His Bitter Half (1950)

Directed by

Friz Freleng

Genre

animation, comedy

Country

United States

Runtime

8 min

Rating

8.2 of 10 from 10 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Daffy Duck marries a wealthy woman hoping for an easy life. After the wedding he discovers his new wife is mean and he is forced to do hard chores and take care of her bratty son.

sillyfast-pacedfrustratingslapstickzanycausticcynical

What happens

His Bitter Half is a 1950 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short, directed by Friz Freleng with a story by Tedd Pierce. The cartoon was released on May 20, 1950, and stars Daffy Duck. The voices are performed by Mel Blanc and Martha Wentworth. Both His Bitter Half and Freleng's 1962 Yosemite Sam short Honey's Money have a similar plot: a fortune-seeking bachelor marrying an ugly mean widow, whose true personality is revealed only after the wedding, and, after forced to do backbreaking housechores, being made to care for her child, introduced (to both the main protagonist and the audience) only after the marriage is legalized. The child in both shorts is named Wentworth; here, Wentworth is a normal sized brat who causes trouble, with Daffy suffering the consequences of his son's actions. (In Honey's Money, Wentworth is a giant 3-year-old whose heavy weight is a problem for Sam, but his attitude is friendly to Sam, who tries to bump him off to keep the money for himself.) The differing personalities of the two Wentworths results in different executions for each cartoon. His Bitter Half was reused as a clip in a 1980 TV special where Daffy tells his life's struggles in an attempt to produce a movie about Duck Dodgers. The latter part of the title is a pun on the phrase "better half", meaning someone's romantic partner. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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