Daffy Duck History

Creator: Tex Avery
Voices: Mel Blanc
First Appearance: 'Porky's Duck Hunt.'

Daffy Duck Information
Daffy seemed to be the agent through which the strongest of the Warner cartoon directors most expressed their filmmaking personalities; each director would find aspects of the duck that would articulate their own individual temperament. In each of their hands Daffy would become a different entity, and with each he would become more complex by the accretion of influences from past performances, whitmanesque in his own way, Daffy contained multitoons.

Daffy's first appearance was in Tex Avery's 1937 Porky's Duck Hunt which brings Porky to a marshland with his loyal Hound hunting for ducks, but among the many ducks one would refuse to play by the rules. Squat and rounded, Daffy quickly lets himself be shot; but when Porky's dog brings the carcus back to his master Daffy turns the table by tossing the dogs exhausted corpus at Porky's feet. Daffy then breaks into a giddy laugh, and goads Porky.

For being only a bit player Daffy would go on to steal the hearts of the audience " At that time, audiences weren't accustomed to seeing a cartoon character do these things " Clampett told Mike Barrier and so, after Porky's Duck Hunt people left the theaters talking about Daffy Duck. Tex Avery would go on to direct two more cartoons with the screwloose duck, 1938's Daffy Duck and Egghead and 1938's Daffy Duck in Hollywood, both of which were in color.

Bob Clampett the WB Studio's most passionate advocate of unmotivated lunacy started casting Daffy as an oddball goofball, always out of control. Clampett would bring change to Daffy's appearance, making him taller, skinnier and more thinlimbed, crossing his eyes and his movements would become staccato and erratic and his getaways were proceeded by little leg-swinging hops of no apparent purpose and under these conditions Daffy would execute some of his most outrageous gags. By the early 1940's Robert McKimson would again change Daffy, he would become more rounder,weightier, and more solid, drawn with tailored, graceful lines that brightened his smile and made him handsome. Daffy would also grow more intellectual, an example of this transmutution can be seen in Friz Frelengs 1944's Duck Soup to Nuts.

In the 1950's Daffy would again be transformed, his psychobiography was being rewritten by Chuck Jones. Daffy would appear taller, beakier, scrawnier, and more angular, and also more of a creature of the mind abandoning his penchant for speed gags. Jones made Daffy what he described as a "self-preservationist," fighting furiously to preserve his skin or his dignity against a world that would rob them from him. Yet in Jone's work it is usually Daffy himself who triggers the processes that flay him. For Daffy's self-interest invariably becomes self-destruction; still impulsive, Daffy acts before he thinks.

Chuck Jones once said "Daffy has courage that most of us just don't have,he will continue to try and try again where we would have given up, because failure is unknown to him. No matter how badly things have worked out, he's always going to come back."

As the 1950's unrolled Daffy would play some of his most famous rolls, being teamed with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in classics shorts such as 1951's Rabbit Fire, 1952's Rabbit Seasoning and 1953's Duck! Rabbit, Duck! He would also star with a little unknown Martian in 1953's Duck Dodgers and the 24 1/2 Century. Daffy's career has spanned more than 60 years with some of the finest cartoons to come out of Termite Terrace, Daffy embodied such qualities as malicious evil, shameless self promotion, pure hate ("You're Dethpicable!") and , most of all, insatiable greed.