Daffy Duck

Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. more...

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Daffy was the first of the new breed of "screwball" characters that emerged in the 1930s and supplanted traditional "everyman" characters, such as Mickey Mouse, in popularity in the 1940s.

Virtually every Warner Bros. animator put his own spin on the duck; Daffy may be a lunatic vigilante in one short but a greedy glory hound in the next. Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones especially made extensive use of two very different versions of the character.

Origin

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 the Schlesinger studio was famous, but Daffy (not more than a bit player in this short) represented something new to moviegoers: an assertive, combative protagonist, completely unrestrained and completely unrestrainable. As Clampett 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 short and pudgy, with stubby legs and beak. His voice (performed by Mel Blanc and patterned after producer Leon Schlesinger's) and the white neck ring, contrasting with the black feathers, are about the only parts of the duck that would stay with him.

Different interpretations

Clampett's Daffy

Animator Bob Clampett immediately seized upon the duck and cast him in a series of cartoons in the 1930s and 1940s. Clampett's Daffy is a wild and zany screwball, perpetually bouncing around the screen with cries of "Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!" (In his autobiography, Mel Blanc stated that this was inspired by Hugh Herbert's catchphrase. Herbert's own mild-mannered "hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo" was taken to a wild extreme for Daffy). Clampett also redesigned the character, making him taller and lankier, and rounding out his beak and feet. He was often paired with Porky Pig. "Daffy" of course means "crazy" (a variant of "daft") and his soon-to-rival's name, "Bugsy", also means "crazy".

McKimson's Daffy

By the early 1940s, director Robert McKimson tamed Daffy a bit, redesigning him yet again to be rounder, 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. This era also saw Daffy teamed up with Porky Pig, the duck's one-time rival now his straight man. Daffy would also feature in several war-themed shorts during World War II. Daffy always stays true to his unbridled nature, however, attempting, for example, to dodge conscription in Draftee Daffy (1945) and battling a Nazi goat intent on eating Daffy's scrap metal in Scrap Happy Daffy (1943).

Read more at Wikipedia.org