The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
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| The Great Piggy Bank Robbery Looney Tunes/Daffy Duck series |
|
 Duck Twacy goes out after the Gangsters |
|
| Directed by | Robert Clampett |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Edward Selzer |
| Story by | Warren Foster |
| Voices by | Mel Blanc |
| Music by | Carl W. Stalling |
| Animation by | Rod Scribner Manny Gould Bill Melendez I. Ellis |
| Layouts by | Thomas McKimson |
| Backgrounds by | Philip De Guard |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. The Vitaphone Corporation |
| Release date(s) | July 20, 1946 (USA) |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Running time | 7 min., 32 sec. (one reel) |
| Language | English |
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short, produced in early 1945, and released in 1946. It was directed by Robert Clampett, and features Daffy Duck in Clampett's penultimate Warner cartoon, produced shortly before he left the studio.
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[edit] Synopsis
On a farm, Daffy waits for his new Dick Tracy comic book to the tune of Raymond Scott's song "Powerhouse". The mailman then arrives and he gets the comic book. To the tune of the Poet and Peasant overture, he sprints to a corner of the farm and reads it. Then, he wishes to become Dick Tracy and then knocks himself out by punching himself.
He then imagines himself to be "Duck Twacy, the famous detec-a-tive." Ignoring a piggy bank theft crime wave, he goes into action when he learns that his own bank has also been stolen from his secure safe.
Daffy's search leads him to a tram with Porky as the driver leading to the gangsters' not-so-secret hideout, where he faces off against all the dangerous criminals in town: Mouse Man, Snake Eyes (spoof of B.B. Eyes), 88 Teeth (spoof of 88 Keys), Hammerhead, Pussycat Puss, Bat Man (a name parody of the real Batman where DC Comics is now owned by WB), Doubleheader (spoof of Tulza "Haf-and-Haf" Tuzon), Pickle Puss (spoof of Prune Face), Pumpkinhead, Neon Noodle (spoof of Frankenstein), Jukebox Jaw, Wolfman, Rubberhead, and a host of unnamed grotesques (the villains are obvious parodies of Dick Tracy's rogues gallery).
In one sequence, the bad guys are seen using well-known Dick Tracy villain Flattop's head (perhaps a Mount Rushmore-style variant) as an airstrip with planes taking off. Rubberhead "rubs him out" with his head as an eraser but Daffy appears on the door. Pumpkinhead meanwhile moves in with submachine gun blazing. Daffy tosses a hand grenade directly to Pumpkinhead's head and he becomes a series of pumpkin pies.
After being chased about, Daffy eventually turns the tables on the villains and traps them inside a hallway closet. He slams the door shut on them and eradicates the group with sustained fire from a Thompson submachine gun (which, if this were not a cartoon, would be a grim scene indeed, echoing the climactic scene from Warner's film The Big Sleep, released the same year).
He faces one last adversary, Neon Noodle (who survived because he is a mere neon outline with no physical "center" for Daffy to shoot), whom Daffy defeats by turning into a neon sign that reads "Eat at Joe's" (a standard WB cartoon gag). He then finds the missing piggy banks, including his own. He begins to kiss his bank, but since he is dreaming he doesn't realize that he is on the farm again, kissing a real female pig. The plump yet slightly curvacious pig is rather smitten by Daffy since she believes he's trying to woo her with the barrage of smooches he plants all around her face while saying things like "I've finally found you!" He wraps his kisses up with a peck to the cute pig's little nose. So in an elegant female voice she says "Shall we dance?" and lovingly kisses him right in the mouth. Now wide awake, Daffy wipes the kiss away disgustedly and runs away. The lady pig says "I love that duck!" and laughs before iris out.
[edit] Notes
- Daffy's early line about Dick Tracy, "I love that man!" and the pig's closing line, "I love that duck!" are references to a popular catch-phrase of the time, "Love dat man!", said by the character Beulah on Fibber McGee and Molly [1] Clampett would use the gag again in his next and final cartoon at Warner Bros. Cartoons, The Big Snooze.
- John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, named this as his favorite cartoon on the DVD commentary for Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2.
- In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "New Character Day", there was a segment called "The Return of Pluck Tracy" where Plucky Duck is in the same role that Daffy had here. Here, Pluck Tracy had to rescue Shirley the Loon's aura (who is really Hatta Mari) from gangsters like Ticklepuss, Boxcars, Millipede Pete, etc.
- In 1994 it was voted #16 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
- When Duck Twacy takes a street car to the gangsters' hideout, the conductor is a thinly-disguised Porky Pig dressed in a driver's uniform and a handlebar mustache.
- Animation historian Steve Schneider said of this picture:
| “ | ...Bob Clampett's forever priceless The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is clearly a work of the highest cinematic poetry, for prompting the film's manic hilarity are a sequence of images that remain among the most indelible in cartoon history.[2] | ” |
- First Looney Tunes cartoon with a new version of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down until 1955.
- Some sources erroneously credit animation by Robert McKimson, who had his own directing unit at the time this cartoon was in production.
- Daffy says "sufferin' succotash" while waiting for his Dick Tracy comic. This line would eventually become the catchphrase of Sylvester, who also has a lisp in his voice.
- In the scene in which Daffy is seen through a door in silhouette as Duck Twacy, his shadow briefly morphs into Dick Tracy's trademark profile.
- In this film the WB shield doesn't zoom to the viewers, only the sound effect is heard. This error also occurred in Kitty Kornered.
- An episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold titled "Legends of the Dark-Mite" contains a sequence which heavily parodies the cartoon. Unlilke cartoon when Daffy faces criminals which are parodies, here Bat-Mite face actual Batman villians. As an example, miniature Kite Man figures launch off the the top hat of the Mad Hatter.
[edit] Censorship
- When this cartoon aired on the Kids WB shows "Bugs 'N Daffy" and "The Daffy Duck Show", the scene of Daffy locking all the criminals in a closet, blasting them with his Thompson submachine gun, and all of the criminals falling out in rapid succession was cut for being too violent.
[edit] References
- ^ Billy Ingram. "The Beulah Show". http://africanamericans.com/Beulah.htm. Retrieved on 2006-09–15.
- ^ Jerry Beck, ed. (1998). The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals. JG Press, Inc.. ISBN 1-57215-271-0.
