Daffy's "splice" film borrows its title card from Gold Is Where You Find It (1938), a movie produced by Warner Bros. that same year.
Also, has connections to:
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) , Boy Meets Girl (1938)
- The film reels can be seen in the editing room

Soundtracks used in the short:
"Congo"
Music by M.K. Jerome

"California, Here I Come"
Music by Joseph Meyer

"The Ride of the Valkyries"
Music by Richard Wagner

"You Oughta Be In Pictures"
Music by Dana Suesse
Lyrics by Edward Heyman

"Gee, But You're Swell"
Music by Abel Baer

"The Kiss Waltz"
Music by Joseph Burke

"Garden of the Moon"
Music by Harry Warren

"Sweet Georgia Brown"
Music by Maceo Pinkard

This is also an important milestone in the evolution of Daffy Duck's personality. While Tex Avery and Bob Clampett had depicted Daffy as completely insane, irrational, and uncontrollable in their previous cartoons with the character, Jones depicted Daffy here as somewhat more thoughtful and calculating. Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng would continue to develop Daffy's personality in this direction throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

References in pop media:
A scene from this cartoon appeared in the movie Hide and Seek, starring Robert DeNiro and Dakota Fanning.
A scene from this short also appeared in a dinosaur educational film.
A few clips from the cartoon are played on the TV seen in the the music video of "Walk the Dinosaur" by Was Not Was.
A short clip from this cartoon also appeared on an episode of the educational television program, Bill Nye the Science Guy.
A couple short clips from this cartoon appeared on the Star Trek Voyager episode "Memorial".

Cultural References:
The intial soft chanting of the name Chloe, and the opening swampland setting, are a reference to the 1927 song "Chloe (Song of the Swamp)", written by Gus Kahn and Neil Moret, and performed by artists like Eva Taylor, Bessie Brown, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Spike Jones.

"Dr. Jerkyl" and his alterego "Chloe" are a reference to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a story by Robert Louis Stevenson about a man with a severe split personality.
Chloe's birthday message comes from a Frank N. Stein, a reference to Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, a novel by Mary Shelley.

The Scene where Dr. Jerkyl mixes the potion is similar to a scene from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse, a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

Culturual References:
The film title is a reference to the line in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, "...to be or not to be".

At the beginning of the film Morning Mood from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt suite is heard in the background score. This indicates that the time is early morning.

Daffy challenges Elmer to a fight under Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Porky's first starring role. They still hadn't settled on whether to have him portrayed as a kid or an adult, as he was in Gold Diggers of '49.

Stage actress Lucille La Verne provided the voice of "The Bomber". It was surprising for La Verne to do a cartoon since, at that time, many stage actors refused to do film, much less a cartoon. About a year later, La Verne voiced the Wicked Queen/Old Crone, in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Thomas Pynchon refers to the cartoon involving "Porky Pig and the anarchist" several times in his novels The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow.

This short, starring Porky Pig, is notable for being the first appearance of the character Daffy Duck. Also notable is that this is the first cartoon in which Mel Blanc voices both Porky and Daffy. Originally scheduled to voice the duck, Blanc won the part of Porky earlier that year. Joe Dougherty who was Porky's original voice, was fired following the cartoon Porky's Romance because he could not control his stutter.

Porky's Duck Hunt was a very popular cartoon, well-known for popular gags and the debut of Daffy Duck, and met with very positive reviews. Only a year later, this cartoon was reworked by Avery as Daffy Duck and Egghead, which was in color. In that cartoon, Porky's role was filled by another Avery-created character, Egghead (who evolved into Elmer Fudd)in the episode Elmer's Candid Camera [1940],and Daffy is given his name.

Of the many iterations that Porky posed as a hunter, I found his funniest cartoon was in The Sour Puss (1940), although the cartoon mainly featured jokes being played upon his pussycat, more so than actually starring Porky.

Months before "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" became the Looney Tunes theme song, the score for "Get Rich Quick Porky" quotes "Merry-Go-Round" the first time Gabby tries to use the jackhammer. This was the first time "Merry-Go-Round" was used in a Looney Tunes cartoon, having previously been used in Merrie Melodies' Sweet Sioux (1937).

