Droopy Dog
Droopy (mostly short Droopy called; in the German translation Drops ) is a cartoon character , which in 1943 by Tex Avery for the cartoons of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was created.
The figure
character
Droopy is a plump, stocky, small white basset hound with tousled, orange-colored head hair, drooping lips , a stumpy tail, drooping , drowsy-bluish circumscribed, almost puffy eyelids, a black snub nose, elongated, slender pendulous ears and mild to soft facial ears.
His most prominent character trait is his almost absent facial expression and his minimalist gestures . The lips usually hang motionless. Its pronunciation is sluggish, monotonous and difficult to pronounce. Droopy always seems to try to avoid unnecessary words. These characteristics lead to the fact that Droopy mostly arouses a markedly phlegmatic-gloomy, sometimes also melancholy impression in the audience.
In his cartoons, his sedentary lifestyle was used for a running gag by making the viewer believe that Droopy is actually very agile, but only when the camera is turning away from him.
In many cartoons, Droopy shows a pronounced affinity for erotic women, who in turn have a great weakness for the cute Droopy.
Surname
Ironically, Droopy had the speaking name Happy Hound in his early films , which contrasted in a humorously antonymous way with his appearance and character. In 1949 the Happy Hound was renamed Droopy. The name Droopy is also a descriptive name derived from the English adjective droopy , which means something like "drooping" and in turn is derived from the verb to droop which means " to wilt ; to fall; to hang down" and refer to droopys paralyzed nature relates.
voice
Droopy's characteristically muffled voice is modeled on the character of Wallace Wimple from the radio comedy show " Fibber McGee and Molly " , whose narrator Bill Thompson Droopy also lent his voice in the original.
Surroundings
Droopy was not restricted to a fixed environment and accordingly often slipped into carnival-like roles in the cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s. a. as a Mountie , a cowboy, deputy sheriff or lover of Dixieland music. The characterization of the figure was in the foreground, whereas its environment was freely interchangeable.
history
Avery created Droopy as an opposition figure to his second known creation, the hyperactive, over-the-top squirrel Screwy Squirrel (meaning "crazy squirrel ").
He had his first appearance in a cartoon in the cartoon "Dumb-Hounded" , which was released on March 20, 1943 as a supporting film. The title of the film is a non-translatable play on words: dumb originally means deaf , but also describes a mixture of sedate and stupid; hound is the dog. In English, dumbfounded means that someone has left the language, so dumb-hounded literally means "stupid dog" with the connotation of speechlessness, which is a reference to Droopy's lack of words.
Droopy's first scene in this cartoon became famous, in which he leisurely strolls into the picture, looks at the audience and tells them: “Hello you happy people… you know what? I'm the hero. ” In this short film, Droopy pursues an escaped convict as a prisoner dog who runs away from him every time he meets and hides from him in an increasingly absurd, apparently impossible to reach place, just to do to find that the sedate Droopy is waiting for him there calmly. This cartoon has unmistakably its roots in the old story of the race between the rabbit and the hedgehog , just as Droopy is largely modeled on the hedgehog in this story.
His counterparts in these early cartoons were Butch , the Irish bulldog , and a nameless thieving bad wolf. In all of these cartoons, the viewer was quickly given to understand that Droopy is only outwardly unintelligent, but actually a "boiled rascal" who always succeeds in outsmarting his adversaries with skill and disturbing stoicism .
In 1956, Avery's animator Michael Lah took over the direction and artistic direction of the Droopy cartoons, to whom he provided the characters of Spike the dog and Jubalio Wolf as partners / opponents. In the 1970s, Filmation produced a number of cheaply made Droopy shorts for television in which Frank Welker and producer Lou Scheimer replaced each other as Droopy's dubbing voices.
