The Great Piggy Bank Robbery

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
Looney Tunes (Daffy Duck) series

Lobby card
Directed by Robert Clampett
Produced by Edward Selzer (uncredited)
Story by Warren Foster
Voices by Mel Blanc (All)
Music by Carl W. Stalling
Animation by Rod Scribner
Manny Gould
C. Melendez
I. Ellis
Layouts by Thomas McKimson
Backgrounds by Philip De Guard
Studio Warner Bros. Cartoons
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date(s) July 20, 1946 (USA)
Color process Technicolor
Running time 7:35
Language English

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

Legacy

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] ”

This was the first cartoon to air on Cartoon Network, when the 24-hour cartoon channel launched on October 1, 1992.[3]

In 1994 it was voted #16 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Billy Ingram. "The Beulah Show". Retrieved 2006-09-15.
  2. ↑ Jerry Beck, ed. (1998). The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals. JG Press, Inc. ISBN 1-57215-271-0.
  3. ↑ Cartoon Network on Facebook
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