Daffy Duck is a cartoon character created by animators Tex Avery and Bob Clampett for Leon Schlesinger Productions. Styled as an anthropomorphic black duck, he was created for the Warners' cartoon series Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, in which he is usually depicted as a screwball or foil for either Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, or Speedy Gonzales. He 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 Porky Pig.
In The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950), Daffy has a middle name, Dumas as the writer of a swashbuckling script, a nod to Alexandre Dumas. Also, in the Baby Looney Tunes episode "The Tattletale", Granny addresses Daffy as "Daffy Horatio Tiberius Duck". In The Looney Tunes Show (2011), the joke middle names "Armando" and "Sheldon" are used.
Daffy starred in 130 shorts in the golden age, making him the third-most frequent character in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons, behind Bugs Bunny's 168 appearances and Porky Pig's 153 appearances. Virtually every Warner Bros. cartoon director, most notably Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones, put his own spin on Daffy.
He was ranked number 14 on TV Guides list of top 50 greatest cartoon characters.
History
Golden age appearances
Origin (1937–1940)
Daffy first appeared in Porky's Duck Hunt, released on April 17, 1937. The cartoon was directed by Tex Avery who, as a lifelong duck hunter, based the cartoon on his hunting experiences at White Rock Lake in Dallas. The lead animator on the cartoon was Bob Clampett who was equally responsible for Daffy's creation. As Clampett recalled in a 1970 interview with Milton Gray and Michael Barrier:
After reviewing a pencil test version of Clampett's scene, Avery thought it was hilarious, but needed some vocal effects, so a series of "Woo-Woos" were later dubbed in post-production. Daffy's "Woo-Woos" were inspired by similar noises made by Warner Bros. live-action comedian Hugh Herbert. Avery also ordered Clampett to repeat this action several times throughout the film including over the ending "That's all folks!" title card.
This early appearance of a yet unnamed Daffy is less anthropomorphic and resembles a normal black duck. In fact, the only aspects of the character that have remained consistent through the years are his voice characterization by Mel Blanc and his black feathers with a white neck ring. Blanc's characterization of Daffy once held the world record for the longest characterization of one animated character by their original actor: 52 years.
According to Clampett, when Porky's Duck Hunt appeared in theaters the audience responded enthusiastically. As he 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."
In his second appearance, Daffy Duck & Egghead (again directed by Avery, released on January 1, 1938) the duck character was officially given a name of "Daffy". Clampett recalled that the "Termite Terrace" team originally wanted to call the character "Dizzy Duck" after baseball player Dizzy Dean, but their producer Leon Schlesinger objected to it, saying: "No, you can't call him Dizzy it sounds as if he's going to faint." The team named him "Daffy Duck" after Dizzy's brother Daffy Dean instead.
The origin of Daffy's voice, with its lateral lisp, is a matter of some dispute. One often-repeated "official" story is that it was modeled after producer Leon 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 'desth-picable.'" Daffy's slobbery, exaggerated lisp was developed over time, and it is barely noticeable in the early cartoons.
World War II Daffy, 1941–1945
Daffy would feature in several war-themed shorts during World War II, remaining true to his unbridled nature. He battles a Nazi goat intent on eating Daffy's scrap metal in Scrap Happy Daffy (1943), hits Adolf Hitler's head with a giant mallet in Daffy the Commando (1943) and outwits Hitler, Goebbels and Goering in Plane Daffy (1944). Oddly enough, it was only after these wartime escapades that Daffy is actually subject to conscription into military service, in the form of "the little man from the draft board", whom he tries to dodge in Draftee Daffy (1945).
Evolving "Earlier" Daffy, 1946–1950 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 decreed there should be only three units (McKimson, Friz Freleng, and Jones), presented a Daffy similar to McKimson's. McKimson is noted as the last of the three units to make his Daffy uniform with Jones's, with even late shorts, such as Don't Axe Me (1958), featuring traits of the "screwball" Daffy. Starting in You Were Never Duckier, Daffy's personality evolved to be less loony and more greedy.
