Daffy Duck in Hollywood: A Mixed Bag of Miscarried Madness

Release date: 12/3/1938 (according to IMDb*; no release date given on BCDb)

DVD-Blu-Ray Availability: Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. III (Warners Home Video)

You may view this cartoon HERE.

Avery's third and final cartoon with Daffy Duck is a regressive affair that abandons the formal advances made in his unit's previous three pictures.

Tho' amusing, it operates at a much lower level than Avery & Co. have performed in recent work. Daffy Duck in Hollywood feels more like a 1937 Avery effort, with its barrage of screwball gags, nose-biting and broad comedic strokes.

By this time, Daffy was used by director Robert Clampett in two memorable, anarchic black-and-white shorts, Porky and Daffy and The Daffy Doc. Daffy was ideal for Clampett's tense, explosive brand of comedic film-making. (Black ducks appear in his What Price Porky? but, contrary to popular belief, they are NOT Daffy.)

Such loose-limbed zanies were no longer vital to Avery's sense of comedy. His 1938 cartoons (of which this is the last) bookend with Technicolor Daffy Ducks. The first, Daffy Duck and Egghead, is over-full of crazy-kooky moments--many of them a bit forced. This last Daffy, less frenzied and formless, can be seen as Avery's farewell to the kablooey school of cartoon comedy. A cool has entered Avery's worldview in this year. Playing it deadpan, with cards close to his chest, is now his way of working.

Avery would never make another cartoon like DDiH. That task was left to his many imitators, who continued in this vein through the 1940s. At the dark end of the tunnel is the Screen Gems cartoon Wacky Quacky (1948), which represents the last forlorn outpost of this school of comedy.

This cartoon was restored to breath-taking brightness in the 2000s, and our screen captures will prove much more pleasant going than recent posts.

We iris in on a joke that seemed the shared property of every theatrical cartoon studio:

 No time is wasted getting down to cases:

Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas: Hoary History in a Post-Modern Playground

Release date: 10/22/1938 (according to BCDb)

DVD-Blu-Ray Availability: none

You may view this cartoon HERE.

The third forward-reaching, formally playful cartoon in a row from the Fred Avery unit, Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas further accelerates Avery's often radical study of the relationship between the pre-existing (the 7:52 of this animated film, projected on celluloid) and the unpredictable (the paying audience who took this cartoon in as part of a typical evening's movie fare).

This is the first of Avery's Schlesinger cartoons that really feels like his M-G-M work. Two films from wartime bear an obvious resemblance to JSaPH (I refuse to re-type that title)--the regrettable 1944 Screwy Squirrel cartoon Big Heel-Watha and 1945's Jerky Turkey, By no means is this cartoon as technically adroit, nor sophisticated in its timing, as those later works. A general vibe, familiar to his M-G-M masterpieces of the 1940s, comes to the forefront of Avery's work here.