Soundtracks featured in short:

"With Plenty of Money and You"
Music by Harry Warren

"She Was an Acrobat's Daughter"
Music by Harry Ruby

"When My Dream Boat Comes Home"
Written by Dave Franklin and Cliff Friend

"The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down"
Written by Dave Franklin and Cliff Friend

"We're in the Money"
Music by Harry Warren

"I've Been Working on the Railroad"
Traditional

You Ought to Be in Pictures is a 1940 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes short film featuring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. The film combined live-action and animation, and features live-action appearances by Leon Schlesinger, writer Michael Maltese, and other Schlesinger Productions staff members. In 1994 it was voted #34 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.

The title comes from the popular song "You Ought to Be in Pictures" by Dana Suesse and Edward Heyman.

In a real-life parallel of the storyline, the short was Friz Freleng's first since returning to Schlesinger after a stint as a director at MGM's cartoon division.

This short, done in black and white in the early 1940s, was later re-visited and another short (Back Alley Oproar, done in color), which took the same basic idea and even some of the same gags, but embellished on the concept substantially, was the result. While Back Alley Oproar is the better of the two, Notes To You is also a very good short in its own right. I will be discussing some details, so consider this a spoiler warning:

Porky Pig has gone to bed for the night when we see a cat climb up on a fence with a music stand and lots of sheet music. He uses a harmonica to get his "voice" in the correct pitch and then begins singing "Figaro". Porky takes issue with the "caterwauling", so to speak, and throws a vase at the cat and returns to bed. The cat then switches to popular tunes (perhaps under the impression that Porky merely objected to an aria) and Porky throws a book (Fu Manchu) at him. When the book comes back and hits Porky, it reads The Return of Fu Manchu.

Porky and the cat go several rounds, with the cat generally getting the better of their exchanges. Porky finally shoots the cat, which sings a farewell, "Aloha Oe/Farewell To Thee" and Porky tries to go back to bed, only to be "serenaded" by nine ghosts, who are singing more opera, thus bookending "popular music" with opera.

The first cartoon selected for the National Film Registry.

In animation historian Jerry Beck's 1994 poll of animators, film historians and directors, this cartoon was selected as the #1 cartoon of all time.

Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. only allotted five weeks for the production of each seven-minute short, but director Chuck Jones spent seven weeks on this short. To cover up for the extra time spent, he had his entire unit doctor their time cards to make it appear as if they working on the Road Runner/Coyote short Zoom and Bored (1957) for two weeks before they actually started (since Chuck and his staff were so familiar with the Road Runner formula, they were able to complete Zoom and Bored in three weeks).

According to Chuck Jones, there are 104 cuts in this cartoon, an unusually high number for a Warner Bros. cartoon.

For the ballet scenes, Chuck Jones and his animators studied dancers Tania Riabouchinskaya and David Lichine, who were working for Warner Bros. at the time. Both dancers had previously worked on Fantasia (1940), as reference models for the "Dance of the Hours" sequence.

When Elmer is summoning the various forces of nature ("North Wind bwow! South Wind bwow!" etc.), Mel Blanc does the summoning on the final incantation ("Smog!") because Arthur Q. Bryan's reading was not strong enough. Bryan's reading of the line can be heard on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 DVD vocal only audio track.

When presented in the 1979 compilation The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Movie, Bugs Bunny claims that the short was the whole of Wagner's 17-hour Opera Cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" (The Ring of the Nibelung, which he mispronounced as "The Rings of Nibble-lung" in his Brooklynese accent), condensed into only 7 minutes. He also pronounced Richard Wagner the way it looks (wag-ner), instead of Rikard Vagner. Besides the second opera of Ring, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) and the third opera of the Ring, Siegfried, other Wagnerian music present in the cartoon comes from Tannhäuser and Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman).

Specific excerpts include:
the overture from The Flying Dutchman — opening storm scene
Siegfried's horn call from Siegfried — "O mighty warrior of great fighting stock"
the overture and "Pilgrims’ Chorus" from Tannhäuser — "O Bwünnhilde, you'w so wuvwy," "Return my love," and the closing scene
the Bacchanal from Tannhäuser — ballet scene between Elmer and Bugs

What's Opera, Doc? required about 6 times as much work and expense as any of the other 6-minute cartoons his production unit was turning out at the time. Jones has admitted as much, having described a surreptitious re-allocation of production time to completing the short.

