul Julian, a former background artist for Warner Bros. whose
work there had been fairly traditional in nature, mainly for director
Friz Freleng.

Reference Sources

Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones

Chuck Reducks by Chuck Jones

Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier

Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide by Jerry Beck

Warner Bros. Animation Art by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald

7 Minutes by Norman M. Klein

That's All Folks by Steve Schneider
Stepping Into the Picture by Robert J. McKinnon

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set, Duck Dodgers commentary by Michael Barrier

Friends at the IMDb Classic Film message board including Rollo Treadway, Chloe Joe Fassbender, Illtdesq, and Fish Beauty

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch Duck Dodgers...

Purchase Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent Disc Two of Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2011 Lee Price

Backgrounds by Maurice Noble

Daffy-blogging, essay 10 of 15 blog entries on

Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century

Backgrounds by Maurice Noble

The landscape of Planet X, designed by Maurice Noble and painted by
Philip De Guard.  The planet surface is pink, the sky a deep sea green,
and the trees and clouds form giant letters X.

The eye was Maurice Noble's idea.  It's probably the
single most famous design element in the cartoon.

Maurice Noble’s background artistry floors me every time.  Consistently across dozens of cartoons, his background layouts are wonderfully playful and beautifully designed.  Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century offers a thrilling series of futuristic alien landscapes, perfectly supporting the comedy in the forefront while capable of 

being viewed as remarkable stand-alone works of art.

Here’s a sampling of eye-boggling art that was designed by Maurice Noble and, in most cases, painted by Warner Bros. background painter Philip De Guard.

Who needs 3D when perspective is used this effectively?
Haunted houses recede into the background in Claws for Alarm (1954),
designed by Maurice Noble and painted by Philip De Guard.

Another Maurice Noble background from Claws for Alarm (1954).
I love the purple shadow of the staircase, falling diagonally
across the bright pink wall (and Door #13 of this haunted house,
of course!).

Daydreaming youngster Ralph Phillips imagines that he's a fighter
pilot who captures a squadron of UFOs in Boyhood Daze (1957).
For this heroic moment, Maurice Noble frames the action inside a
dreamy cloud with the same type of radiant aura that Noble employs
when Duck Dodgers announces his name.

Another image from the delightful Boyhood Daze (1957).  The
strong colors and lines of Maurice Noble's background perfectly
complement the tiger in the foreground (he's something of a
Calvin and Hobbes precursor, as he transforms from a
stuffed animal into a jungle tiger in Ralph Phillips' dream).

Maurice Noble cleverly plays with perspective in Bewitched
Bunny (1954).  The fire is flat on the floor, the mirror hangs impossibly
from the ceiling, and the sofa is an image on the wall.  This cartoon
featured the first appearance of popular Chuck Jones' character
Witch Hazel.

Modern art meets Warner Bros.  Art doesn't get much more abstract
than this background that Maurice Noble slipped into the climax of
the classic Duck Amuck (1953).

Frequently regarded as Maurice Noble's masterpiece (and I'm not
about to argue with that), What's Opera, Doc? offers one startling
landscape background after another.  This magnificent image is
just one among many.

(Both this entry and tomorrow’s blog entry are particularly indebted to Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in its Golden Age by Michael Barrier and Stepping Into the Picture: Cartoon Designer Maurice Noble by Robert J. McKinnon, two of the finest works written on classic Hollywood cartoons.)

Reference Sources

Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones

Chuck Reducks by Chuck Jones

Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier

Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide by Jerry Beck

Warner Bros. Animation Art by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald

7 Minutes by Norman M. Klein

That's All Folks by Steve Schneider
Stepping Into the Picture by Robert J. McKinnon

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set, Duck Dodgers commentary by Michael Barrier

Friends at the IMDb Classic Film message board including Rollo Treadway, Chloe Joe Fassbender, Illtdesq, and Fish Beauty

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch Duck Dodgers...

Purchase Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent Disc Two of Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2011 Lee Price

Funny Little Things

Daffy-blogging, essay 9 of 15 blog entries on

Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century

Part One, Funny Little Things

Blink and you miss it:  Daffy gets so angry at Porky that he sticks
his hand straight through his head.

Daffy takes the evaporator on the right that goes to the airport
and not the evaporator on the left that would presumably take
him to the Warner Bros. studio.

I love the flying taxi modeled on a submarine.

How did they miss the misspelling on "stratosphere"?

Marvin's Matomic Masher is built on the model of a cash register,
complete with "SALE" tab.

Part Two, The Star of Our Show

Daffy as Duck Dodgers.

Psst…  I’m going to let you in on a secret.

Daffy is not really Duck Dodgers.  It’s all just an act.

Daffy’s enablers at Warner Bros. didn’t understand him at first.  It took years for them to get a full grasp of his character.

In his first movie appearance in Tex Avery’s Porky’s Duck Hunt (1937), Daffy stole the movie from everyone around him simply by being a

Daffy in Porky's Duck Hunt (1937).

manic nutcase.  “I’m just a crazy darn-fool duck!” he babbles to Porky and, truthfully, that just about covers it.  You can sense the charisma though.  In retrospect, you can see the star power.

