This article particularly deals with content blacklisted from contemporary television for containing heavy wartime themes. This article is not censored, as to censor the article would be to pretend that these events never existed. Please continue at your own risk. |
Plane Daffy is a 1944 Looney Tunes short directed by Frank Tashlin.
Title[]
The title is pun on "plain daffy."
Plot[]
One after another of a company of carrier pigeons fall prey to the seductive wiles of "Queen of the Spies" Hatta Mari. The alarm is raised at pigeon headquarters when Pigeon 13 goes AWOL with the female Nazi spy bird, to whom he reveals all his secrets after she plies him with a mickey, causing the guilty Pigeon 13 to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head.
When all hope is lost for the carrier pigeons, self-described woman-hater Daffy volunteers for the next mission. She tries to seduce him by hiking up her skirt to reveal her shapely leg and kissing him full on the bill twice. The first kiss electrocutes Daffy and melts him like butter, but the second kiss electrocutes Hatta Mari having the same effect on her. Daffy eventually resists her charms. He has to swallow his secret message when the temptress corners him as well. After a frenetic battle at slinky Mari's pad, she x-rays Daffy and broadcasts the secret, "Hitler is a stinker," to Hitler. Goebbels and Goering have to shoot themselves in the head after agreeing with it. Daffy then remarks "They lose more darn 'Nutzis' that way!" before hooting wildly.
Caricatures[]
- Mortimer Snerd
- Mata Hari
- Marlene Dietrich
- Adolf Hitler
- Jerry Colonna - "Something new has been added!"
- Hermann Goering
- Joseph Goebbels
Availability[]
Viddy-Oh! For Kids Cartoon Festivals: Daffy Duck Cartoon Festival Featuring "Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur"
Cartoon Moviestars: Bugs and Daffy: The Wartime Cartoons
Cartoon Moviestars: Bugs and Daffy: The Wartime Cartoons
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes: Vol. 2, Side 3: Frank Tashlin
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4, Disc 2 (with optional audio commentary by Greg Ford)
The Essential Daffy Duck, Disc 1
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3, Disc 2 (with optional audio commentary by Greg Ford)
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3, Disc 2 (with optional audio commentary by Greg Ford)
Streaming[]
Censorship[]
- When this cartoon was shown on Cartoon Network USA on a 3am showing of Bugs and Daffy in 2003, the ending when Hitler's henchmen agree with the "military secret" that Hitler is a stinker is edited to remove the part where the henchmen shoot themselves in the head, though an earlier scene where Pigeon 13 tries and fails at shooting himself in the head after giving away military secrets while under the influence wasn't cut.[3]
- Despite the ending being cut from the short proper, Cartoon Network USA once showed the offending part on an episode of its animation history anthology show ToonHeads centered on World War II cartoons entitled "The Wartime Cartoons". The scene was featured in a montage near the end, where narrator Leslie Fram explains that a lot of the outdated references and outrageously offensive stereotypes of Germans and Japanese people have prevented a lot of wartime cartoons from being shown on TV and, in some cases, distributed on home video (and those that do are usually edited to remove them, especially on television airings).[4]
- While The Censored Cartoons Page also states that TNT aired this cartoon with the henchman suicide scene cut, a 1988 airing of this cartoon on TNT's Wild World of Shorts programming block shows that the ending sequence was not censored at all (not even to cover up Hatta Mari doing the Hitler salute after she captures Daffy and straps him to the X-ray).[5]
Notes[]
- The cartoon still uses WARNER BROS. on opening titles. This is also the first cartoon to have Daffy's face on the opening titles without Porky. The drum ending has "PRODUCED BY WARNER BROS. CARTOONS INC." still with the "RELEASED BY WARNER BROS. PICTURES INC." byline on the bottom.
- The European dubbed version uses the bylines "A WARNER BROS. CARTOON" instead of "PRODUCED BY WARNER BROS. CARTOONS INC."
- Despite being billed as a Daffy Duck cartoon in the opening credits, Daffy does not appear until at least three-and-a-half minutes into the cartoon.
- Several of the names of the pigeons listed on the blackboard are named after Warner Bros. staff members: Warren Foster, Melvin Millar, Richard Bickenbach, Leon Schlesinger, Ray Katz, A.C. Gamer, and Cal Dalton. Also included is notable Hollywood actor Walter Pidgeon.
- According to DVD commentary on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4, Hatta Mari's blond hair and cartoonishly top-heavy body figure would later become a reality in the 1950s with actress and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, whom Tashlin would direct in The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
- The quote "Something new has been added" was a catchphrase by Jerry Colonna and a slogan for Old Gold cigarettes.
- Although seldom shown on American television due to its focus on World War II and the Nazis, it was uploaded to the official Warner Bros. Classics YouTube channel in 2024 (and was previously shown on Cartoon Network in the early 2000s). As of this writing, the short has since been set to private.
Gallery[]
_-_Seduced.jpg "Plane Daffy (1944) - Seduced.jpg (254 KB)")
_-_Faint.jpg "Plane Daffy (1944) - Faint.jpg (358 KB)")
_-_X-Ray.jpg "Plane Daffy (1944) - X-Ray.jpg (181 KB)")
References[]
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/catalogofc19723261213libr/page/72/mode/1up?view=theater
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/animationbreakdowns8
- ↑ http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-p.aspx
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/toonheadsthewartimecartoons
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=483N3xxNWmM