Daffy's Southern Exposure is a 1942 Looney Tunes short directed by Norman McCabe.
Plot[]
Various ducks are flying in the sky, including a few flying with the banner "KEEP 'EM FLYING! BUY A BOND!" Meanwhile, Daffy is sitting in a lake, pointing out how silly it is for the rest of the ducks to fly south and north repeatedly. He comments how he isn't going south, because he wants to "check up on this whole winter business." The other ducks say, "You'll be sorry!" However, Daffy doesn't care and splashes around in the lake. He flies up in the sky, and then flies down, but the lake suddenly freezes, and he crashes on it. He notices snow and skates around.
Later, Daffy is trapped in a snowstorm, and is now searching for food. He imagines a snowy tree as a T-bone steak and starts licking it. However, he realizes the steak is actually a tree and starts banging on it, and then peels off pieces of bark. With the pieces of bark and one of his hands, he creates a "hand sandwich", and yelps in pain after biting down.
The aroma of food welcomes him to a log cabin. Inside, are a weasel and a fox eating beans. The fox is complaining about how he has to eat beans everyday, and would rather eat steak, baked ham, or roast duck. He hears Daffy knocking on the door. The fox opens the top half of the door, and the weasel tries to pull Daffy in, but is slapped by the fox. He lifts up Daffy, then puts him down and whispers something to the weasel. They leave, and the fox returns, disguised as a woman.
He invites Daffy inside, and he starts fattening up Daffy with beans as he sings a parody of the song "The Latin Quarter", while the weasel, also disguised as a woman (with the name of "Abigail") measures him. After Daffy is put in a frying pan, the fox says "And now for our dessert!" slipping back into his normal masculine voice while doing so, and he and the weasel take off their wigs and hats, revealing their true selves. Daffy is shocked, and jumps out of the frying pan. Daffy tries to talk them out of eating him by saying that he is a pigeon and a hummingbird.
Daffy swings the door open, runs out, and swings the door shut. The fox swings the door open and runs out. The weasel swings the door, accidentally closing it, and runs into the wall. The fox chases Daffy into a tree. Out of a hole near the top, Daffy imitates an elevator operator, and then he and the fox go upwards and out of the tree. The fox swings his ax around and around, making the tree a totem pole. He cannot find Daffy, who is on the pole mimicking a totem. He gets on the ground and kicks the fox in the behind.
The fox chases Daffy some more, only for Daffy to momentarily stop the chase and punch the fox in the face. The chase resumes, as Daffy pulls a lever on a log that makes a detour appear. The fox runs onto the detour and falls off the log. Daffy runs past some signs that say "SOUTH", "SOUTH", and "AND WE DO MEAN SOUTH!"
A Carmen Miranda-like character does a dance. Her dance ends, and Daffy pops up from the fruit in her head, sporting a similar hat on his head. He comments, "I like the South American way. And I do mean South."
Caricatures[]
- Carmen Miranda
- Jimmy Fiedler - "And I do mean south!"
Availability[]
Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition Volume 15: A Battle of Wits
Looney Tunes Collector's Choice: Volume 2 (restored)
Streaming[]
Notes[]
- This was one of the few black-and-white cartoons from the Sunset Productions/Guild Films package to air on Cartoon Network that still aired with a redrawn colorized print regularly. Others included "Wholly Smoke", "Jeepers Creepers", "Porky's Bear Facts", "Porky's Pooch", and "Puss n' Booty". However, it aired computer-colorized on the Norman McCabe episode of ToonHeads.[4]
- This is the first Daffy Duck short to be directed by Norman McCabe and the first short he directed to not feature Porky Pig.
- This is also Daffy's first solo short in the Looney Tunes series. He was previously paired with Porky for Looney Tunes shorts and had four solo Merrie Melodies shorts before this.
- For unknown reasons, certain prints of the redrawn colorized version cuts straight from the opening credits to Daffy discovering snow and skating on the ice.
- In TV airings of the redrawn colorized version, the 1968 Warner Bros.-Seven Arts logos are shown at the beginning and the end, retaining the original 1942 opening and closing music.
- This is one of the redrawn colorized cartoons that used the original theatrical opening and closing titles but retraced.
- The computer-colorized version and certain prints of the black-and-white version, such as on Boomerang's SVOD service, have the wrong opening music playing over the opening logos, i.e., the 1936–37 "Porky Signature" theme as heard on "Porky's Badtime Story" and "Porky's Railroad", instead of the correct 1941–45 "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" theme music. It also uses the 1937–39 "Porky in a Drum" closing animation in place of the correct 1939–43 closing animation, albeit using the correct 1941–46 closing music.
- As the restoration aired on MeTV is sourced from these prints, these errors persist in the restoration.
- The print on Looney Tunes Collector's Choice: Volume 2 uses a sped-up version of the 1938–41 "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" theme and plasters the closing animation with the 1939–43 version from another cartoon.
- This cartoon was remade five years later as "Along Came Daffy".[5]
- This cartoon entered the public domain in 1970 as Warner Bros. didn't renew the copyright in time.
- MeTV aired a previously unreleased restored print of the cartoon on Saturday Morning Cartoons.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ http://likelylooneymostlymerrie.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-daffys-southern-exposure-1942.html
- ↑ (3 October 2022) Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2 (in en). BearManor Media.
- ↑ https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/animator-profiles-norm-mccabe/
- ↑ Norman McCabe Toonheads Special | Anime Superhero Forum
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/CartoonNetworkToonHeadsDirectorNormanMcCabefirstHalf