In the 1990s, more Droopy short films were made for the animated series Tom & Jerry Kids , in which he is given a little son named Dripple to the side. In addition, a spin-off series (“Droopy Master Detective”) was created, which shows Droopy and Dripple as private detectives in the style of the “hard-boiled novels” of the 1930s and 1940s and in particular the films of the Black Series, with the cute appearance of the two Bassets contrasted in a cute way with their genre-compliant clothing (trench coats and fedora hats). In addition, Droopy had cameo appearances in two movies: as a lift boy in Wrong Play with Roger Rabbit and in Tom and Jerry: The Movie . In addition, it served as a template for the character of Hans Maulwurf in the series "The Simpsons" by Matt Groening. A comic book series on Dark Horse in the 1990s was short-lived. In 2004 he appeared in episode 19 ("Droopy Botox", July 18, 2004) of the series "Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law" as a client of the title hero, who has to contend with massive facial wrinkles after a lift, which he now likes learned.
German dubbed versions
In Germany, the character became known in the 1980s in the television series " Mein Name ist Drops ", which consisted of a cut of the movies about Droopy, but also other characters. The German version was by Siegfried Rabe , the voice of Drops was contributed by Kurt Zips .
However, the original short films were later broadcast separately, sometimes with German subtitles, but also in new dubbed versions. It was broadcast on ZDF , on KiKA , on ProSieben , on Hr-fernsehen and on Boomerang .
In 2007 all 24 short films were released on the double DVD box "Tex Avery's Droopy: The Complete Collection".
In 1994 the 13-part television series Droppy, der Meisterdetektiv (in the English original: Droopy, Master Detective ), first published in the USA in 1993, was broadcast in German for the first time on RTL in the Vampy-Block. A 20-minute episode consisted of 3 mini episodes. Further broadcasts took place on RTL II and Boomerang .
Filmography
Short films:
- Dumb-Hounded (1943) - Droopy's wild daring hunt
- The Shooting of Dan McGoo (1945) - Shots at Dan McGoo
- Wild and Woolfy (1945) - Droopy, the hero of the prairie
- Northwest Hounded Police (1946) - Adventure in Prison (TV Title); Hunting Season (DVD Title)
- Señor Droopy (1949) - Senor Droopy
- Wags to Riches (1949) - To inherit or to die?
- Out-Foxed (1949) - Droopy, a clever guy
- The Chump Champ (1950) - sports cannons
- Daredevil Droopy (1951) - devils
- Droopy's Good Deed (1951) - Good deeds
- Droopy's Double Trouble (1951) - Double is better
- Caballero Droopy (1952) - One too many
- The Three Little Pups (1953) - Three Little Dogs (TV title); Snoopy, Loopy and Droopy (DVD titles)
- Drag-A-Long Droopy (1954) - Sheep versus Cattle (TV title); Sleepless Times (DVD Title)
- Homesteader Droopy (1954) - Droopy in the Wild West
- Dixieland Droopy (1954) - Dixieland Droopy Drops
- Deputy Droopy (1955) - Droopy, the horror of the underworld
- Millionaire Droopy (1956) - Millionaire Droopy [remake of "Wags to Riches" (1949)]
- Grin and Share It (1957) - Droopy Nobody Takes Hops (TV Title); No one takes drops hops! (DVD title)
- Blackboard Jumble (1957) - teacher Wolf
- One Droopy Knight (1957) - Noble Deeds
- Sheep Wrecked (1958) - Such a Sheep's Head (TV title); Who digs a pit for others ... (alternative TV title); Drops as Shepherd (DVD title)
- Mutts About Racing (1958) - racing
- Droopy Leprechaun (1958) - Droopy, the Heinzelmann
TV Shows:
- Droopy Dog (1943–1955) - My name is Drops!
- Droopy: Master Detective (1993) - Droppy, the master detective
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Product information from Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. on the DVD "Tex Avery's Droopy: The Complete Theatrical Collection" ( Memento from June 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed§Hdr=on&spellToler=&search=dumb
- ↑ imfernsehen GmbH & Co KG: My name is Drops! Accessed April 30, 2020 .
- ↑ imfernsehen GmbH & Co KG: Droopy, the master detective. Accessed April 30, 2020 .