Credits: Animation – Don Patterson, Layout – Paul Sommer, Backgrounds – Dick Thomas, Written by Warren Foster, Story Director – Alex Lovy, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Yakky Doodle – Jimmy Weldon; Cat – Daws Butler; Woman, boy – Jean Vander Pyl; Pet Store owner, Green Cat – Don Messick.
Music: Hoyt Curtin.
Episode: Production R-17.
Copyright 1961 Hanna-Barbera Productions.
Plot: Yakky is an Easter present that its owner’s cat wants to eat.
You know the song:
“We’ve got a Yakky for sale!
A Yakky Doodle for sale!
Won’t you buy him, take him home and try him?
A Yakky for sale!”
Oh, wait. That’s Magilla Gorilla, isn’t it? Pardon my confusion. In this cartoon, Yakky is in the front window of a pet store and no one wants to buy him. In fact, there are a number of familiar routines in this cartoon that pre-date its first appearance on TV (Magilla came a few years later). It seems to me a pet store birdie was part of the plot of Ain’t She Tweet?, a Sylvester-Tweety pairing. The “kiss the little birdie” bit in this cartoon can be found in both Gift Wrapped and Catty Cornered, another couple of Warners cartoons. And two cats struggling over a bird can be found in Truck or Tweet. All of those cartoons were written by Warren Foster, who came up with the story for this one.
Ah, but Warners Bros. isn’t the only studio from where ideas were borrowed. The whole concept of a duck gift for Easter was used in Happy Go Ducky, an MGM cartoon directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera and featuring the duckling that became Yakky Doodle.
Oh, and while we’re talking about borrowing...
The cat appears to be closely related to Mr. Jinks. The Hanna-Barbera house design is pretty obvious.
Instead of a Tweety sandwich, we get a “duck burger.” And the granny in this one clocks the cat with a broom instead of an umbrella, as does the Warners’ Granny. And there’s the “follow that cab” joke where one character is induced to get into a cab. The second character tells the driver to drive off and then the camera moves to show the first character is right behind the second one.
Anyway, it’s all familiar territory for Foster, who I believe only wrote this one cartoon for Yakky. He manages to resist having Yakky call the cat a “bad old puddy tat.”
Should I run down the story? Yakky holds up signs to try to get bought from a store. Finally, a woman comes in to take the duck home as an Easter present for her granddaughter. The woman’s cat (Daws in a watered down version of his Jerry Lewis voice) likes the idea of a duck breakfast. Granny doesn’t. Broom. Yakky feels rejected by the cat and walks out of the house. Granny meanwhile threatens the cat if anything happens to Yakky while she’s gone (no phoney cat-gut violin-string playing like at Warners). Now the cat has to find Yakky. “Quack, quack,” the cat says over and over, looking around the neighbourhood. Cut to a boy. Boy turns to camera. “Poor mixed-up pussy cat.” Nice interruption gag.
A green cat in a garbage can has decided to claim Yakky. The two cats fight over the duck, clobbering each other with something before running away. The cab gag is tossed in. The cuts are pretty quick for a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. The running is accompanied part of the time by the chase variation of “Meet the Flintstones.” Some of the fight is a simple shot of Yakky with the camera shaking; we don’t get to see it.
Fade to Yakky pulling the roughed up Jinks stand-in home. Granny decides because the two get along so well, she’s going to give Yakky to the cat as an Easter present. The cat repeats some earlier dialogue from the green cat—“Ya should’na taken my duck”—to end the cartoon.
We’ve now reviewed all the cartoons in the Yakky Doodle series. Maltese wrote the majority, with Tony Benedict spelling him off. What did Maltese think of Yakky? I can’t say for sure, but perhaps it’s telling that in a 1977 interview, when Maltese read a list of series he wrote at Hanna-Barbera, toward the bottom he said “Chopper Dog and Canary.” Canary! Yakky and his predecessor ducks in the MGM theatrical cartoons were doted on by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera but Maltese didn’t quite recall him. Still, the series has its moments and some praise should go to Jimmy Weldon for his fine voice work. His Yakky is expressive with diction clear enough to comprehend him.