Duffy's Tavern - Influence

Influence

As a result of the radio program's popularity, dozens of bars and inns across the country adopted the name, such as Duffy's Tavern in Holmes Beach, Florida.

Duffy's Tavern inspired a number of TV series set in neighborhood taverns:

• Archie Bunker's Place, the low-keyed spinoff from the groundbreaking All in the Family, which moved the now-title character from the loading dock and the taxicab to running a blue-collar bar with his usual repertoire of malaprops.
• The soap opera Ryan's Hope (whose title family oriented around tavern-owning Irish parents).
• The 1980s situation comedy classic Cheers (co-created by James Burrows, the son of Duffy's Tavern co-creator Abe Burrows).
• Jackie Gleason's "Joe the Bartender" sketches. These usually began with Joe (Gleason) in a conversation with an unseen patron, Mr. Dunahy, before being joined (usually at Dunahy's request) by a Finnegan-like, cheerful dolt, Crazy Guggenheim (Frank Fontaine).
• One of the regular cartoon sequences from The Quick Draw McGraw Show (produced by Hanna-Barbera between 1959 and 1962) was called Snooper and Blabber, featuring a pair of cat and mouse detectives. Daws Butler patterned Super Snooper's (the cat's) voice ("Leave us not be hasty, Blab!") after Ed Gardner’s Archie on Duffy’s Tavern.
• George and Junior was a short-lived theatrical cartoon series produced by MGM. All of the postwar shorts were directed by Tex Avery, who based them on George and Lennie from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, as well as Archie and Finnegan from Duffy's Tavern.
• The Simpsons, in the form of Moe the bartender, who answers the telephone saying, "Moe's Tavern, where the elite meet to drink."
• The show was parodied in the 1947 Popeye cartoon "I'll Be Skiing Ya." A billboard advertises: "Stuffy's Tavern. Where the Elite Beat the Heat. Lake Plastered, NY."
• The 1946 Warner Bros. cartoon "Hush My Mouse" also parodied the show, with Sniffles the mouse visiting "Tuffy's Tavern."
• Whether or not they were inspired by the radio show, there are numerous bars across the United States today that call themselves Duffy's Tavern — from Wickford, Rhode Island, to Monterey, California.
• The National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) publishes a series of recorded lectures titled "Basic Concepts in the Law of Evidence" by Irving Younger. On the eighth tape of the series, Younger lectures about hearsay when a telephone rings. Younger picks up the phone and says, "Duffy's Tavern". The audience find this humorous and laughs. After hanging up, Younger states, "When I said Duffy's Tavern, he said, 'I'll have a ham and cheese on rye.'"
• Puerto Rico's best rated television program of 1956, "La Taberna India", was loosely based on Duffy's Tavern