Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions (Looney Tunes)
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
On a quiet farm a pair of ducks wait for their egg, which is black, to hatch. Out comes a white duckling with a toothbrush moustache who gives the Nazi salute and shouts "Sieg Heil!" He grows into a ranting duck-Hitler haranguing the barnyard in mock German, joined by a fat Neapolitan goose, Mussolini, and later by a buck-toothed Japanese duck, Tojo, drawn with the full racial caricature of the war. A Dove of Peace weeps at the arming of the farm and tries a peace conference, which Hitler wrecks by tearing up the treaty. The dove finally loses patience, rolls up his sleeves and thrashes all three dictators, and the film ends with their heads mounted on his wall and a plea to buy war bonds.
Why It Matters
- The Ducktators is the most complete animated allegory of the war's outbreak, with the black egg, the duck-Hitler's speeches and the dove's conversion from pacifist to fighter as its stages, and McCabe's black-and-white unit gives it a quick, crude energy; the sequence in which the dove finally fights is a small catharsis. Its caricature of Tojo is as offensive as any in the period's cartoons.
- The film is in the public domain through non-renewal, which has made it one of the most-cited examples of wartime cartoon propaganda, and it is a key work of the Warner studio's short-lived black-and-white propaganda unit under McCabe, who was drafted a year later. The original ending with the dove's trophies was cut from some reissues.
Notes and Trivia
- John McLeish, the narrator, was also the pompous narrator of Disney's Goofy "How To" shorts.
- The title puns on dictator and duck; the war-bond plea was standard in 1942 shorts.
- See also: Tokio Jokio (1943), Der Fuehrer's Face (1943), Confusions of a Nutzy Spy (1943).
