When was Droopy dog created?

Droopy dog. Image believed to be in the public domain.

Droopy’s wonderful screen debut was Dumb-Hounded on March 20, 1943. MGM made twenty-four Droopy cartoons between 1943 and 1958. One of these, One Droopy Knight (1953) was nominated for an Academy award. Tex Avery was the creator and he said that he designed Droopy as a “a baby bloodhound. I didn’t want too many wrinkles on his forehead [and] I wanted him on his hind legs. His name came from a droopy look on a bloodhound.”

Here are some Droopy dog tweets:

Please remember that these are embedded images and videos which sometimes stop working because they are pulled from Twitter or YouTube for reasons beyond my control. If that happens they will stop working. If they have stopped working I apologise.

Bill Thompson provided the character’s voice, which was inspired by Mr Whipple from the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show. The year of peak popularity for this cartoon character was 1954. The animation was “flattened” and the “moulded full-bodied look” sacrificed due to budgetary requirements. Droopy made a cameo appearance in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit working as an elevator operator in Toon Town.

Droopy was a low-key, bipedal, white pup with black ears, a brown tail, a head of messy red hair and jowels that hang nearly to his shoulders. He has a soft and prissy voice and he shows excitement by waving a small banner that he pulls from behind him or by an exclamation in a quiet cry of delight. He can move across the planet in the blink of an eye. The physics of the cosmos are not a barrier to him.

I have been very naughty in using, on occasions, the words of Jeff Rovin from his book The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Cartoon Animals. I hope that he can forgive me but I am under an enormous time pressure at the moment.

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