Nearly all the Warner Bros. directors worked to get a handle on Daffy’s personality in the early 1940s.  Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, and Robert Clampett all struggled to find the key to the duck’s undeniable charm.  (In a way, watching Daffy in shorts from this period is like watching Humphrey Bogart movies prior to High Sierra (1939)—there’s a strong character there but it isn’t channeled properly yet.)

Daffy as Duck Twacy in The Great Piggy Bank
Robbery (1946).

Robert Clampett probably realized the truth first.  In The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946), Daffy hallucinates that he’s a police detective.  “Nothing’s impossible to Duck Twacy!” he slobbers.  But, of course, he’s not a real Dick Tracy but just a dream of himself as Dick Tracy.  And even that doesn’t quite capture the real Daffy…  There was one further realization that had to be made.

Daffy isn’t a barnyard dreamer like in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery.  He’s an actor, a born performer.  That’s why he’s not really Duck Dodgers but something much more entertaining than a genuine space hero—he’s Daffy Duck pretending he’s Duck Dodgers.  Just as in other great Daffy shorts, he’s Daffy pretending to be Robin Hood or the Scarlet Pimpernel or a western sheriff or Sherlock Holmes.

In all these cases, the hero exterior is only a feather or two deep.  Clever disguises like his Dodgers’ red cape and head antenna can’t conceal the truth.  Daffy’s a star because he’s Daffy, the world’s greatest show-biz duck.

Daffy on the set, his cigar smoke plugging his bosses, in
Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938).

Reference Sources

Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones

Chuck Reducks by Chuck Jones

Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier

Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide by Jerry Beck

Warner Bros. Animation Art by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald

7 Minutes by Norman M. Klein

That's All Folks by Steve Schneider

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set, Duck Dodgers commentary by Michael Barrier

Friends at the IMDb Classic Film message board including Rollo Treadway, Chloe Joe Fassbender, Illtdesq, and Fish Beauty

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch Duck Dodgers...

Purchase Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent Disc Two of Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2011 Lee Price

Orchestrating the Apocalypse

Daffy-blogging, essay 8 of 15 blog entries on

Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century

Part One, Earlier Apocalypses

In Max Fleischer's Koko's Earth Control (1928), Koko the Clown's dog
Fritz presses the "Destroy the Earth" lever.  At the top of the earth,
Koko and Fritz are panicking but it's too late to reverse things now.

Animals can be seen in the foreground surveying post-apocalyptic
desolation in Hugh Harman's Peace on Earth (1939).

Two fighting superpowers (a super-cat and a super-mouse)
endanger the entire planet in Tex Avery's King-Size Canary (1947).

Bugs Bunny tricks Marvin the Martian into blowing up the moon
in Haredevil Hare (1948).  Left hanging on the remaining crescent,
Bugs screams, "Get me out of here!"

Planet X obliterated in Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2the Century (1953).

Part Two, Orchestrating the Apocalypse

How do you orchestrate the end of the world?

In the closing scene of Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century, Duck Dodgers and Marvin the Martian blow up Planet X.  Michael Maltese and Chuck Jones dreamed the scene up, Mel Blanc supplied the character voices, the animators painted the images on hundreds of cels, and then the sounds of apocalypse were added.

Treg Brown, Warner Bros. resident sound effects genius, orchestrated the noise.  A 20-year veteran at the studio, Brown had assembled a vast collection of thousands of sound effects, preserved on small reels of tape, over the years.  His task was to find or create the appropriate sound effects and synchronize them into the film using the animator’s exposure sheets, which precisely timed image, dialogue, and sound effects.  This particular scene—the blowing up of a planet—would have required a super-sized explosion noise.  Brown had plenty of explosions on file to choose from.

Planet X, pre-explosion...

Carl Stalling wrote and conducted the music.  At the age of 62, Stalling was the oldest of the core team of artists who worked on Duck Dodgers.  He was a pivotal figure in the history of animation having wedded music to animation for the first time with his legendary work on Disney’s Steamboat Willie in 1928.  Like so many others who worked on Duck Dodgers, he was a wizard at his work but also
a consummate team player.

Kaboom!!!

The roots of Stalling’s genius extend back to his improvisational work as a silent movie organist in Kansas City.  Matching music to a wide variety of silent films, Stalling became a master at borrowing snippets of melodies from classical and popular sources, incorporating them into broader themes, and building emotional or comic impact.  Performing for live audiences, he learned when it was most effective to play loud and when it was best to be silent.  He learned the art of timing.

So this is how you orchestrate the end of the world:  Stalling’s fifty-piece orchestra is fully employed, building up to a mighty horn section crescendo that reaches its peak a second before the explosion.  Then there’s a split second of silence followed by Treg Brown’s enormous “kaboom” effect.  As the sound effect trails off, an eerie subdued flute melody emerges in the background.  On the screen, we have deep space, with Daffy and Marvin standing on what’s left of Planet X, just a floating clump of dirt now.  The characters exchange their final dialogue as the flute melody temporarily drops out, replaced by the mock-heroic Dodgers theme.  But then, as the camera tilts down to show the predicament of Porky and Marvin, the minor key of the flute melody returns, momentarily suggesting their insignificance against a backdrop of infinite space.

