The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short, produced in early 1945, and released in 1946. It was directed by Robert Clampett, and features Daffy Duck in Clampett's penultimate Warner cartoon, produced shortly before he left the studio. The cartoon is largely a parody of the popular Dick Tracy comic book series.
Plot
On a farm, Daffy 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. To the tune of Franz von Suppé's Poet and Peasant overture, he sprints to a corner of the farm and reads it. Then, he wishes to become Dick Tracy and then knocks himself out by accidentally punching himself while imagining fighting criminals.
He then imagines himself to be "Duck Twacy, the famous duck-tec-a-tive." Ignoring a piggy bank theft crime wave, he goes into action when he learns that his own piggy bank has been stolen from his secure safe. He decides to call Duck Twacy and calls himself before remembering he is Duck Twacy. He calls a taxi to follow a car but it leaves without him, to which he replies 'Keeps them on their toes.' Daffy while looking through a magnifying glass at the pavement, at one point bumps into one Sherlock Holmes who is doing the same thing in the opposite direction, and tells him he is working on this side of the street.
Daffy's search leads him to a tram with Porky as the driver leading to the gangsters' not-so-secret hideout. He falls through a trapdoor when he rings the bell and follows footprints, even climbing up a wall making him think the culprit is the Human Fly, to a mouse-hole. He says the culprit is Mouse Man, however a huge humanoid mouse then comes out, looking positively angry, and the scared Daffy tells him to go back in. He runs away but faces off against all the dangerous criminals in town (many of which are parodies of Dick Tracy's rogues gallery) consisting of Snake Eyes (spoof of B.B. Eyes who has dice for eyes), 88 Teeth (spoof of 88 Keys with piano keys for teeth), Hammerhead (a criminal with a hammer for a head), Pussycat Puss (a monochromatic gangster version of Sylvester), Bat Man (an anthropomorphic baseball bat who is a name parody of the real Batman where DC Comics is now owned by WB), Doubleheader (a two-headed spoof of Tulza "Haf-and-Haf" Tuzon), Pickle Puss (a pickle spoof of Pruneface), Pumpkinhead (a criminal with a pumpkin for a head), Neon Noodle (a neon spoof of Frankenstein), Jukebox Jaw (a criminal with a jukebox speaker for a jaw and a turntable on top of his head), Wolfman (an anthropomorphic wolf criminal), Rubberhead (a pencil eraser-headed criminal), and a host of other unnamed grotesque criminals. He declares "You're all under arrest!" The villains then roar at our hero and the chase begins.
In one sequence, the bad guys are seen using well-known Dick Tracy villain Flattop's head as an airstrip with planes taking off. When Daffy is trapped against a wall, Rubberhead "rubs him out" with his head as an eraser but Daffy appears at the door. Pumpkinhead meanwhile moves in with submachine gun blazing. Daffy tosses a hand grenade directly to Pumpkinhead's head and he becomes a stack of pumpkin pies.
After being chased about, Daffy eventually turns the tables on the villains and traps them inside a hallway closet. He slams the door shut on them and eradicates the group with sustained fire from a Tommy gun.
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 him 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, but since he is dreaming he doesn't realize that he is on the farm again, kissing a real female pig. The plump yet slightly curvacious pig is rather smitten by Daffy since she believes he's trying to woo her with the barrage of smooches he plants all around her face. He wraps his kisses up with a peck to the cute pig's little nose. So in an elegant female voice she says "Shall we dance?" and lovingly kisses him right in the mouth. Now wide awake, Daffy wipes the kiss away disgustedly and runs away. The lady pig says "I love that duck!" and laughs.
Allusions and influence
- 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. Clampett would use the gag again in his next and final cartoon at Warner Bros. Cartoons, The Big Snooze.
- The gag where Duck Twacy says "I'm gonna pin it on ya" only to be revealed to be playing Pin the tail on the donkey is taken from the Tex Avery cartoon Thugs with Dirty Mugs.
- In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Inside Plucky Duck," there was a segment called "Bat's All Folks" where a spoof of the criminal encounters has Plucky Duck as Bat-Duck encountering Jackster (a donkey parody of Joker), Puffin (a puffin parody of Penguin), Question Mark (a parody of Riddler), and Polecat Woman (a parody of Catwoman). In "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 like Ticklepuss (based on Sloppy Moe from Wagon Heels), Soupy Man (an anthropomorphic soup can), Jack the Zipper (an anthropomorphic zipper), Boston Dangler (an upside-down Bostonian on a trapeze), Flatbottom (a naval criminal with a miniature battleship for a butt), Boxcars (a train conductor based on the Peter Lorre scientist), the Generic Thugs, Wolvertoon (a deformed version of Bugs Bunny), Millipede Pete (an anthropomorphic millipede), the Chorus Line Men, and the other unnamed grotesque criminals.
- Daffy says "sufferin' succotash" while waiting for his Dick Tracy comic. This line would eventually become the catchphrase of Sylvester, who also has a lisp in his voice. Daffy has said this line in Ain't That Ducky, Baby Bottleneck and Hollywood Daffy and repeats it in six more cartoons: The Up-Standing Sitter, You Were Never Duckier, Daffy Dilly, His Bitter Half, Fiesta Fiasco and Skyscraper Caper.
- In the scene in which Daffy is seen through a door in silhouette as Duck Twacy, his shadow briefly morphs into Dick Tracy's trademark profile.
- After Daffy shoots through the door with his Tommy Gun and the rogues' gallery of characters begin falling there is a brief shot of a very well endowed woman mixed in with the deck. This happens about halfway through and can only be appreciated fully by carefully going frame-by-frame during this sequence. A well hidden gag.
- An episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold titled "Legends of the Dark-Mite" contains a sequence which heavily parodies the cartoon. Unlike when Daffy faces criminals which are parodies, here Bat-Mite faces actual Batman villains (namely Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, Mad Hatter, Catman, Polka-Dot Man, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Killer Moth, Kite Man, Zebra-Man, and Tiger Shark). As an example, miniature Kite Man figures launch off the top hat of the Mad Hatter.
Legacy
Animation historian Steve Schneider said of this picture:
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery was the first of several cartoons in which Daffy Duck would do a parody of a well-known character, but the only one in which he was actually competent. In other take-offs, such as The Scarlet Pumpernickel, he was somewhat buffoonish, though still able to intimidate the bad guys. But, in later stories such as Stuporduck, Boston Quackie, Robin Hood Daffy and Deduce, You Say? (in which he played "Doorlock Holmes"), Daffy was hopelessly overmatched.
This was the first cartoon to air on Cartoon Network, when the 24-hour cartoon channel launched on October 1, 1992.
In 1994 it was voted #16 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
See also
- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1940â€"1949)
References
External links
- The Great Piggy Bank Robbery on Internet Movie Database
- The Great Piggy Bank Robbery at The Big Cartoon DataBase