During the 6 minutes of What's Opera, Doc?, Jones lampoons:
Disney's Fantasia,
the contemporary style of ballet,
Wagner's perceived ponderous operatic style, and even
the by-then clichéd Bugs-and-Elmer formula.

Michael Maltese devised the story for the cartoon, and also wrote lyrics to Wagner's music to create the duet "Return My Love". Art director Maurice Noble devised the stylized backdrops for the cartoon. The cartoon drew upon some previous Warner studio work; the concept of Bugs in Valkyrie drag riding a fat horse to the Tannhäuser Pilgrim's Chorus was originated by Friz Freleng in the suppressed 1945 wartime cartoon Herr Meets Hare.

Released in 1953, but completed and copyrighted in 1951. During this late forties-early fifties period, Warner Bros., MGM and Disney/RKO stockpiled many cartoons, releasing them a year or two after completion.

According to Chuck Jones, the revelation of the animator in the ending is just for comedic value - Jones (the director) is speaking to the audience directly, asking "Who is Daffy Duck anyway? Would you recognize him if I did THIS to him?"

In animation historian Jerry Beck's 1994 poll of animators, film historians and directors, this cartoon was rated the second greatest cartoon of all time.

This cartoon nearly didn't get made because there was resistance to the idea of using Bugs Bunny in such a limited role near the end.

SPOILER: Bugs Bunny needed to be used at the end, because no other character had any kind of antagonism with Daffy (acquired by Bugs over the course of the Hunting Trilogy in Rabbit Fire (1951), Rabbit Seasoning (1952) and Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (1953)) and Elmer Fudd is not a competent enough character - an ironic point considering the next year Elmer Fudd gets his animator's shots at Bugs Bunny in Rabbit Rampage (1955).

The film is celebrated for its surreal humor, such as when Porky is chasing the bird, it disappears and suddenly the Warner Brothers shield emerges from the horizon's vanishing point, as it typically did at every cartoon's beginning, and complete with the standard stretched "boing" of the steel guitar. The Do-Do comes from behind the shield to bop Porky on the head and we see the shield immediately turn to return to the horizon with the bird riding it there (with, consequently, the boing sound played in reverse). The Do-Do character is much like the very early Daffy Duck in voice and mannerisms.

Among the crazy characters Porky encounters is a creature with three heads arguing amongst themselves in gibberish talk. From the haircuts on the three heads, it is clear that this is a parody of The Three Stooges. The character then faces the camera and leans into it in such a way that their round heads form a triangle, and a small character explains to the audience that, "He says his mama was scared by a pawnbroker's sign!"

At one point in the pan of the various denizens of Wackyland, a character with large glasses comes out of a pot and says, "Hello, Bobo." This refers to animator Robert Cannon, whose nickname was Bobo and who did wear big glasses. On the pot are the words "Treg's a Foo", refering to sound effects man Treg Brown. (Foo, incidentally, is a nonsense word from the Smokey Stover comic strip, a big influence on this cartoon in terms of humor and visual style.)

Much of the Wackyland sequence was adapted and reused by Clampett for inclusion in his 1943 short Tin Pan Alley Cats. A color remake of Porky in Wackyland was supervised by Friz Freleng in 1948. Re-titled as Dough for the Do-Do, the remake was released in 1949. The films were nearly identical, in many cases appearing to match frame-by-frame in certain details, albeit with Porky's appearance updated and the voices having evolved, and many of the backgrounds being different.

First (and, as far as many people are concerned, only) appearance of Michigan J. Frog.

The main character's name, "Michigan J. Frog", was created long after the cartoon was produced. Michigan J. Frog later became the mascot of the Warner Brothers television network ("The WB").

Steven Spielberg once described this as "the most perfect cartoon ever made".

The retrospectively-given name of Michigan J. Frog is derived from the one song he sings in this cartoon that Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese wrote especially for him, "The Michigan Rag". Jones came up with the middle initial after being interviewed by a writer named Jay Cox.

The song "Michigan Rag" was invented solely for this short.

No voice is heard except the frog in the short.

