Don't Axe Me

Don't Axe Me
Production company	Warner Bros. Cartoons
Distributor	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date	January 4, 1958
Starring	Mel Blanc Arthur Q. Bryan June Foray
Producer(s)	Edward Selzer
Music composed by	Milt Franklyn
Story by	Tedd Pierce
Animation	Ted Bonnicksen George Grandpré Tom Ray
Director(s)	Robert McKimson
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Title card

Don't Axe Me is the four hundred and thirty-third Merrie Melodies theatrical short. It was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation on January 4, 1958. It was written by Tedd Pierce, produced by Edward Selzer and directed by Robert McKimson.

Daffy Duck is on the chopping block when the Barnyard Dawg suggests to Mrs. Fudd that they have roast duck for dinner. When she sends out her husband Elmer to go after Daffy, the duck tries to prevent him from doing so.

Memorable quotes

Daffy: Now he tells her. SHEESH!

Characters

Legend
Character debut	Speaking debut	Ep. debut	No lines	Mentioned

In order of appearance:

Character	Actor
Daffy Duck	Mel Blanc
Elmer Fudd	Arthur Q. Bryan
Rover	Mel Blanc
Mrs. Fudd	June Foray
Reverend Brown	Mel Blanc

Locations

• Earth
  • United States
    • Elmer's Farm

Objects

• Axe
• Elmer's rifle

Music

The music was composed by Milt Franklyn.

Release

Dates are in order of release:

• United States: January 1, 1958 in theatres

Behind the scenes

• The title is a pun on the phrase "don't ask me."
• This is the first cartoon of 1958 to use the 1957-59 blue color rings on both the intro and outro sequences.
• This is the final cartoon of the golden age to pit Daffy Duck and Barnyard Dawg against each other
• It is the final theatrical short to pair Daffy and Elmer without Bugs Bunny. All three of them would appear together in one more short, the 1960 cartoon Person to Bunny.
• The unseen character, Reverend Brown, has a voice that sounds similar to Marvin the Martian, although he has only one line of dialogue at the end.
• This is the only time where Elmer is married, as all other cartoons depict Elmer as a single bachelor.
• Barnyard Dawg is named "Rover" in this cartoon, since he had previously appeared outside of the Foghorn Leghorn shorts twice: One Meat Brawl (with Porky Pig) and Daffy Duck Hunt (with both Daffy and Porky). Barnyard would appear one more time in a non-Foghorn cartoon later that year in Gopher Broke (with the Goofy Gophers).
  • Birth of a Notion and A Bone for a Bone, however, do not count because they both use the likeness of the character in terms of name (such in the case of A Bone for a Bone, which uses a different-looking dog with Barnyard's name "George P. Dog") or physical appearance (such as in the case of Birth of a Notion, which uses a dog resembling Barnyard Dawg but with brown fur).
• The gag where Elmer's face is disfigured from a hot towel (in this case, pulled off like flypaper) is a partial reference to a similar gag from Wise Quackers.
• This cartoon is unusual for its time period, as the short depicts Daffy in both his greedy, self-centered characterization and "screwball" characterization.
  • This similarly occured in the 1948 shorts You Were Never Duckier and Daffy Dilly, which were released about ten years prior.
• This was the first short animated by Tom Ray, who would animate Robert McKimson's shorts until 1960, where he would then work for Chuck Jones' unit.