Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
In a snowy landscape, Daffy Duck is building a snowman when shots ring out. Tom Turk, a terrified turkey on the run from Porky Pig, begs Daffy to hide him. Daffy hesitates, then agrees, and stuffs Tom inside his snowman. Porky arrives with his gun and asks where the turkey went. Daffy refuses to say, until Porky starts describing the turkey dinner he's planning, with all the trimmings. Daffy's mouth waters, and he can't help himself: he gives the hiding place away, while protesting his innocence. Tom, enraged, calls him a "Quisling" and takes revenge by sticking his tail feathers onto Daffy, so that Porky now goes after the duck instead. Daffy runs across the snow, using the ice and the snowdrifts to stay ahead of Porky, and even tricks him into paying a toll. But Porky is furious now and won't give up. Desperate, Daffy runs back to Tom and begs him for help, and as night falls Tom tries hiding him in one place after another.
Why It Matters
- Daffy's struggle with his conscience while Porky lists the side dishes is a great piece of character comedy: greed beats loyalty in seconds, and he denies it the whole time. It shows Chuck Jones beginning to make Daffy a selfish, scheming coward, the personality that would define the character in his later films.
- It is a wartime cartoon with wartime vocabulary: Tom's insult, "Quisling", refers to Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian politician who collaborated with the Nazis and whose name became a byword for traitor. Its use in a children's cartoon shows how closely Warner's films followed the news.
Notes and Trivia
- The writers, Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce, are credited on screen simply as "The Staff".
- Tom Turk returned, redesigned and with a different voice, in Holiday for Drumsticks (1949).
- It was the last Chuck Jones short animated by Rudy Larriva.
- See also: Daffy - The Commando (1943), Slightly Daffy (1944).