Experimenting with Daffy, 1951–1964 While Daffy's loony days were over, McKimson continued to make him as bad or good as his various roles required him to be. McKimson would often have Daffy play the role of a salesman who pushes a potential customer into buying something, such as Fool Coverage (1952) where Daffy succeeds in selling Porky Pig a $1,000,000 accident policy which only works under impossible conditions (which, unfortunately for Daffy, all occur), and The High and the Flighty (1956) where Daffy intervenes in Foghorn Leghorn and the Barnyard Dawg's usual antics by selling them novelty joke items to get back at each other. His marks eventually catch on and team up against Daffy to trap him in one of the prank kits he sold to them. McKimson would use this version of Daffy from 1946 to 1961. However, even McKimson would follow in Jones' footsteps in many aspects with cartoons like People Are Bunny (1959) and Ducking the Devil (1957). Friz Freleng's version took a hint from Chuck Jones by making the duck more sympathetic, as in Show Biz Bugs (1957). Here, Daffy is overemotional 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. When Bugs tells Daffy that the audience loves the act and wants more, Daffy, now a ghost floating upward (presumably to Heaven), says that he can only do the act once. Some TV stations, and in the 1990s the cable network TNT, edited out the dangerous act, afraid of imitation by young children.
Pairing of Daffy and Porky in parodies of popular movies, 1951–1965 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; Porky Pig was usually a comic relief sidekick. For example, Daffy in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946) as "Duck Twacy" (Dick Tracy) by Bob Clampett; in The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950), Daffy was the hero and Porky Pig was the villain. Drip-Along Daffy (1951), named after the Hopalong Cassidy character, throws Daffy into a Western with him labeled "Western-Type Hero" and Porky Pig labeled "Comedy Relief". In Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953), a parody of Buck Rogers, Daffy trades barbs (and bullets) with Marvin the Martian, with Porky Pig retaining the role of Daffy's sidekick. In Rocket Squad (1956), a parody of Dragnet and Racket Squad, Daffy and Porky Pig pair up once again. Daffy also played Stupor Duck, a parody of the Adventures of Superman television series. Robin Hood Daffy (1958) casts the duck in the role of the legendary outlaw Robin Hood with Porky Pig as Friar Tuck. China Jones (1959) named after China Smith, has Daffy in Hong Kong playing the role of a private investigator.
Pairing of Bugs and Daffy, 1951–1964 Bugs's ascension to stardom also prompted the Warner Bros. animators to recast Daffy as the rabbit's rival, intensely jealous, insecure and determined to steal back the spotlight, while Bugs either remained cool headed but mildly amused and/or indifferent to the duck's jealousy, sometimes using it to his advantage. Daffy's desire to achieve stardom at almost 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' "Hunting Trilogy" (or "Duck Season/Rabbit Season Trilogy") of Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning and Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (each respectively launched in 1951, 1952, and 1953), a running gag involves Daffy's attention-grabbing ways and excitability providing Bugs Bunny the perfect opportunity to fool the hapless Elmer Fudd into repeatedly shooting Daffy's bill; Daffy's bill is shown to be invulnerable towards bullets, unlike Bugs who has had his ears grazed by Elmer's shots and barely avoiding injury. Daffy sees it as humiliation in part of Bugs due to his inflated ego. It is thought that Chuck Jones based Daffy Duck's new personality on his fellow animator Bob Clampett, who, like Daffy, was known as a loud self-promoter. In Beanstalk Bunny Daffy, Bugs and Elmer are once again teamed up in a parody of Jack and the Beanstalk (with Elmer as the giant); in A Star Is Bored Daffy tries to upstage Bugs Bunny. In the spoofs of the TV shows The Millionaire and This Is Your Life, Daffy tries to defeat his arch-rival Bugs Bunny for a $1,000,000.00 prize given out by his favorite TV show in The Million Hare and in This Is a Life?, Daffy tries to upstage Bugs Bunny in order to be the guest of honor on the show; in all four of these cartoons Daffy ends up a loser because of his own overemotional personality (which impairs Daffy's common sense and reasoning ability) and his craving for attention. By Daffy's own admission he is extremely greedy: "I can't help it, I'm a greedy slob. It's my hobby!" Ali Baba Bunny (1957) and "I may be a coward, but I'm a greedy little coward" Ducking the Devil (1957).
Solo Daffy 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.
Daffy's pairing with Speedy, 1965–1968