Title: “A Corny Concerto”
Year released: 1943
Character(s): Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd
Story by: Frank Tashlin
Animation by: Robert McKimson
Directed by: Bob Clampett
Studio: Warner Bros
The second in the list for Warners, this one features all or most of the main
Merrie Melodies cast, and slyly takes a pot-shot at rival Disney’s
Fantasia, released three years earlier. It’s the first (in the list) to use the later to be standard idea of making titles alliterative, though this one uses a double-joke, as it were, with the word “corny” being also used to describe the venue, Carnegie Hall, which is changed to, you guessed it, Corny-gie Hall. Naturally, it uses classical music, kicking off with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, though this is only heard over the credits. Introducing the whole thing is one of my least favourite
Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes characters, Elmer **** sorry Fudd. His voice - not to mention his lisp - always drove me up the wall, and they use it to the max here, giving him plenty of words with “r” in them.
The first sequence is “Tales from the Vienna Woods”, and rather cleverly I guess switches the roles, making Porky Pig the hunter (it’s usually Fudd) as he stalks Bugs Bunny with a dog that looks - I think intentionally - rather a lot like Mickey Mouse’s best friend, Pluto. Nit sure if this is a speechless venture (I don’t say silent, as there is of course music and the introduction by Fudd, who no doubt will be back to annoy us) but Bugs doesn’t speak, merely appearing out of his rabbit hole to show the dog a book of etiquette, in which is written IT AIN’T POLITE TO POINT! After which he slams the book shut on the dog’s nose, then does a sort of ballet dance, taking the opportunity to kick the dog and tie him to a tree. Next they all end up in a bush, and Bugs somehow contrives to fool Porky into thinking he’s the dog, having the pig point the gun at the pointer. Yeah, the usual shenanigans you expect when Bugs Bunny is around.
Bugs then manages to get the gun himself and throws in into the bole of a tree, where a rather angry squirrel gets it and shoots all three of them. They stagger around theatrically, dying, then Porky and the dog realise they’re all right, but Bugs is - apparently - done for. As Porky tries to revive him, the rabbit turns into a girl rabbit, slaps him and legs it into the distance. Fudd is back then, as I expected, to introduce the next sequence (wherein for some reason his pants fall down) which is based on
The Blue Danube (or to give it its full title,
On the Beautiful Blue Danube), featuring a rather well choreographed (this is 1943, remember) waltz by a mother swan and her three cygnets, all going “Quack-quack” in time to the music, and attracting the attention of what must surely be a baby Daffy (Daffy Duckling?) whose raucous QUAKK QUAKK! Does not impress the mother swan. In a kind of retelling then I guess of “The Ugly Ducking”, he’s kicked out of the troupe.
Daffy being Daffy though, he doesn’t give up, and when a vulture - in a tuxedo, no less - spies the swans (twisting his eyes like he has a pair of binoculars) it’s up to the plucky little dark duckling to save his new friends. In what would become another cartoon trope, as the vulture prepares to eat the cygnets he sprinkles salt and pepper on them. Daffy, also captured but rejected, for some reason uses an oar to propel himself through the water. When the mother discovers, far too late, that her babies are missing, she goes frantic, and eventually faints, Daffy having to revive her with a bucket of water (!) and then he takes off like a fighter after the vulture. A few things to note here: as he flies, teeth bared (do ducks have teeth?) there is the sound of an aircraft flying and, in cast the audience don’t get it for some reason, he briefly turns into a P-51 Mustang, complete with shark’s teeth painted on. This would, of course, have been a nod to the boys fighting in the Pacific and Europe in the USAF against both the Japanese and the Germans. Two trees, blown together as Daffy passes, huddle together, their branches around each other in fear as they become one tree.
Daffy’s fury and speed is such that when he catches up with the vulture he blows the tuxedo off him, leaving him naked but for a bowtie. The little cygnets descend to the lake on tiny parachutes, and in time-honoured fashion, Daffy hounds the vulture to a cloud, where he presents him with a large stick of TNT. In Roadrunner style, the vulture falls from the cloud, is blown to bits and ascends plucking a harp as an angel, while in the next scene we see a grateful mother swan, reunited with her children, has allowed Daffy to join their group as they all sing happily together.
Comments: I have to say, I don’t see this as a send-up of
Fantasia at all. Other than the fact that you have Elmer Fudd doing a (pretty poor) rip-off of the opening scene (which was originally, I think, live action) it’s really two cartoons, each starring one of the franchise’s biggest stars, and each of these could have been produced as a separate cartoon and not suffered from it. The link, for me, with Elmer Fudd, is superfluous and does not work. That said, there’s a clear wartime message in the second one, with the vulture no doubt being seen as a Nazi and a very young Daffy coming to the rescue as an all-American duck. The choice of music is not surprising: it works well with the swans’ dance, and who after all does not know this piece? Though again, given the subject matter, “Swan Lake” might have worked too.
It’s very interesting to see Daffy as a duckling. I don’t know if this was his first appearance - 1943, I would doubt it but let’s see … no, first appeared in 1937. Still, it’s curious to see him so young, and indeed silent, without his trademark catchphrase “You’re despicable!” Of course, Bugs doesn’t get to use his well-known greeting “What’s up Doc?” either, so both are a slight oddity in that regard. Whereas the first short would, I believe, have worked without the Strauss waltz, it is entirely integral to the second, even the bit where it speeds up tying in very well with Daffy’s vengeful attack on the vulture. I mean, it would have worked without the music, but it works better with it. The change of attitude of the mother swan, too, from annoyed at Daffy trying to play with her kids to grateful to him for saving them, and therefore accepting him, is well accomplished within the four minutes or so the cartoon - or this part of it - runs for. Packed quite a lot into such a short space.
This I did not know, but I read now that the rejection stamp put upon Daffy by the vulture - “Rejected 4F” - refers to a military rejection for one who is unfit for service, which therefore lends his “fighter aircraft” rescue even more significance.
My own personal rating: 8/10