Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions (Looney Tunes)
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures, The Vitaphone Corporation
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
Porky Pig, a talent agent at Smeller Productions, is trying to leave for his golf game when Daffy Duck barges in to sell him a client, the child performer Sleepy Lagoon, a fat, silent boy with a lollipop. Daffy will not take no for an answer: he performs the boy's whole act himself, singing, dancing, playing the ukulele, impersonating Carmen Miranda, doing a Western number and a bit of everything else, as Porky tries every exit and Daffy is at each one before him. At last, exhausted, Porky agrees to hear the kid; Sleepy Lagoon opens his mouth and sings, in a rich adult tenor, "In the Garden of My Heart", with Ken Bennett's voice dubbed in, and the joke is that he is genuinely good.
Why It Matters
- It is the purest showcase of the early, hyperactive Daffy, a seven-minute audition from a duck who cannot stop performing, and Freleng's timing makes every number a gag; the Carmen Miranda routine and the exploding-door exits are the high points. Porky's long-suffering agent is the straight man the series had been looking for.
- Yankee Doodle Daffy is among the handful of Porky and Daffy cartoons in the public domain, through United Artists' failure to renew the copyright by 1971, so it has been seen far more than most of its neighbours and is often the film that fixes the "crazy Daffy" in people's minds. The title borrows from Yankee Doodle Dandy, Warner's hit of the previous year, with which it shares nothing but show business.
Notes and Trivia
- Ken Bennett, who sang the final number, also sang in other Warner cartoons of the period.
- This was the second Porky and Daffy Looney Tune in Technicolor, after My Favorite Duck.
- See also: Porky Pig's Feat (1943), Scrap Happy Daffy (1943), Daffy the Commando (1943).
