Yankee Doodle Daffy


Yankee Doodle Daffy is a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short released on June 5, 1943, directed by Friz Freleng and written by Tedd Pierce. The short was the second Technicolor Looney Tunes entry to feature Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. It is also one of the handfuls of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies to have fallen into the public domain.
The title and introductory music are inspired by the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy, a major hit and a Warner release. Other than the fact of both films being about show business, they have no plot elements in common.

Plot

At Smeller's Productions, Porky Pig, a producer, loaded down with luggage and a golf bag, hangs a sign on his office door reading "No casting today" and leaves his office in a hurry to board an airplane. However, Daffy Duck, a talent agent, stops Porky from leaving, wanting to secure an audition for his client, droopy-eyed child performer Sleepy Lagoon. The pitch, intended to demonstrate Sleepy's allegedly wide and varied repertoire, consists of Daffy himself performing an array of musical and stage acts in his usual, absurd and unoriginal fashion. Sleepy meanwhile stays seated, nonchalantly licking an enormous lollipop and silently commenting on Daffy's ludicrous behavior using signs bearing rebuses, such as "ham", "screwball", and "corn".
The songs that Daffy performs include I'm Just Wild About Harry, William Tell Overture and Angel in Disguise.
Porky, with mounting frustration, repeatedly tries to escape from the pitch. Daffy handily foils each attempt in increasingly improbable ways, including by turning out to be the pilot of Porky's plane and then turning out to be the parachute Porky uses to escape said plane. After Daffy finally takes it upon himself to harass Porky with an outrageous finale, Porky decides to just get it over with by allowing Sleepy to audition.
Sleepy calmly leaves his seat and begins to sing the song, The Garden of My Heart, in a strong, operatic baritone that is not only surprising given his small stature but also substantially more dramatic than any of the acts Daffy used in the pitch. However, during a high note near the end, he erupts into a long coughing fit before weakly croaking the rest of the line.

Analysis

Authors Michael S. Shull and David E. Wilt consider it ambiguous as to whether this cartoon contains a World War II-related reference. When Daffy is revealed as the pilot of the plane, he is wearing an aviator's goggles and helmet. In this guise, Daffy sings "We watch the skyways o'er the land and the sea, ready to fly anywhere the duty calls, ready to fight to be free". This could be a reference to military aviation.

Home media

US

Yankee Doodle Daffy is available on DVD as part of .

UK