Quack-a-Doodle-Doo is a 1950 Noveltoons cartoon directed by I. Sparber and Dave Tendlar.
Plot[]
Mama Duck waits in her cozy little house with an ample supply of diapers, formula bottles, etc. for the arrival of her first egg, but as usual with so many cartoon poultry, is getting nothing to show for it. In fact, the baby supplies have developed cobwebs between them from waiting so long. Mama tries to keep up her strength by taking a dose of her daily vitamins, instructions clearly reading “Take ONE daily”. Today, she decides to throw caution to the wind by swallowing a week’s supply, then sternly settles into her nest as if she means business. With sudden fitful twitches and sound effects resembling a car backfiring, a mammoth egg explodes into view below her. She quacks the news to all the girls of the farmyard, as the giant shell hatches – producing a massive yellow pot-bellied duckling, already six feet tall. “Duh, sorry I’m late, ma”, says the obviously dimwitted youth, shortly followed by the question, “When do we eat?” Attempts to weigh him break the baby scale and send the needle bouncing off its spring. For a diaper, he is outfitted in a burlap flour sack. A blue bonnet completes his ensemble, as he continues to claim that he’s starving. The duck community chef sounds a dinner bell at that moment, setting out a full trough of corn. Huey outraces the rest of the population, dragging Mama through the air behind him, and promptly swallows the day’s entire food supply. “He’s a pig, not a duck” mutter the other mothers. Huey next tries to join the local ducklings in a swim in a small pond, until Mama advises him in the middle of a dive that he hasn’t learned to swim. “Duh, now she tells me”, pouts Huey. No matter, as the water proves no hazard – Huey’s impact empties the pond entirely, and adds a crater to its muddy bottom in Huey’s image. Now the other ducks declare Huey a menace to society.
Mama and son are given their walking papers to leave the community. But bigger problems take center stage, as a ravenous fox swoops down on the flock, wielding an iron mallet. Mama tries to push Huey to safety in his carriage – but Huey’s weight soon exhausts her to the point she can no longer run. Huey switches places with her and skips along carelessly with Mama in the basket. The fox strikes a blow straight on Huey’s cranium – but what’s to break when there’s already nothing inside? Huey thinks it’s a game of tag, and grabs the fox back, clutching him so tight around the throat that his face turns deep blue. Fox plays along with Huey’s idea of games, while actually setting various traps for his demise. Engaging Huey in a game of hide and seek, fox lays fake paw prints leading out onto a board extended over a cliff. When Huey reaches end of the board, we see from below that its far end has been sawed through, and is held in place only by a supporting pin of wood which fox pills out with a string. Huey falls into a canyon, where fox waits in chef’s hat and with a stewpot of water boiling on a fire. Huey misses the pot and hits one of the burning logs, which flips the pot into the air and upside down on the fox. When fox pops out, he has ingested all of the steaming water, and has assumed the shape of a boiling teakettle as the steam escapes from him with a whistle. Next, fox posts a sign over a knothole in a tree: “Look in here, stupid!” Huey does, and comes eye-to-metal with the business end of a double-barreled shotgun. But he grabs hold of the barrel and lifts fox out of the tree just as fox pulls the trigger. Huey’s grip is so powerful, the bullets can’t exit, and the gun blows up in fox’s face. An anvil dropped on Huey’s head from the barn merely cracks in two. As the fox attacks with a carving knife, Huey establishes another part of the standard plot formula, as he finally realizes, “I think you’re trying to kill me.” The two disappear in a fight cloud as the knife fight ensues – but out of it pops fox, skinned and reduced to a pair of BVDs, and races for the hills. Huey is welcomed back to the community as their hero, and Mama shows off her brand new fox fur coat.[3]
Voice cast[]
- Sid Raymond - Baby Huey
- Gwen Davies - Mother Ducks
- Jack Mercer - Fox
- Mae Questel - Baby Huey's mother
- Cecil Roy - Duckling, Mother ducks
Availability[]
- VHS - Baby Huey and Friends (1992; Kids Klassics)
- DVD - Cartoon Craze - Volume 16 - Donald Duck & Woody Woodpecker: Pantry Panic (2004; Digiview)
- DVD - Nursery Classics (2004; Digiview)
- DVD - Noveltoons Original Classics (2012; Thunderbean Animation)
- DVD - Harvey Toons - The Complete Collection (2006; Classic Media)
- DVD - 200 Classic Cartoons (2008; Mill Creek Entertainment)
- DVD - 300 Cartoon Classics (2011; Image Entertainment)
- Blu-ray - Noveltoons Original Classics (2019; Thunderbean Animation)
- DVD/Blu-ray - Famous Studios Champion Collection (2026; ClassicFlix)
Trivia[]
- The title is a play on "cock-a-doodle-doo", the onomatopoeia for the sound of a rooster, mixed with the sound of a duck: "quack."
- This cartoon features the first appearance of Baby Huey.
- This cartoon fell into the public domain in the United States in 1977 due to National Telefilm Associates not renewing the copyright on time.
References[]
External links[]
Quack-a-Doodle-Doo at the Internet Animation Database
Quack-a-Doodle-Doo at the Internet Movie Database
