The Spotlight:
"Fool Coverage" (1952, Looney Tunes)
Director: Robert McKimson
Story: Tedd Pierce
Animation: Phil DeLara, Charles McKimson, Herman Cohen, Rod Scribner
Layouts: Robert Givens
Backgrounds: Carlos Manriquez
Voices: Mel Blanc
Music: Carl W. Stalling
This cartoon features daffy Duck at his most obnoxious, with a job that reflects it: Insurance Salesman. Daffy, wearing a straw hat and oversized neck tie, knocks on Porky Pig's door and tries to sell him an insurance policy. Porky doesn't want one, and Daffy sets out to prove that it's a necessity for accidents around the home. Daffy points out Porky's mistake of lighting a match to look for a screwdriver he left in the oven. When Daffy shows him the safe way, a flashlight, the oven explodes on him. He then decides to set up a few booby traps to enhance the possibility of an accident. Of course, they all backfire on him and leave the pig unscathed. After seeing all of Daffy's accidents, Porky decides to buy the policy after all. Of course, he forgets to read the fine print and all of the crazy conditions needed to collect on the policy, including getting a black eye as a result of stampeding wild elephants on the fourth of July during a hail storm, followed by one baby zebra. Unfortunately for Daffy, though, it IS the fourth of July, a hailstorm starts, the stampede of elephants comes through Porky's living room, he gets a black eye, and the zebra charges through and tramples Daffy.
This cartoon is unusual in that it uses some slightly different character designs for its characters than McKimson's usual style for the period. Daffy is short-legged, beaky, and squinty-eyed. Porky dons a green golf shirt for much of the cartoon. The unusual design of Daffy may have been an experiment with subtlety in his facial expressions, but in a few scenes it's clear that the animators weren't quite sure how to handle the bigger, fatter beak and the straw hat. Future McKimson cartoons brightened Daffy's expression and slimmed down the bill a bit.
