Daffy Duck

Daffy Sheldon Duck is an animated cartoon character produced by Warner Bros. Animation. He has appeared in cartoon series such as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, where he usually has been depicted as a rival and occasional best friend of Bugs Bunny. Daffy was one of the first of the new "screwball" characters that emerged in the late 1930's to replace traditional "everyman" characters who were more popular earlier in the decade, such as Mickey Mouse and Popeye. Daffy starred in 133 shorts in The Golden Age, making him the third-most frequent character in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons, behind Bugs Bunny's 166 appearances and Porky Pig's 159 appearances. Daffy was ranked #14 on TV Guide's list of top 50 best cartoon characters and was featured on one of the issue's four covers as Duck Dodgers with Porky Pig and the Powerpuff Girls (all of which are Time Warner-owned characters).

Origin
Daffy first appeared on April 17th, 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 Leon Schlesinger's studio was famous, but Daffy (barely more than an unnamed bit player in this short) was something new to moviegoers: an assertive, completely unrestrained, combative protagonist. Bob 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 less anthropomorphic and resembles a "normal" duck. In fact, the only aspects of the character that have remained consistent through the years are his voice (provided by Mel Blanc) and his black feathers with a white neck ring. Mel's voice for Daffy holds the world record for the longest voice-acting of one animated character by his/her original actor: 52 years.

The origin of Daffy's voice is a matter of some debate. One often-repeated "official" story is that it was modeled after producer 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 'dethpicable.'"

Daffy's slobbery, exaggerated lisp was developed over time, and it is barely noticeable in the early cartoons. In Daffy Duck & Egghead, Daffy does not lisp at all except in the separately drawn set-piece of Daffy singing The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down in which just a slight lisp can be heard.

In The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1949), Daffy has a middle name, Dumas, as the screenwriter of a swashbuckling script, a nod to Alexandre Dumas. Also, in the Baby Looney Tunes episode The Tattletale, Granny addresses Daffy as "Daffy Horacio Tiberius Duck." In The Looney Tunes Show (2011), the joke middle names "Armando" and "Sheldon" are used.

Different Interpretations
Virtually every Warner Bros. cartoon director put his own spin on the Daffy Duck character – he may be a lunatic vigilante in one short but a greedy gloryhound in another. Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones both made extensive use of these two very different versions of the character.

Daffy's Early Years
Tex Avery created the original version of Daffy in 1937. Daffy established his status by jumping into the water, hopping around, and yelling, "Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Woo-hoo!" Animator Bob Clampett immediately seized upon the Daffy Duck character and cast him in a series of cartoons in the 1930s and 1940s. The early Daffy is a wild and zany screwball, perpetually bouncing around the screen with cries of "Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!" (In his biography, Mel Blanc stated that the zany demeanor was inspired by Hugh Herbert's catchphrase, which was taken to a wild extreme for Daffy). Bob physically redesigned the character, making him taller and lankier and rounding out his feet and bill. He was often paired with Porky Pig.

1941 - 1945
Daffy would also feature in several war-themed shorts during World War II. Daffy always stays true to his unbridled nature, however; for example, he attempts to dodge conscription in Draftee Daffy (1945), battles a Nazi goat intent on eating Daffy's scrap metal in Scrap Happy Daffy (1943), and hits Adolf Hitler's head with a giant mallet in Daffy the Commando (1943). Daffy was "drafted" as a mascot for the 600th Bombardment Squadron.

1946 - 1952
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 1940's until upper management declared there should be only 3 directors (Robert McKimson, Friz Freleng, and Chuck Jones), presented a Daffy similar to Robert's. Robert is noted as the last of the 3 directors to make his version of Daffy uniform with Chuck's, with even late shorts, such as Don't Axe Me (1958), featuring the "screwball" version of the character.

1953 - 1964
While Daffy's looney days were over, Robert continued to make him as bad or good as his various roles required him to be. Robert would use this Daffy from 1946 to 1961. Friz Freleng's version took a hint from Chuck Jones to make the duck more sympathetic, as in the 1957 Show Biz Bugs. Here Daffy is arrogant 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. Some TV stations, and in the 1990s the cable network TNT, edited out the dangerous act, afraid of imitation by young kids.