A Corny Concerto question....

[Jack]

Is the ugly duckling in "A Corny Concerto" a baby version of Daffy Duck, or just a duck who looks like Daffy? I always thought it was Daffy, but some seem to dissagree.


Jack :confused:

[Sogturtle]

Originally posted by Jack
Is the ugly duckling in "A Corny Concerto" a baby version of Daffy Duck, or just a duck who looks like Daffy? I always thought it was Daffy, but some seem to dissagree.

Jack :confused:

Frere Jack ;)~

Knowing Clampett's fondness for the Daffy-lator, I'd say the odds are better than 99.9% that Clampett and Tashlin intended the baby ugly duckling to be none other than a pint-sized version of Daffy. People are always entitled to their own opinions but some things are soooo obvious...

[J Lee]

While "A Corny Concerto" is always IDed as Clampett's lampoon of "Fantasia," Bob -- and Frank -- didn't limit their horizons to just that. The "Blue Danube" segement lampoons the movie, but also fires a few shots across the bow of Walt's 1939 Academy Award-winner (and last Silly Symphony) cartoon "The Ugly Duckling," right down to cribbing a couple of similar scenes with the mother swan and the kiddies.

Given that Disney made his ugly duckling white, it would be perfectly in tune with Clampett's style to decide to put a black duck -- following up on the parody idea of So White in "Coal Black" -- in his cartoon. Combine that with the ultra-precise McKimson clan being the model-makers in Bob's unit and the fact that this duckling was designed for comedy, not pathos, you're likely to get a duck that looks like a younger version of Warner's main mallard.

(Plus Warners wasn't adverse to using a good-looking design for one of its main characters in other places -- Freleng modified the Porky and Elmer designs for two of his musical cartoons, "Pigs in a Polka" and "Holiday for Shoestrings" and as late as 1959 Abe Levitow was tweaking Bugs' look for the Martian-marrying rabbit in "Unnatural History.")

[Daffyfan2002]

I thought of that too, but he does look quite different. The way Daffy looked was pretty much established by 1943. But you never know. Maybe Clampett did mean for it to be a baby Daffy. I guess only he knows for sure. :confused:

[J. J. Hunsecker]

Just throwing in my two cents. I think it is a baby version of Daffy Duck. The duckling doesn't act too much like Daffy, though (but who knows how he would have behaved as a child). One can always compare this design to the baby Daffy used in Tashlin's Nasty Quacks (where he is also supposed to be an ugly duckling) and see if the two are similar.

[Jack]

Here's something else that I think supports the idea that it is intended to be Daffy: All the other segments of the cartoon feature a major WB star character. Elmer introduces the segments and Bugs and Porky are used in the first segment, so it makes sense to me that they would use WB's fourth major (shared) character for the final segment. So, not only are Clampett and Tashlin making fun of Fantasia, all of the then-current WB cartoon stars are too.


Jack :D