Some believe that the story of this frog was at least partly inspired by a real amphibian. In Eastland, Texas they tell the story of one horned toad named Old Rip. He was placed in the cornerstone of the courthouse there in 1897. In 1928 the courthouse was demolished and the story is that they pulled Old Rip out and he was still alive (he did not get up and dance however). Eleven months later, Old Rip finally "croaked" and the citizens made him a fancy velvet-lined casket and put him on permanent display, where you can still see him today. In 1973, an anonymous person claimed that he wanted to come clean about Old Rip. He claimed that it was all a hoax back then and they had switched the dead "original" toad with a live one. No-one has ever come forward to verify this claim, but most think it is probably true that it was a prank. Whatever the real story, the legend of Old Rip has some interesting similarities to the frog in "One Froggy Evening".

The singing voice of the frog is provided by Bill Roberts, a popular Hollywood nightclub singer of the 1950s. Many sources erroneously credit Terence Monk with supplying the singing voice of the frog. This error appears to be rooted in an interview in which Chuck Jones identified him as such. However, he was not the baritone heard in the film. The confusion may have been caused by the fact that Jones did use Monck in "The Cat Above and the Mouse Below", where he sang "Largo al factotum" (from Rossini's "Il barbiere di Siviglia"/"The Barber of Seville").

Due to the cartoon, "Dancing Frog" is now computer terminology for a computer problem that will not appear when anyone else is watching.

Several of the songs performed by the frog were written after he was presumably sealed into the cornerstone, dated 1892. They include:

"Hello! Ma Baby"
Words and Music by Ida Emerson and Joseph E. Howard (1899)

"The Michigan Rag"
Words and Music by Milt Franklyn, Michael Maltese and Chuck Jones (original song written for the cartoon)

"Come Back to Erin"
Words and Music by Claribel (pseudonym of Charlotte Alington Barnard) (1866)

"I'm Just Wild About Harry"
Words and Music by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle (1921)

"Throw Him Down, McCloskey"
Words and Music by John W. Kelly (1890)

"The Michigan Rag" reprise

"Won't You Come Over To My House"
Words by Harry Williams
Music by Egbert Van Alstyne (1906)

"Largo al factotum"
from "The Barber of Seville"
Composed by Gioacchino Rossini (1816)

"Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone"
Words and Music by Sidney Clare, Sam H. Stept and Bee Palmer (1930)

"Hello! Ma Baby" reprise

Duck Dodgers in the 24½th (twenty-fourth and a half) Century is a Merrie Melodies cartoon created in 1952 and released on July 25, 1953, starring Daffy Duck as space hero Duck Dodgers, Porky Pig as his assistant, and Marvin the Martian as his opponent. Marvin the Martian had been introduced as an unnamed villain in Haredevil Hare (1948) playing opposite Bugs Bunny (and was given the title 'Commander, Flying Saucer X-2' in 1951's The Hasty Hare), but this cartoon was the first of many appearances of Duck Dodgers.

In 1994 it was voted #4 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. In 2004, it was retrospectively awarded a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

When this cartoon was released, it received the admiration of many notable science fiction directors, including Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. When Star Wars (1977) was re-released in theaters, the cartoon was run preceding the feature at Lucas' request.

The instant Martians resemble the Martian from another Chuck Jones cartoon, Jumpin' Jupiter, they resemble green buzzard like aliens with purple tufts of feathers around their necks and little palm tree shaped antennas they are also apparently mute.

Marvin the Martian: At last, after two thousand years of research, the illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator. At last...

Plot Summary

The basic plot of A Wild Hare, which centers on Elmer Fudd's hopeless pursuit of the much smarter Bugs, would serve as a template for many subsequent cartoons. Elmer first walks over to Bugs' hole and puts down a carrot, then running behind a tree. Bugs takes the carrot twice, the second time where Elmer threatens him with his gun. After sticking his gun into the hole, Bugs ties it into several knots, which angers Elmer enough to dig in search for him.

Bugs then pops out of his hole exclaiming "Eh, What's up doc?". Elmer tells Bugs to "Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet. I'm huntin' wabbits". After describing what a rabbit looks like to Bugs, Elmer gets a clue that he's a rabbit ("I think this guy is an R-A-B-B-I-T!"). Bugs then yells in his ear that he's a rabbit. Then disappears behind a tree and grabs Elmer. Bugs exclaims "Guess Who." After 4 guesses, Elmer finally guesses that it's him. Bugs then kisses him and dives back into his hole.

