Cartoon a Day: Deputy Droopy

Deputy Droopy
1955
Directed by Tex Avery and Michael Lah
Available on: Tex Avery's Droopy - The Complete Theatrical Collection

Let's finish off the weekend with some Droopy. Thing is, this hilarious short actually has very little to do with the character of Droopy. His role could've been played by anybody in this short which gets it's humor from one basic gag repeated over and over in slightly different forms.


Droopy is deputy to a pistol packin' sheriff and they are given the task of guarding a shipment of gold. Two crooks have their eyes on that gold and see Droopy as an easy obstacle to gettin' their hands on the loot. The sheriff tells Droopy that he'll be in the next room and if there's any trouble just make any sort of noise and he'll come in shootin'. So the crooks need to be as quiet as they can to keep the sheriff from catching them.

As the short progresses, the crooks get injured in various ways, sometimes by Droopy and sometimes by their own stupidity. Each time they get hurt, they quickly run to the outskirts of town to scream in pain, safely out of earshot of the sheriff. This happens over and over and over again. There are slight variations (the one where the crooks screams into a milk bottle and then the other one takes it outside to release the sounds is a favorite of mine), but it is pretty much the same gag...and it works!

The animation style is a bit different than some of the earlier Droopy shorts. Droopy doesn't looks as...well, Droopy in this one. There are a lot more straight lines in his design than the round, kind of frumpy look he started with. The design of the crooks also feature a lot unique curves and angles which are used to great comic effect in some of their reactions.

This is a cartoon with a simple premise taken to hilarious extremes!