Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur
Encyclopedia
Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur is a 1939 Merrie Melodies
animated cartoon short directed by Chuck Jones
and produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions
for Warner Bros. Pictures. The cartoon is notable as being the first Daffy Duck
cartoon directed by Jones. Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur is set in the Stone Age
and features Daffy Duck, a caveman
named Casper (a caricature of Jack Benny
), and his pet dinosaur, Fido. As usual, Mel Blanc
provides the voice of Daffy here, while Casper was performed by Jack Lescoulie
.
The film is in the public domain
and is available on several low-budget home video releases in an unrestored form (Associated Artists Productions
and later United Artists
acquired the rights to many of the pre-August 1948 WB cartoons and let the colors of the prints fade with age). A restored and remastered version is available on DVD
as part of disc 4 of Volume 3
of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection
.
For no particular reason, this story is set in the stone age, millions and billions and trillions of years ago, probably before some of you were even born.
Casper (a caveman
) and Fido (an apatosaurus
) go duck hunting and find Daffy. Casper slingshot
s a rock at Daffy, but Daffy manages to avoid it by disguising himself as a traffic cop. When the rock realizes that it has been tricked, it backtracks towards Daffy but ends up hitting Fido. Fido proceeds to perform a dazed dance.
Daffy snatches Casper's slingshot and tricks Casper into thinking that swimming is not allowed (to prevent him from pursuing him). Subsequently, Casper and Fido leave, but Daffy, knowing that Casper won't give up, paints himself on a nearby stone. Casper, holding a stone club, sees the painting and bashes it, but the force backfires and makes Casper dizzy. Daffy gives Casper a glass of water, which cures the dizziness and earns him Casper's trust. Daffy, however, gives Casper a card advertising a rare, gigantic duck living nearby, which Casper and Fido begin to hunt, following signs planted by Daffy. They eventually reach the duck (actually an inflatable
balloon
pumped up by Daffy), terrifying Casper until Daffy gives Casper a knife
with which to stab the duck. Casper does so, and the ensuing explosion
kills Casper, Fido and Daffy and destroys the whole place.
The short ends showing Daffy, Casper and Fido in Heaven
, sitting on clouds, Fido playing a lyre
while Daffy and Casper lament their mistakes (Daffy: "Y'know, maybe that wasn't such a hot idea after all!" Casper: "Good night, folks").
the Mouse), were very heavily inspired by Walt Disney
's cartoon shorts, placing more emphasis on story and animation than gags. Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur shows the faintest hints of deviation from such cartoons, which would eventually lead to the fast-paced Jones cartoons of the 1940s, such as The Dover Boys
and The Draft Horse
.
This is also an important milestone in the evolution of Daffy Duck's personality. While Tex Avery
and Bob Clampett
had depicted Daffy as completely insane, irrational, and uncontrollable in their previous cartoons with the character, Jones depicted Daffy here as somewhat more thoughtful and calculating. Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng
would continue to develop Daffy's personality in this direction throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
animated cartoon short directed by Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
and produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions
Warner Bros. Cartoons
Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. was the in-house division of Warner Bros. Pictures during the Golden Age of American animation. One of the most successful animation studios in American media history, Warner Bros. Cartoons was primarily responsible for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical...
for Warner Bros. Pictures. The cartoon is notable as being the first Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
cartoon directed by Jones. Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur is set in the Stone Age
Stone Age
The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period, lasting about 2.5 million years , during which humans and their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporary genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, widely used exclusively stone as their hard material in the...
and features Daffy Duck, a caveman
Caveman
A caveman or troglodyte is a stock character based upon widespread concepts of the way in which early prehistoric humans may have looked and behaved...
named Casper (a caricature of Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
), and his pet dinosaur, Fido. As usual, Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
provides the voice of Daffy here, while Casper was performed by Jack Lescoulie
Jack Lescoulie
Jack Lescoulie was a radio and television announcer and host, notably on NBC's Today during the 1950s and 1960s. His parents were both in vaudeville along with their children; Lescoulie's first public performance was at age seven. His first media job was with KGFJ, Los Angeles, when he was still...
.
The film is in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
and is available on several low-budget home video releases in an unrestored form (Associated Artists Productions
Associated Artists Productions
Associated Artists Productions was a distributor of theatrical feature films and short subjects for television. It existed from 1953 to 1958. It was later folded into United Artists. The former a.a.p. library was later owned by MGM/UA Entertainment and then Turner Entertainment. Turner continues...
and later United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
acquired the rights to many of the pre-August 1948 WB cartoons and let the colors of the prints fade with age). A restored and remastered version is available on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
as part of disc 4 of Volume 3
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 is a DVD box set from Warner Home Video that was released on October 25, 2005. It contains 60 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical short subject cartoons, 9 documentaries, 32 commentary tracks from animators and historians, 11 "vintage treasures from...
of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection
Looney Tunes Golden Collection
The Looney Tunes Golden Collection was an annual series of six four-disc DVD box sets from Warner Bros.' home video unit Warner Home Video, each containing about 60 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts...