Elmer decides now to set a rabbit trap by placing carrots under a box. After the trap goes off, Elmer pulls out a skunk and realizes that he has been tricked by Bugs. Bugs then decides to let him have a free shot at him. After Elmer shoots, Bugs feigns to have been killed, which leaves Elmer sobbing. Bugs then wakes and kicks Elmer hardly in his rear (making him lift in the air and bang his head on a branch).

Finally, the frustrated Elmer driven to distraction by the rabbit's antics, walks away sobbing about "wabbits, cawwots, guns", etc. Bugs tells the audience, "Ya know, I think the poor guy's screwy!" Bugs then begins to play his carrot like a fife, playing the tune The Girl I Left Behind Me, and marches with one stiff leg towards his rabbit hole, as with the fifer in the painting, The Spirit of '76.

Trivia

The animator of this cartoon, Virgil Ross, gives his first-person account of the creation of the character's name and personality in the interview published in Animato! Magazine, #19, copyright 1989 Pixar. The rabbit is unnamed in this film, but would be christened "Bugs Bunny" in his very next short, Elmer's Pet Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones. The opening lines of both characters—"Be vewy, vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits" for Elmer, and "Eh, what's up Doc?" for the rabbit—would become catchphrases throughout their subsequent films.

The first cartoon with Bugs Bunny in his final redesign. Also the first real teaming of Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny.

The producers' reaction to the gag of Bugs responding to a hunter pointing a gun at him with a confident casual remark, "What's up, Doc?" was so favorable that they decided to make that a standard element of future films featuring the character.

There are at least two conflicting stories as to who came up with the "What's up, Doc?" line. Tex Avery claimed that he based the line on an expression used by his friends in Texas. However, Mel Blanc claimed that it was an ad-lib that he came up with while recording the dialogue.

What's Up, Doc?

Bugsy's nonchalant carrot-chewing stance, as explained many years later by Chuck Jones, and again by Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett, comes from the movie, It Happened One Night, from a scene where the Clark Gable character is leaning against a fence eating carrots more quickly than he is swallowing (as Bugs would later often do), giving instructions with his mouth full to the Claudette Colbert character, during the hitch-hiking sequence. This scene was so famous at the time that most people immediately got the connection.

The line, "What's up, Doc?", was added by director Tex Avery for this short. Avery explained later that it was a common expression in Texas where he was from, and he didn't think much of the phrase. But when this short was screened in theaters, the scene of Bugs calmly chewing a carrot, followed by the nonchalant "What's Up, Doc?", went against any 1940s audience's expectation of how a rabbit might react to a hunter and caused complete pandemonium in the audience, bringing down the house in every theater. Because of the overwhelming reaction, Bugs eats a carrot and utters some version of the phrase in almost every one of his cartoons after that, sometimes entirely out of context as compared to this original use.

First appearance of Foghorn Leghorn.

Foghorn Leghorn was closely based on Senator Claghorn, a character on ‘The Fred Allen Show’, whose trademark lines included, "Somebody, Ah say, somebody knocked," "That's a joke, son," and "Pay attention, boy!"

First appearance of the Barnyard Dog (whose unspoken real name, according to the model sheets, is George P. Dog).

"So round, so firm, so fully packed" was the advertising slogan of Lucky Strike Cigarettes.

Foghorn's line "Open the window, Richard!" is a reference to saxophonist Jack McVea's 1947 hit song, "Open the Door, Richard."

The film is mostly notable for being an Academy Award for Animated Short Film Nominee, losing to MGM's Tom & Jerry cartoon The Cat Concerto, which shared one of 7 oscars for the cat and mouse team.

Leghorn's imitation of a whinnying horse, effected by pressing a finger against the side of his nose and creating the nasal sound, mimics the technique Mel Blanc actually used to make the sound.

The same year MGM produced The Cat Concerto, Warner Bros. released a very similar Bugs Bunny cartoon Rhapsody Rabbit, directed by I. Freleng, with Bugs against an unnamed mouse. Both shorts used near identical gags, and even use the same piece by Liszt.

Both MGM and Warner Bros. accused each other of plagiarism, after both films were shown during the 1947 Academy Awards ceremony. Technicolor was accused of sending a print of either cartoon to the competing studio, who then allegedly plagiarized their rival's work. This controversy was the subject of an episode on the Cartoon Network documentary show ToonHeads (the cartoons have been under the same ownership since 1981).