Monday 14 August 2023

Smearing Daffy

Daffy Duck hands a gun to a bull to kill himself in Mexican Joyride (released Nov. 29, 1947), another fine cartoon from the Art Davis unit.

There’s some great smear animation in this scene. The in-betweens are animated on twos.



Bill Melendez, Herman R. Cohen, Basil Davidovich and Don Williams are the credited animators.

There’s some really expressive animation of Daffy near the beginning which I suspect is Melendez’ work.

Dave Monahan wrote the story. Tom McKimson handled the layouts and the backgrounds were by Phil DeGuard. I believe this was the last Warners cartoon with McKimson’s name on the credits. He was replaced by Don Smith.

Despite what trade publications and ads say, “Joyride” is one word on the opening titles, not two.

4 comments:

  1. Eric O. Costello14 August 2023 at 09:21

    ...which, when you consider that the title is probably a riff on the Cole Porter musical "Mexican Hayride," one word, makes sense.

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  2. Bill Scott recalled writing this.

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  3. Yet another pre-'48 WB cartoon from the a.a.p. package that I remember ran in heavy rotation during the Seventies, but pretty much vanished off the face of the earth the following decade.

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  4. I love these Daffy cartoons by Art Davis. They are my favorite Daffy shorts outside of the ones directed by Clampett.

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