Dodgers’ control panel is a piano keyboard.
Noble and painter Phil De Guard came up with some fantastic backdrops for this Chuck Jones cartoon; Jones analysed some in depth in his book Chuck Amuck. Exhibitor magazine, on July 29, 1953, caught a preview and called the cartoon “excellent.” Jones had some winners in the 1952-53 theatrical season, including Duck Amuck and Bully For Bugs.
The official release date was July 25, 1953, the same day Warners released another short called Ride a White Horse (narrated by Art Gilmore, directed and written by Owen Crump, music by Howard Jackson and edited by Rex Steele) in the Sports Parade series. No one clamoured for a sequel to that one reeler, but there was one for Duck Dodgers. Mike Maltese was brought in to write it. Mike Kazaleh has a copy of the original storyboard, created in June 1979, and you can get the story behind the storyboard in this post on Jerry Beck’s history site. (Incidentally, we have found newspaper ads for showings of the original cartoon at the Lyric Theatre in Ft. Collins, Colorado as far back as June 5th).
Maltese told the Los Angeles Times in 1979: “I really didn’t want to go back to work. I was enjoying my retirement, but Chuck called me and it was hard to say no. He’s such a nice guy—I’d like to punch him in the mouth, he’s so nice.”
As for the original cartoon, he said: “One day, 26 years ago, I had a Daffy to do. We’d done story adaptations before, like putting Porky and Daffy in ‘The Scarlet Pumpernickel,’ so I though, hum, Buck Rogers, Daffy Duck, ‘Duck Dodgers’! We just decided to do that. It could have been anything.
“The funny thing is that we never thought these things would last. We were just doing a job because we had rent to pay, babies to raise. We did a cartoon, they released it and we forgot it. Now, years later, it comes back to haunt us like an antique.
“It was a lot of fun working on those shorts,” Maltese went on. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a stuntman. I wanted to be in pictures so bad and those cartoons gave me a chance to act, to dance, to write, to do all those things. They gave my show-off ego a chance to express itself.”
The animators on the cartoon were Lloyd Vaughan, Ken Harris and Ben Washam, with Harry Love handling effects. Carl Stalling drops “Powerhouse” onto the soundtrack, but the music over the titles is one of his original tunes (See note in the comments below).
I've seen references to the fact that the title music is, in fact, Raymond Scott's "Egyptian Barn Dance," the only time it seems to have been used in a WB cartoon. Compare with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7GtHhsQumk and I think you'll agree.
ReplyDeleteHi, E.O. I'm getting my info from Daniel Goldmark's "Happy Harmonies" dissertation. The second cue (after "Merrily We Roll Along") isn't listed, which means it's a Stalling cue. The third cue is Scott's.
DeleteWhat appears to have happened is Stalling put two cues over the opening credits. His piece is the dramatic cue that ends when the title card with the animators, etc. appears. That's when the Scott cue is heard.
I don't recall Stalling scoring more than one cue over the opening credits, but that appears to be what he did here.
"“The funny thing is that we never thought these things would last. We were just doing a job because we had rent to pay, babies to raise. We did a cartoon, they released it and we forgot it. Now, years later, it comes back to haunt us like an antique."
ReplyDeleteI love this quote. Shows he was just as witty in real life as in his cartoons.
"I don't recall Stalling scoring more than one cue over the opening credits"
He didn't do it much, but on "A Pest in the House" he cued both "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" and "Home Sweet Home" over the title cards.