Little Quacker

Little Quacker
Tom and Jerry series
Title Card
Directed by	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Produced by	Fred Quimby
Story by	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Voices by	Red Coffee (uncredited)
Music by	Scott Bradley
Animation by	Irven Spence Ray Patterson Ed Barge Kenneth Muse
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	January 7, 1950, 1956 (re-release)
Color process	Technicolor
Running time	7:07
Language	English
Preceded by	Tennis Chumps
Followed by	Saturday Evening Puss

Little Quacker is a 1950 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 47th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. It is the first Tom and Jerry short to be released in the 1950s. Little Quacker marks the debut of the eponymous character, Quacker the duckling who would go on to appear in seven more shorts, making him one of the more enduring supporting characters in the Tom and Jerry cartoon series. The voice of Quacker and his parents (who make their only speaking appearance in this cartoon), along with a single WAH WAH! line by Tom, was supplied by (uncredited) Red Coffee, though the voice has often been mistaken for Clarence Nash's, who was better known as the voice of Donald Duck.

Plot

Little Quacker and Jerry meet for the first time.

On a farm, a momma duck goes out for a swim, leaving behind an egg in her nest. Tom craftily reaches into the nest and takes the egg for cooking. He rushes back to his kitchen and places a frying pan over the hob. However, when Tom breaks the egg open, instead of getting the albumen and yolk, he gets Quacker, a duckling. Not to be put off, Tom decides he will cook roast duck instead.

Tom feeds Quacker on plenty of bread to fatten and stuff him up, and while the duckling is not looking, Tom gets hold of a meat cleaver and attempts to chop Quacker up, but misses. Quacker escapes into Jerry's mouse hole and into his bed. Jerry uncovers Quacker, who informs Jerry of what Tom has tried to do to him.

Jerry emerges from his mouse hole cautiously, but Tom cuts him down with his meat cleaver... almost. Quacker, believing that Jerry has been beheaded, pulls at Jerry's legs, only for the camera to pull away, showing that Tom has only managed to catch Jerry by the whiskers. Jerry is set free and gets his revenge on Tom by placing Tom's tail outside of the hole, such that Tom ends up chopping his own tail. He screams in pain and retaliates by chasing Jerry and Quacker.

The chase continues outside, where Tom's efforts to chop away at Jerry and Quacker result in him being flattened by falling buildings or falling posts. Later on, while Quacker and Jerry search for his momma, Tom uses a duck call to lure in Quacker, but Jerry is clued up to what Tom is doing, and substitutes his duck caller for a stick of dynamite which blows up in his face. He then chases them to a large tree with a single barrel hunting rifle. He thrusts the rifle in, only for the barrel to bend towards his fanny, which he accidentally fires at. Jerry and Quacker flee, but they ram into a tire and hide in it. Tom grabs a sledge mace from the ground and tries to flatten them to death, but it doesn't work; he ends up smacking himself square in the face with it. Entranced, he places the mace on the ground and slumps down. Jerry and Quacker escape. Tom awakens from the trance, grabs a lawnmower and charges after them.

Tom chases after Jerry and Quacker with the lawnmower, but ultimately ends up running over Quacker's mother, revealing her undergarments. She covers them with a look of shock and embarrassment on her eyes. Momma and baby are reunited, but Tom grabs Quacker from the momma duck and she grabs her baby back. After Quacker tells his momma what has happened, she demands to know what Tom thinks he's doing, saying, "He did?" Tom's only answer is scornful mimicry of her quacking (It is presumed by some that it is his way of replying, "I did" or, "So what?"). Irritated, the momma duck calls her mate ("HENRY!") and tells him how she was minding her own business when Tom ran over her with the lawnmower "and he got smart, too!" Henry, tattooed like a sailor and strong as an ox, snarls "He did?" and glares at Tom. Tom tries to flee, but the enormous drake chases after him. Tom slams face first into a tree, enabling Henry to continuously run the lawnmower down and up on the cat's back, thus giving numerous amounts of painful cuts.

The final scene has Momma Duck and Quacker swimming in the pond, with Momma Duck towing Jerry on a little raft. Jerry uses the duck caller to attempt to sound like momma and baby.

Voice cast

• Red Coffee as Quacker/Mama Duck/Henry (uncredited)

External links

• Little Quacker at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Little Quacker at the Internet Movie Database