Daffy Dilly is a 1948 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and written by Mike Maltese, one of the finest of their collaborations. Dave Mackey has this listed as Production #1064. That’s a little early by my calculations, given that it was released in Cinecolor, which should give it a much later number than the contemporary Technicolor releases, but who knows for sure. Unfortunately, the print I have (a late 1940s Eastman print – a real oddity in itself) is missing the shield, and the color has menstruated considerably. The original titles are fairly boring anyway, but at least everyone can see what the credits look and sound like now.
This is easily one of the most underrated of Chuck Jones’s cartoons, certainly the most underrated of the ones he did with Daffy Duck. It’s probably best-known for being brilliantly used as the framing device for Greg Ford and Terry Lennon’s Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters, the least offensive of the Warner cartoon ‘compilation’ features. But like the other cartoons chopped-and-hacked in those things, the only way to properly see it is on its own.
Daffy is still crazy in this cartoon, just a different kind of crazy than the Clampett or Tashlin Daffy. He’s deluded himself into thinking he’s a master comedian, one who can easily make a joyless geriatric “bust a seam laughing” for prize money, even though his skills aren’t worth anything on the Mean Streets. Here greed and conceit are the dominant traits of the duck’s psychosis, portrayed in a vastly more likable manner than they would be in much later Freleng and McKimson shorts. (Call me biased, but the Jones Daffy was always hilarious, naysayers take a hike to hell.)
The opening by Lloyd Vaughan captures the character’s situation perfectly. He’s sunken to about as low as he can get, peddling novelty tricks on a street corner in NYC. The pain he feels with each failed shill hits home beautifully, right until we get his desperate pitch that involves electrocuting himself to add some overt hilarity (not to mention it makes him more sympathetic/pathetic) to the scene.
I’d also like to call attention to the unusual layout and truck-in Jones and Robert Gribbroek use in the first shot. Rather than having Daffy front and center with his table, he’s more to the lower-left of the frame. It’s a daring choice, because in emulating those busy Manhattan streets, the duck could have easily gotten lost in the clutter illustrated.
Phil Monroe doesn’t get much at all to do in this cartoon, but the butler slyly stealing the bottle of ‘wine’ is a very slick and funny bit of animation. More on him later perhaps.
Ben Washam is a master of the jolly laugh. He gets a brief one with the butler at the door, and the masterful one with Cubish at the end. The animation gives a great illusion of weight and heavy-breathing required for these larger characters to have a laughing fit. The drawing is also tremendously appealing, easily outranking all the Jones animators in this category.
Finally, the centerpiece of the cartoon: the lengthy Ken Harris scene of Daffy ‘interrogating’ the butler. What’s brilliant about the scene is that it’s so stupid. Daffy is making his accusations up as he goes along, chastising the butler for everything short of communism (believe me, it was probably in the boards given Jones’s ‘liberal’ status in Hollywood). The butler gets roped into it all, proving that the lunatic duck actually is able to sell something – bullshit.
Harris is said to be the Jones animator always given the sort of challenging scenes many animators try to avoid. He gets his fair share of that here, not only getting the heaviest acting sequence, but also having to animate the cigarette being held in Daffy’s beak, a hard enough thing to draw, let alone animate.
The picture ends with Daffy taking what he can get. At first insulted by Cubish’s laughter, he’s now resigned to this lower level of humiliation than he had on the streets – at least someone thinks he’s funny.
(Thanks to Tommy José for film-to-digital transfer assistance.)
What I like about this Daffy is stuff happens to him (falls two storeys out a door) but it doesn’t bother him. He just plugs on. He isn’t the bitter, angry, jealous duck that screwed up his personality (Jones can take some credit for that, too).
I notice four animators on this. Recently, the interesting Asterisk Animation blog posted the Guild contract with Warners for 1944. It specified five animators, five assistants and five in-betweeners. Did a later contract reduce the number of animators to four?
Jones seemed to be the only one among the three directors who really understood this new side of Daffy he pushed for. Freleng’s duck was such an annoying dick. (Why any of those shorts are so praised I’ll never understand.) McKimson’s duck staggered between the two main traits before resigning to Freleng’s version.
It’s somewhat satisfying to see Daffy win here, even if it’s not what he expected.
I like it! Daffy is a lovely loser in “Daffy Dilly”
Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters is very good!
