The Henpecked Duck (1941)
Article 5484 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-27-2017
Directed by Robert Clampett
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Sara Berner
Country: USA
What it is: Daffy Duck cartoon

Daffy is taken to divorce court by his wife when he loses her egg.

I’m setting down a ground rule for my coverage of cartoons for this series. The rule is that when it comes to discussing the fantastic content of the cartoon, it has to have something beyond the two common cartoon traditions of talking/anthropomorphic animals and comic exaggeration. This being a Daffy Duck cartoon, it has both of those elements, but the reason I decided to review it is because it has one extra element, in that the loss of the egg was the result of Daffy performing magic tricks on it and then proving unable to retrieve the egg from the magic ether to which it vanished. This cartoon is about average for the series; it falls a little too conveniently into the overly common comic situation of the nagging wife and the henpecked husband, but it has a few good gags in it. My favorite of the latter involves a funny comment from a chicken near the end of the short. Perhaps the best thing about it is the animation; the animation of Mrs. Duck when she’s screaming for a divorce is pretty sharp.