Daffy Duck & Egghead

Daffy Duck & Egghead is a 1937-produced, 1938-released Warner Bros. cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series. It features the early, zany version of Daffy Duck, who spends the film harassing Egghead (later to become Elmer Fudd), marking the second appearance of Daffy Duck (after Porky's Duck Hunt, of which this cartoon is basically a reworking), his first in color, and first where he is given his current name. It includes a set-piece song-and-dance number by Daffy (shown with a blue band around his neck, instead of the usual white), doing his own variation of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down (later the theme for Looney Tunes).

Plot
The story begins with Egghead (in a voice imitating radio comic Joe Penner) who is annoyed by a (rotoscoped) shadowman in the audience who doesn't sit down. Egghead shoots the audience member and the member falls after going through extended "death throes". Egghead hears a call from the grass, and out comes Daffy Duck biting his nose (just like he did to Porky Pig in Porky's Duck Hunt.) While fighting, a tortoise (with a voice imitating radio comic Parkyakarkus) comes and tries to give Daffy and Egghead new weapons. When the tortoise goes away, Egghead uses his real gun and Daffy tries to make him shoot the apple on his head. Egghead misses every time, so Daffy puts a blind sign, a cup of pencils, and disguise glasses on Egghead. ("Too bad, too bad," as Daffy says.).

Daffy then walks away and sings his own variation of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down by himself five minutes into the cartoon, in a set-piece drawn in a different style from the rest of the cartoon, and also containing the subdued, early form of Daffy's lisp, which is absent in the rest of the film:
 * My name is Daffy Duck,
 * I worked on a Merry-Go-Round,
 * The job was swell
 * I did quite well
 * Till the Merry-go-round broke down.''
 * (Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo-hoo!)
 * The guy that worked with me,
 * Was a horse with a lavender eye,
 * Around in whirls, we winked at girls
 * Till the Merry-go-round broke down.
 * (plays flute)
 * Up and down and round we sped,
 * That dizzy pace soon went to my head,
 * Now you know why I'm dizzy
 * And do the things I do
 * I am askew [or "a screw"] and you'd be too
 * If the Merry-go-round broke down.
 * (Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo-Hoo-hoo-Hoo-hoo-Hoo-hoo!)
 * If the Merry-go-round broooooooookkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeee (while stretching his neck so far that the blue line on his neck becomes many blue lines instead of one) down (calmly; not singing)

Daffy then shakes hands with his reflection from the lake and they both dive back into the water.

Later, Egghead finally manages to capture Daffy by shooting a pair of gloves from his gun, knocking Daffy out and allowing Egghead to place him in a net. Just as Egghead celebrates, a duck from the mental ward comes to claim Daffy. He thanks Egghead for helping to catch Daffy, and tells him that Daffy is 100% nuts. "Yeah?" Egghead asks, "Yeah!" answers the duck warden. At that moment, both he and Daffy beat Egghead up before woohoo-ing out into the distance. Egghead becomes fed up with the antics and decides to join them as the cartoon ends. A similar joke would end 1940's Knock Knock, the debut of Woody Woodpecker, a character whose early behavior was similar to the early Daffy, and likewise voiced by Mel Blanc, who was then working for Lantz as well as Warner/Schlesinger.

Availability
Daffy Duck & Egghead is available, uncensored and restored, on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3.

Errors
On the ending titles, the 1941-1955 ending rendition of "Merrily We Roll Along" (the Merrie Melodies theme music) is used instead of the 1937-1938 rendition. This only happens on DVD and on TV showings of the Turner "dubbed version".

Before the Asylum Ambulance pulls up, Egghead's hat is on the ground. When the scene changes, his hat is back on his head.