Iris in on Porky for the closing line and the orchestra roars back for the traditional Merrie Melodies’ closing theme.  That’s all, folks!

It’s perfect music for Duck Dodgers.  And it would probably work just as brilliantly with an arthouse piece like Samuel Becket's Waiting for Godot.  The essential existential themes are all there—the anarchic comedy and underlying despair—but perhaps a bit more accessible for the general public when performed by Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Marvin the Martian, and Carl Stalling.

The explosion fades, revealing a clump of dirt with our three leads
clinging to it.

Reference Sources

Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones

Chuck Reducks by Chuck Jones

Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier

Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide by Jerry Beck

Warner Bros. Animation Art by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald

7 Minutes by Norman M. Klein

That's All Folks by Steve Schneider

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set, Duck Dodgers commentary by Michael Barrier

Friends at the IMDb Classic Film message board including Rollo Treadway, Chloe Joe Fassbender, Illtdesq, and Fish Beauty

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch Duck Dodgers...

Purchase Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent Disc Two of Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2011 Lee Price

Talks Like a Duck

Daffy-blogging, essay 7 of 15 blog entries on

Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century

Part One, The Acme Arsenal

Sometimes Acme products do what they promise.  Here,
Duck Dodger's Acme Disintegrating Pistol very effectively
disintegrates.

The effectiveness of an Acme product often depends upon the
character of the user.  When reliable Space Cadet Porky uses an Acme
Integrating Pistol, it works just fine.

The first appearance of an Acme product in a Warner Bros. cartoon:
An Acme Super Outfit for Wile E. Coyote in the first of the Coyote/
Road Runner series, Fast and Fury-ous (1949).

Another Acme product that delivers what it promises.  Wile E. Coyote
neglects to read the fine print (and holds the pebble over his head
while adding water) in Scrambled Aches (1957).

Acme Aspirin may be effective for curing some pain but not for relief
from crashing into the ground after falling off a mountain.  A hard lesson
learned by Wile E. Coyote in Beep, Beep (1952).

"Mr. Coyote believed that this product would enable him to pounce
upon his prey in the initial moments of his chase, when swift reflexes
are at a premium."  From "Coyote V. Acme" by Ian Frazier, published
in The New Yorker, February 1990.  The still is from Beep, Beep (1952).
Note that Acme Rocket-Powered Products, Inc. is located in Fairfield, NJ!

Part Two, Talks Like a Duck

There were great voice artists in animation before Mel Blanc.  Two of my favorites are:

Jack Mercer

Jack Mercer who did the ever-mumbling, ad-lib spouting Popeye for most of the great Fleischer cartoons of the 1930s.

Pinto Colvig who was the lovable, folksy voice of Goofy in the Disney cartoons.

Both were great.  They mastered their Popeye and their Goofy and kept discovering new shades and depths to their characters.

Perhaps more importantly, there was Mae

Pinto Colvig

Questel, who could be considered an authentic precursor of the Mel Blanc phenomenon.  Her Betty Boop and her Olive Oyl have fully developed vocal personalities, expressed through dead-on mimicry and solid acting chops. 

But Mel Blanc redefined the field, creating a whole new set of expectations regarding what voice artists can accomplish in animation.  Through force of personality and natural acting talent, he developed the distinctive speaking characters of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Pepe le Pew, Yosemite Sam,

Mae Questel

Speedy Gonzalez, and a host of others.  His vocal talent was actually not as broad as many others who have done well in the field—but his vocal acting ability was boundless.

Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century is a one-man voice extravaganza, with Blanc effortlessly differentiating Daffy, Porky, Dr. I.Q. High, and Marvin the Martian.  There’s never a slip.  Each is always perfectly in character.

Mel Blanc

In reality, these performances required a bit more work than it sounds.  Blanc would do all the Daffy lines in one session, the Porky lines in another, and then the Marvin lines.  He wasn’t performing in a vacuum either.  Jones was right there with him, feeding the cues (doing his own versions of Daffy, Porky, and Marvin in turn), and setting the tempo.  Every aspect of these cartoons required teamwork—even Blanc’s high-flying solo contribution.

Reference Sources

Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones

Chuck Reducks by Chuck Jones

Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier

Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide by Jerry Beck

Warner Bros. Animation Art by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald

7 Minutes by Norman M. Klein

That's All Folks by Steve Schneider

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set, Duck Dodgers commentary by Michael Barrier

Friends at the IMDb Classic Film message board including Rollo Treadway, Chloe Joe Fassbender, Illtdesq, and Fish Beauty

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch Duck Dodgers...

Purchase Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent Disc Two of Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume One DVD set at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2011 Lee Price