Category Archives: classic animation

I don’t think anyone will disagree with the statement that Daffy Duck is the least formulaic character in cartoon history. Unless you count the Jones ‘Rabbit/Duck’ trio (I don’t), all of the character’s cartoons are different. There may be reused gags or concepts once in awhile, but all of the directors seemed to find it easiest to come up with new, un-rehashed cartoons for the duck.

Freleng’s His Bitter Half is of the the handful of cynical shorts that shows Daffy as a married man. For my money, it’s probably the funniest, neck-and-neck with Tashlin’s also excellent Stupid Cupid. (Daffy was also married in Clampett’s Wise Quacks and Henpecked Duck, Davis’s Quackodile Tears, and Freleng’s Stork Naked, in which Daffy basically tries to perform the first animated abortion.)

This is one of the best cartoons written by Tedd Pierce, the ‘weak sister’ of the Termite Terrace writing trio. I’ve written before that I find his period with Freleng (1946-49) to be particularly unexceptional, but this and his other classic Daffy (Golden Yeggs) are probably Freleng’s two best with the character.

There’s some really funny timing solutions in this cartoon, like the one below with Daffy getting punched in the face (Gerry Chiniquy), or Daffy’s take not even fully registering before the explosion (Virgil Ross). These sort of things are what separated the Warner guys from the rest.

I ID’ed the animators of this short in hopes of further educating the Internet on proper animation ID’ing.

(I faked the Merrie Melodies logo too, so the copyright and production number notices are incorrect. I could have corrected them if I had more time…)

I posted the funniest of the Goofy “How to” ripoffs featuring Terrytoons’ Dimwit, How to Relax, ages ago, so here is the third and final of them: Daddy’s Little Darling. (Obviously a riff of those George Geef ‘father and son’ pictures by Jack Kinney.)

This short joins the immortal Cat Happy as one that also features an incredibly insanely animated sneeze by Jim Tyer. (I’m sure Tyer used some footage of somebody snorting cocaine as reference for this scene.)

The ‘treasures’ are never-ending in the wonderful library of Columbia cartoons.

This particular 1942 Al Geiss directed short features the distinctive work of Emery Hawkins and Ray Patterson, both of whom Frank Tashlin pulled out of the picket line at Disney’s to work for him at Columbia. What makes this short most interesting is that all of the earmarks (namely extra hair and pursed lips) of Patterson’s animation at MGM are already here in this short. He was ready to start animating Tom and Jerry whether he knew it or not!

A constant recurrence in the studio’s cartoons is how there seems to be no voice direction whatsoever, and the vocals veer quite often into the ‘obnoxious’ category. (This cat is no exception.) No actor was an exception to this rule, and Columbia regularly used people like Mel Blanc, Frank Graham, John McLeish, and Stan Freberg. I have no idea who voices the cat(s) – it sounds like the same guy who voiced the mustachioed Puzzlewitz (WTFdom’s all-time greatest star) at Columbia.

Columbia gags can come bland and offbeat in the same film. We’ve seen the “cat’s nine lives help cat win” scenario in several 1930s cartoons, but how many times do you see that end as “cat’s nine lives beat the crap out of cat”? It may be prudent to assume, as a general rule, that if the other studios didn’t do something, Columbia just might have done it!