Melissa Duck - Character History

Character History

In the 1945 cartoon Nasty Quacks, Daffy's owner, a young girl, also becomes the besotted owner of a small, yellow duckling. When a jealous Daffy feeds the duckling growth pills, he is surprised to see it age into a white, female duck with blonde hair. By the end of the cartoon, the two have fallen in love and given birth to roughly ten black, white and yellow ducklings of their own. The blonde duck in this cartoon bears visual similarities to Daffy's girlfriend from Muscle Tussle (as well as a vague resemblance to the female pigeon Hatta Mari from Plane Daffy, 1944) and may represent the "origin" of the Melissa Duck character.

Melissa Duck first officially appeared by name in adult form in the original Looney Tunes short Chuck Jones' The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950) which was, in 1994, voted number 31 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. In the cartoon, she appears as a blonde damsel-in-distress and Daffy Duck's love interest. The plot followed Daffy attempting to save Fair Lady Melissa from having to marry the evil Grand Duke Sylvester with whom she is not in love.

Femme Fatale (AKA 'The Body,' has also been referred to as Fowl Fatale or Shapely Lady Duck), from the 1952 Daffy Duck cartoon The Super Snooper, was a tall voluptuous bright blue-eyed, redheaded duck wearing red lipstick who bears a strong resemblance to Melissa Duck. In the cartoon, she fell madly in love with the inept detective Daffy was portraying at first sight. Femme Fatale also appears on the cover of volume 5 of the Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection, which indicates that she and Melissa may be considered the same character since unlike Femme Fatale, the identities of all of the other characters on the cover are well known Looney Tunes characters.

Later in Robert McKimson's Muscle Tussle (1953), Daffy Duck's girlfriend appears with him on a visit to the beach. The girlfriend's design in this cartoon is markedly more stylized than Melissa's appearance in The Scarlet Pumpernickel, but a contemporary comics adaptation of Muscle Tussle carried the name Melissa on to this new design as well. The voice of Melissa in this cartoon is obscure voice actor Gladys Holland, the narrator of UPA's classic 1952 adaptation of Ludwig Bemelmans's 1939 classic Madeline.

Another blonde, female duck featured in the Greg Ford and Terry Lennon 1987 cartoon The Duxorcist, the first Looney Tunes short released to theaters after the original series ended in 1969. A loose parody of William Friedkin's The Exorcist, the cartoon depicts the single, young duck as having become possessed by ghosts. Despite having paler feathers, the female duck from this cartoon physically appears very similar to Melissa from The Scarlet Pumpernickel; even more so than the designs in Muscle Tussle and Nasty Quacks.

Melissa Duck was the inspiration for the Shirley the Loon character on Tiny Toon Adventures, a spin-off series which follows the adventures of the next generation of Looney Tunes; each character being, to a degree, modeled after the original Looney Tunes. Shirley the Loon is a similar-looking blonde, female waterfowl with a romantic interest in the male duck character, Plucky Duck, who in turn is inspired by Daffy Duck. Despite the comparisons between Melissa and Shirley's characters, Melissa Duck never featured in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, despite other original Looney Tunes having done so.