In the ‘40s, Hanna and Barbera had used a Beulah-type maid as a third character for Tom and Jerry to play off. That type of character was o-w-t in the ‘50s. Bill and Joe used a menagerie of other animals but became obsessed with a little duck, who was plotted into at least seven cartoons.
I loathe this character.
In That’s My Mommy, the stupid duckling believes Tom is his mother (the duck has a mommy fixation in most of his cartoons), even after Jerry points out in a book what a mother duck and a mother cat look like (he actually never catches on during the whole picture).
Here are some drawings from the one real take in the short, when the duck realises he’s the key ingredient in his mommy’s duck stew. It ain’t ‘40s-type Tom-and-Jerry animation by a long shot, let alone something outrageous like Tex Avery would have tried.
Now a head shake and another take.
The cartoon ends with Tom taking pity on the pitiable duck (rivers of tears flow from the cat’s eyes) and deciding not to eat him. The last scene shows Tom swimming with him, just like a loving mommy.
The duck, of course, was re-used by Hanna and Barbera in the Yakky Doodle series, and there was even a cartoon where Fibber Fox decides not to eat the duck, but be his mommy instead.
He also became the model for the blue duck on the HB Yogi Bear cartoons like the one where he hibernates with Yogi in the second episode. I forgot what's it's called. What was that duck called?
ReplyDelete"Slumber Party Smarty" (1958). His name is Biddy Buddy. He reappears a year later in "Duck in Luck"..
DeleteThat is clearly Ken Muse's animation. It's especially noticeable in the first and fourth stills. Muse specialized in emotional takes with the eyes closed and mouths wide open. You'll see it it many, MANY FLINTSTONES episodes.
ReplyDeleteFor as tame an animator as Ken Muse was, he seemed to get saddled with scenes requiring Tex-Avery takes (albeit much tamer), like this one.
DeleteI'm not a big fan of the duck either, or any one of his disguises, but Hanna Barbera must have received many letters favoring the little bastard. Knowing HB's way of operating, once they found something that worked, they seized on it and reused it til they ran it into the ground.
ReplyDeleteI liked the little duck when he turned up in Tom and Jerry and other places. When he became Yakky Duck on the Yogi Bear show, I enjoyed his co-stars, especially the Shelley Berman-channeling Fibver Fox and the less utilized Alfred Hitchcock-like Alfie Gator.
ReplyDeleteTotally agreed..and by the time he "guest-starred" on Snagglepuss and then Yakky's own, he traded singer-comic Redd Coffey (sic)'s voice for duck ventriloquist Jimmy Weldon. But the duckling's green color had already started to take place in his earlier incarnaiton on the various HB/Columbia/Screen Gems shows post-MGM, after being the teal b lue..SC
Deletesmall self-correction: I liked the little duckling, coincidentally reviewed on this blog's sister-parent blog YOWP in "Beach Brawl" (1961), ONLY, and ONLY on the Yakky (Doodle, by the way: not duck..) and again....: ONLY, and ONLY in limited doeses compared to costars on that sgement..(Hey, I'm Pokey from Gumby, there's some divded opinion oin the early Gumby character, TOO!) SC
DeleteHi Yowp, The swimming shot from "That's My Mommy" with Tom and the duckling is an Irv Spence scene. Irv usually gets long or medium shot scenes with a lot of action. Ken Muse, being a Disney trained animator, was more controlled in his inbetweens, thus he was ideal for facial close-ups.
ReplyDeleteThis was also the first cartoon Bill & Joe did as both directors and producers, following Fred Quimby's retirement, and I believe the third CinemaScope effort (after "Tom and Cherie" and "Good Will to Men") that didn't require the dual release of both a widescreen and Academy ratio print. That meant they could do more animation on the edges of the screen (which was very noticeable when some of the later T&J 'Scope prints were panned and scanned for syndication back in the late 1970s).
ReplyDeleteBackgrounds here are more in the mode of the last couple of seasons of the non-widescreen shorts, but by the end of the 1955-56 release season, the UPA influence would really take over, totally detaching the 1940s character designs from their stylized surroundings.