This cartoon and the Jones-Pierce “You Were Never Duckier” were two companion pieces in the emerging “new” personality for Daffy, which actually was a throwback to Freleng’s duck in “You Ought to Be In Pictures”. Money becomes a driving factor for Daffy in both cartoons — since as Jones himself has noted, he needed a motivation for his characters to act a certain way, and didn’t like to work with the Avery/Clampett/Tashlin crazy-for-crazy’s-sake Daffy. But the ego and anger that would start showing up with “The Scarlet Pumpernickel” and “Rabbit Fire” isn’t there yet (and in-between “Daffy Dilly” and those two cartoons, Friz would also use “greedy” Daffy for “His Bitter Half”, where the duck takes his failures with a lot less even-temperament than he does in Jones’ shorts, but the oversized ego Chuck and Mike would give him still isn’t in place yet).
Some quick thoughts, in bullet form…
1) I love this cartoon
2) It goes without saying that Blanc’s performance goes hand in hand with the animation and writing. Incredible.
3) Freleng’s Daffy is a fucking prick.
4) What I love about “Rabbit Fire” that I don’t really see in the other two hunter cartoons is that Daffy is still pretty goofy and doesn’t have a problem teaming up with Bugs if he has to. He’s going for self-preservation and wouldn’t mind seeing Bugs get shot if he means he could avoid it, but he isn’t a complete asshole. Yet.
5) Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters is the only compilation film I have any use for. I like how the animators try to adjust their animation to the vintage styles as they segue into the older cartoons.
It’s so great to see the original titles.
Hopefully, when Warner gets around to double-dipping the Super Stars cartoons in a full-frame collector’s set, they’ll make a deal with you to use them.
I know you’re the expert on animator identification, Thad, but are you sure about this one? The opening scene, credited to Lloyd Vaughan, looks an awful lot like Phil Monroe’s work; likewise, the grappling hook gag has Monroe’s name on it, yet I’d swear up and down that Vaughan did it.
Either way, this is one of my favorite of Jones’ Daffy shorts, and I too think it’s criminally underrated. (I guarantee I wouldn’t have bought the otherwise shit-tastic Frustrated Fowl DVD if this hadn’t been included on it.) This downtrodden-yet-streetsmart version of Daffy is a great incarnation of the character; Jones also used him to great effect in “You Were Never Duckier”, another one of my all-time favorites.
I’m sure it’s Vaughan and not Monroe – the Monroe Daffy is a lot looser than scene in the opening sequence here (see the opening to “You Were Never Duckier” and Daffy berating Elmer at the end of “A Pest in the House”).
Good cartoon. Love the scene where Daffy makes the butler nervous. “They’re on your trail! Run! Out this way! AAAAAAHHHHH!!!” gets me every time, especially thanks to the build up of the scene.
Always nice to hear long-lost title card music, too. Was this the only time “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover” was used for a title card? That’s always been one of my favorite songs used in Looney Tunes.
Newb question time: Why didn’t Lloyd Vaughan stay with the Jones unit after the ’53 shutdown? I know he returned to Jones much later, but what was he doing in the mid 50’s-mid ’60s?
I don’t know why Vaughan didn’t stay. Greg Duffell told me how Jones was always grilling Vaughan’s ass and was threatened with a demotion until Ken Harris taught him some tips to improve his animation. Vaughan went to work for Storyboard, Inc. after the shutdown.
I love the ‘transitional’ Daffy cartoons, where he is playing a mix of both the former and latter personas. He had ambition and sanity, but was still a random unpredictable wacko, I personally think they should have kept this Daffy, a versatile sort of anti hero that was never a clear winner or loser.
The animation and gags are lush too and really compliment Daffy’s hyperactive character (nice find with the original titles as well). The ‘interrogation’ scene is amusing, showing how Daffy still has enough tact at this point to convince any soul they are a calculating murderer (as well as lampshading the story’s large plothole as to why he isn’t allowed in a publically invited mansion in the first place).
In McKimson’s defense, he did at least try to keep up this interpretation of Daffy as long as he could and did a decent job balancing the character’s work in the 50s with more versatile roles, while Jones and Freleng became obsessed with movie hero parodies or pairing him against Bugs. It was only in the 60s, when nearly everyone’s efforts were turning stale, that McKimson’s Daffy fell apart.
Great to see so many original titles! So, is that opening shot of the city in the original print too? I remember reading somewhere that it may have been added for the Blue Ribbon release.
