A Coy Decoy
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| A Coy Decoy | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Bob Clampett |
| Produced by | Leon Schlesinger |
| Animation by | Norman McCabe |
| Color process | Black & White |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Running time | 8:00 |
A Coy Decoy is a 1941 Warner Bros. cartoon, directed by Bob Clampett and featuring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. The film is set in a closed book store at night, when the many characters and elements featured within the books come to life. The idea would later be reworked five years later into Book Revue, although only Daffy features in that.
Plot
The film begins with Ludwig van Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" playing as the scene descends on a book store. The camera pans across an array of various books (including a gag in which Uncle Tom's Cabin now has a Federal Housing Administration sign in front).
Porky Pig, featured on the cover of The Westerner, comes to life and sings "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride." Across the way, Daffy Duck, featured on the cover of The Ugly Duckling, comes to life and sings "Git Along, Little Dogies." Daffy finds his way to Black Beauty and comes out riding not a horse, but a big black woman, whom he rides to The Lake.
A wolf emerges from the screenplay of The Wolf of Wall Street, sneaks behind The Green Bay Tree and lures Daffy to him using a female duck decoy from the book Toys. Daffy follows and grabs what he thinks is the decoy but is actually the wolf's nose. Once he realizes he is in danger, Daffy tells the wolf that he is not worth eating (he claims to have so many diseases that even the draft rejected him) and runs away.
Daffy uses the books to defeat the wolf. He opens a copy of The Hurricane to blow the wolf away, and lightning from the book Lightning strikes the wolf. The wolf surrenders, fittingly under Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Daffy returns to the decoy. Porky enters the scene addresses the audience in derision of Daffy, saying that Daffy and the decoy could never "mean anything to each other." Daffy sticks up his nose and swims away with the decoy, followed by four tiny decoys that look like Daffy.
Edited versions
- The syndicated "Merrie Melodies Show", Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network (with the exception of The Bob Clampett Show) edited this cartoon to remove the part where after Daffy sings, "Get Along, Little Doggie", he leaps into a copy of Black Beauty and comes out riding on the shoulders of a black mammy-looking woman (though Cartoon Network cut the entire "Get along, Little Doggie" sequence while "The Merrie Melodies Show" and Nickelodeon left in the "Get Along, Little Doggie" part and cut out just before Daffy gets into Black Beauty) [1].
Availability
- This cartoon is available on many public domain video and DVD compilations (including Cartoon Explosion, Volume 2 released in 2001 by Front Row Entertainment where it is presented in its reanimated colorized form).