.
Plot
The Cartoon opens with a note from the director:For no particular reason, this story is set in the stone age, millions and billions and trillions of years ago, probably before some of you were even born.
Casper (a caveman
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
) and Fido (an apatosaurus
Apatosaurus
Apatosaurus , also known by the popular but scientifically deprecated synonym Brontosaurus, is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived from about 154 to 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period . It was one of the largest land animals that ever existed, with an average length of and a...
) go duck hunting and find Daffy. Casper slingshot
Slingshot
A slingshot, shanghai, flip, bean shooter or catapult is a small hand-powered projectile weapon. The classic form consists of a Y-shaped frame held in the off hand, with two rubber strips attached to the uprights. The other ends of the strips lead back to a pocket which holds the projectile...
s a rock at Daffy, but Daffy manages to avoid it by disguising himself as a traffic cop. When the rock realizes that it has been tricked, it backtracks towards Daffy but ends up hitting Fido. Fido proceeds to perform a dazed dance.
Daffy snatches Casper's slingshot and tricks Casper into thinking that swimming is not allowed (to prevent him from pursuing him). Subsequently, Casper and Fido leave, but Daffy, knowing that Casper won't give up, paints himself on a nearby stone. Casper, holding a stone club, sees the painting and bashes it, but the force backfires and makes Casper dizzy. Daffy gives Casper a glass of water, which cures the dizziness and earns him Casper's trust. Daffy, however, gives Casper a card advertising a rare, gigantic duck living nearby, which Casper and Fido begin to hunt, following signs planted by Daffy. They eventually reach the duck (actually an inflatable
Inflatable
An inflatable is an object that can be inflated with a gas, usually with air, but hydrogen, helium and nitrogen are also used. One of several advantages of an inflatable is that it can be stored in a small space when not inflated, since inflatables depend on the presence of a gas to maintain their...
balloon
Balloon
A balloon is an inflatable flexible bag filled with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. Modern balloons can be made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, while some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig...
pumped up by Daffy), terrifying Casper until Daffy gives Casper a knife
Knife
A knife is a cutting tool with an exposed cutting edge or blade, hand-held or otherwise, with or without a handle. Knives were used at least two-and-a-half million years ago, as evidenced by the Oldowan tools...
with which to stab the duck. Casper does so, and the ensuing explosion
Explosion
An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave. If the shock wave is a supersonic detonation, then the source of the blast is called a "high explosive"...
kills Casper, Fido and Daffy and destroys the whole place.
The short ends showing Daffy, Casper and Fido in Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
, sitting on clouds, Fido playing a lyre
Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later. The word comes from the Greek "λύρα" and the earliest reference to the word is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists", written in Linear B syllabic script...
while Daffy and Casper lament their mistakes (Daffy: "Y'know, maybe that wasn't such a hot idea after all!" Casper: "Good night, folks").
Jones' direction
Most of Chuck Jones-directed cartoons from this era (such as the ones featuring SnifflesSniffles
Sniffles is an animated cartoon and comic-book character in the Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies series of cartoons and comics.-Character biography:...
the Mouse), were very heavily inspired by Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's cartoon shorts, placing more emphasis on story and animation than gags. Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur shows the faintest hints of deviation from such cartoons, which would eventually lead to the fast-paced Jones cartoons of the 1940s, such as The Dover Boys
The Dover Boys
"The Dover Boys at Pimento University" or "The Rivals of Roquefort Hall" is a 1942 Merrie Melodies cartoon produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions and directed by Chuck Jones. It was released by Warner Bros. on September 19, 1942...
and The Draft Horse
The Draft Horse
The Draft Horse is a Warner Bros. cartoon released in 1942, directed by Chuck Jones. Mel Blanc provided the voices. Robert Cannon is the animator, Tedd Pierce is the screenwriter and the music of this cartoon was done by Carl Stalling....
.
This is also an important milestone in the evolution of Daffy Duck's personality. While Tex Avery
Tex Avery
Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery was an American animator, cartoonist, voice actor and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros...
and Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
had depicted Daffy as completely insane, irrational, and uncontrollable in their previous cartoons with the character, Jones depicted Daffy here as somewhat more thoughtful and calculating. Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
would continue to develop Daffy's personality in this direction throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
Links
- Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur at Big Cartoon DatabaseBig Cartoon DataBaseThe Big Cartoon DataBase is an online database of information about animated cartoons, animated feature films, animated television shows and cartoon shorts....
- Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur at YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....