I don’t think the intro is by Lloyd Vaughan. It’s too loose to be Lloyd, who was never very loose at all. That, and it doesn’t have his eyes. Maybe it’s animated by Ben Washam?
Yeah, that opening looks like Monroe, but that’s just me.
It’s nice to see the original titles. I’ll agree with you about Jones’ version of the latter Daffy is MUCH more enjoyable than the other versions were.
From what I read, Friz Freling HATED Daffy, and I can feel that hate in his cartoons. His cartoons from the 50’s onward show the duck as a really nasty person, like in “Show Biz Bugs” or “A Star is Bored” were he goes so far as to try and KILL Bugs Bunny.
At least McKimson tried to keep the likable version of Daffy as long as possible. At least up until after “Ducking the Devil”.
Again, great post Thad. Hope to see more.
Justin, Freleng MUST’VE hated Daffy from my point of view: He must have wished Daffy was in his earlier years. Excellent post and that includes the YouTube upload, THad. Sorry if I ticked you off as apparently I cannot get comments on here, but look at my new address [Betty White from You Again:”I’m On Facebook,too”!]
I just realized… Freleng really didn’t direct many Daffy cartoons in general. From my count: (not counting cameos like “Apes of Wrath”)
-You Ought to Be in Pictures
-Yankee Doodle Daffy
-Daffy the Commando
-Duck Soup to Nuts
-Slightly Daffy
-Ain’t That Ducky
-Hollywood Daffy
-Along Came Daffy
-Wise Quackers
-Golden Yeggs
-His Bitter Half
-Cracked Quack
-Stork Naked
-This is a Life?
-A Star is Bored
-Show Biz Bugs
-Person to Bunny
-It’s Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House
If it’s true Freleng wasn’t a big fan of the character, that may possibly explain his comparatively small amount of Daffy cartoons compared to the other two (Jones, McKimson). But for the most part, it really wasn’t until “Stork Naked” that he went past the point of no return into total jerk territory. (though to me, “Stork Naked” and “Show Biz Bugs” are still funny despite this, thanks to the gags and comic timing on them)
Freleng didn’t really touch that many of the main ensemble, he rarely made any use of Porky, his own creation (though granted by the 50s Porky’s career was lingering). He seemed to devote most of his effort with Bugs and Sylvester with at least one of them usually appearing in the majority of his work. Sylvester was very obviously Freleng’s ‘baby’.
To be fair Daffy was always a sadistic little jerk (while he had alternate motives for turning on Bugs in Jones’ hunting trilogy, he very obviously enjoyed the idea of the rabbit getting his brains blown out and even in earlier work like Tashlin’s Nasty Quacks he had outright murderous urges). It’s just his whimsy and charisma that eased it off and made him likeable. This however was formed largely by the ‘screwball’ dynamics of the earlier shorts which disappeared as WB gradually leaned into more neurotic ‘fall guy’ humor. Daffy being ‘daffy’ wasn’t the in thing anymore it seemed.
I think McKimson once complained about being limited by the later characterizations (eg. Bugs’ suaveness) so maybe Freleng was the same.
I wish Chuck Jones did more Daffy shorts like this in the 1950’s. Daffy is so much more charasmatic and funny when he’s “Daffy” and not an angry jerk.
Ken Harris was a monster animator. Holy Smokes! This version of Daffy is so much fun. Having him more in control is great. Things like “The Scarlet Pumpernickel” made for a better Daffy IMHO. He’s the smart alec that gets the boot once in a while. Unlike Bugs who became bullet proof.
Actually, in regards to Daffy and Friz, according to David Depatie in the Friz documentary in LTGCv4, he said Daffy was one of Friz’s favorite characters at Termite Terrance. So I really don’t know where Justin got that “Friz hated Daffy” from.
Besides, even without that comment, I call bullcrap that he hated Daffy. Although everyone credits Jones from making Daffy who he was in the 50s, it was really Friz who first dealt with that aspect of the duck with “You Ought to Be in Pictures” years before Chuck finally found a comfort zone with the duck. In fact, I think Friz was probably the first director who found more dimensions to Daffy, or at least, probably the first director who didn’t made Daffy insanely artificial (with of course, Clampett, McCade, Tashlin and others later expanding on those dimensions). I doubt someone who “hated” the character could direct a picture like that. Either way, it’s pretty much a case where other units was given a production number and had to direct it, rather than personal preference for the character. Simple as that.