One deed that needs doing is the location of a complete print of The Daffy Duckaroo, a 1942 Daffy Duck cartoon by Norm McCabe.
Here’s the scoop:
There are two different versions of the opening song Daffy sings at the beginning of the cartoon. The more widely-seen version, Guild/Sunset B/W prints and the Korean redrawn, is actually in-sync with the animation, but there is a definite splice in the soundtrack. (Click here to see that copy.) The computer colorized version, as aired on Nickelodeon, featured a different half that obviously was incorrectly pasted over the wrong animation.
Put them together, as Larry Tremblay did in the embeded reconstruction (re: “fake”) below, and you get a complete song.
I have no idea as to why the soundtrack was split up like this. If had to guess (and I hate doing this, because it’ll end up on Wikipedia as a fact), there may have been censorship by Guild/Sunset to remove a legible reference to Warner Brothers on Daffy’s trailer (the company verifiably removed WB references in Porky in Wackyland and You Ought to Be in Pictures), which you can kind of make out at the end of the cartoon when it’s in view again. Again, this is only a guess. But then, if that was the case, why does the computer colorized version use the same footage, and the second half the song? The mind boggles.
If you have leads to an answer on this mystery, I and many others would appreciate them.
Now for the actual cartoon…
This is actually a very underrated cartoon for several reasons. It’s one of the earliest cartoons that uses “modern design” successfully, neck-and-neck almost with Chuck Jones’s usage of it. McCabe unfortunately had the handicap of being resigned to wartime propaganda as story material and having his films only available in shoddy condition, but some of his films are worth rediscovering. I wish I knew who McCabe’s layout artist was during this period.
The earliest Art Davis Warner animation is seen in this cartoon (mostly in the scenes with Daffy and Little Beefer in the teepee), marking the beginning of his 20 years of employment, and beginning his reign of terror as the studio’s funniest animator (a title only also held by Rod Scribner).
The classic sexually active Daffy takes center stage, a carryover from some of the last cartoons Bob Clampett did with his unit, but here it’s about as overt as it would get (Frank Tashlin excepted). Some of it borderlines uncomfortable when he seems to genuinely enjoy Beefer’s advances.
On a related note, Jerry Beck has the honor of being the only historian whose writing created an awkward moment between my parents and I. I asked them what the word “bisexual” meant, as Jerry used the word to refer to Daffy’s behavior in his book in the passage on this cartoon. (This had to be when I was seven, reading his Looney Tunes books for book reports. That created even more awkwardness.)
Interesting cartoon that I had not seen fully before your post. I love how Norm McCabe, as well as Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin around this same time, also experimented with the so-called “modern design,” which would become a major influence at UPA years down the road. There’s some really nice Art Davis animation in this one as well.
Have there been any Norm McCabe LT cartoons released on the LTGC sets? There must have been at least one that I didn’t know about that was already on DVD. Quite a shame how the majority of his cartoons have ended up in such poor condition and in crappy prints.
Robto., ‘Confusions of a Nutzy Spy’ is on Vol. 6. It’s got interesting angular layouts. Matt Y. says that was the period Dave Hilberman did layouts for McCabe.
Thad, was this also part of the AAP package? AAP distributed ‘Wackyland’ without editing the WB shield joke.
Actually, Yowp, none of the black-and-white Looney Tunes were EVER part of the AAP package.
Ok. I know the B&W LTs ran here years ago (1960s, before Korea) but I never saw a Sunset title card. They usually cut the AAP card off the Warners ones here, too, but left them on the Popeyes. Who knows why?
And I saw the Warner shield gag in ‘Wackyland’ because I remember thinking how cool it was.. then wondering why it disappeared from the cartoon about ten years later. I didn’t know why until years after that.
I wonder who was distributing them in Canada then? Odd that you saw even the AAP Warners there…. unless you were getting them off a US station.
I’ll have to double-check, but I think I have 2 copies of this cartoon, one that has the cut like the first video above, and another that’s like the second, more complete version. The more complete one is in even worse shape than above, and it looks like it was dug out of a dumpster. I *THINK* it has a Sunset title card, too.
All of McCabe’s Daffy cartoons are pretty good, because the character’s energy and personality drives the shorts in a way that Porky’s laid-back persona can’t in Norm’s cartoons, let alone the problems McCabe had with his one-shots.
As for Daffy’s behavior in the tent with Little Beaver, he seemed to enjoy sitting on that doorknob post in “The Henpecked Duck,” so maybe this just an experimental phase he was going through in the early 1940s (or, based on “Draftee Daffy”, he may have been using it as a way to stay out of the military during World War II…)
KVOS in Bellingham had at least two hours of cartoons every weekday, an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. They did it for years. Mostly Warners and Popeye but other stuff got tossed in as time went on.
Jeff Lenburg wrote Hilberman worked with Tashlin when Tashlin replaced McCabe. That may partly explain some of the stylised stuff in the early Tashlins, though I get the feeling Tashlin was pretty specific about the look of his cartoons.
“Have there been any Norm McCabe LT cartoons released on the LTGC sets?”
A few. All were released on Golden Collection 6:
-Confusions of a Nutzy Spy (bonus cartoon)
-Ducktators, The
-Hop and Go (bonus cartoon)
I’m hoping we eventually get “Daffy’s Southern Exposure” on DVD. I mean, besides on “Cartoon Explosion”.
If had to guess (and I hate doing this, because it’ll end up on Wikipedia as a fact)
Please. That’s the best part about Wikipedia.
I have nothing of substance to add to this issue, but I suddenly realized it’s been decades since I’ve seen that awful Sunset Productions “logo” on cartoons. Ironically, it was so bad I will never forget it.
Ducktators has always been a favorite…
“oooh, mama! Vas ist Los? Iz it a Dark Horse?”
“Du bist nicht -you dopes! … in allah Europa…” etc. etc.