The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short released in 1946. It was directed by Robert Clampett, written by Warren Foster, and animated by Izzy Ellis, Manny Gould, Bill Melendez, Robert McKimson, and Rod Scribner.
Synopsis
Daffy (voice of Mel Blanc) waits for his new Dick Tracy comic book to the tune of Raymond Scott's song Powerhouse. The mailman then arrives and he gets the comic book. He goes to a farm and reads it. Then, he wishes to become Dick Tracy and then knocks himself out by punching himself. He then imagines himself to be "Duck Twacy, the famous detec-a-tive." Ignoring a piggy-bank crime wave until he learns his own bank has also been stolen, Daffy's search leads him to the gangsters' not-so-secret hideout, where he faces off against all the dangerous criminals in town: Mouse Man, Snake Eyes (B.B. Eyes), 88 Teeth (88 Keys), Hammerhead, Pussycat Puss, Bat Man, Doubleheader (Half 'n' Half), Pickle Puss (Prune Face), Pumpkinhead, Neon Noodle, Jukebox Jaw, Wolfman, Rubberhead, and a host of unnamed grotesques (the villains are obvious parodies of Dick Tracy's rogues gallery). In one sequence, the bad guys are seen using well-known Dick Tracy villain Flattop's head (perhaps a Mount Rushmore-style variant) as a landing strip.
After being chased about, Daffy eventually turns the tables on the villains and eliminates them with a machine gun, shooting them through the door (which, if this were not a cartoon, would be a grim scene indeed, echoing the climactic scene from Warner's film The Big Sleep, released the same year). He faces one last adversary, Neon Noodle (who survived because he is a mere neon outline with no physical "center" for Daffy to shoot), whom Daffy defeats by turning into a neon sign that reads "Eat at Joe's" (a standard WB cartoon gag). He then finds the missing piggy banks, including his own. He begins to kiss his bank, waking up to find himself on the farm again, kissing a real pig. The pig, in an elegant female voice, says "Shall we dance?" and kisses him right in the mouth. He wipes the kiss away disgustedly and walks off, leaving the pig to say "I love that duck!" and laugh before iris out.
Notes
- Daffy's early line about Dick Tracy, "I love that man!" and the pig's closing line, "I love that duck!" are references to a popular catch-phrase of the time, "Love dat man!", said by the character Beulah on Fibber McGee and Molly [1]
- John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, named this as his favorite cartoon on the DVD commentary for Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2.
- In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "New Character Day", there was a segment called "The Return of Pluck Tracy" where Plucky Duck is in the same role that Daffy had here. Here, Pluck Tracy had to rescue Shirley the Loon's aura (who is really Hatta Mari) from gangsters.
- In 1994 it was voted #16 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
- When Duck Twacy takes a street car to the gangsters' hideout, the conductor is a thinly-disguised Porky Pig dressed in a driver's uniform and a handlebar mustache.
- Animation historian Steve Schneider said of this picture:
...Bob Clampett's forever priceless The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is clearly a work of the highest cinematic poetry, for prompting the film's manic hilarity are a sequence of images that remain among the most indelible in cartoon history.[2]
- First Looney Tunes cartoon with a new version of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down until 1954.
Censorship
- When this cartoon aired on the KidsWB shows "Bugs 'N Daffy" and "The Daffy Duck Show", the scene of Daffy locking all the criminals in a closet, blasting them with his gatling gun, and all of the criminals falling out in rapid succession was cut for being too violent (it should be of note that this censored scene, which is shown uncut on volume 2 of the Golden Collection, is said to be John Kricfalusi's favorite scene).
References
- ^ Billy Ingram. "The Beulah Show". Retrieved 2006-09-15.
- ^ Jerry Beck, ed. (1998). The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals. JG Press, Inc. ISBN 1-57215-271-0.
{{cite book}}:|author=has generic name (help)