The Best Drunken Fish in Cartoons

There’s something wrong if you don’t like cartoon fish who accidentally get drunk, then row themselves across a marshy lake singing “Moonlight Bay.” That’s just one of the highlights in one of the best cartoons Tex Avery ever made for Warner Bros., “Porky’s Duck Hunt” (1937).

Avery and Treg Brown use stock audio of a girl tittering as the fish climb into the boat, one of them being so intoxicated he gets kind help from his buddy. The chorus of the song is interrupted by hiccoughs. Mel Blanc was well-known in radio at the time for having a novelty hiccoughing voice.



Virgil Ross and Bobe Cannon receive animation credits. I suspect Sid Sutherland worked on this cartoon and Bob Clampett proudly discussed his animation on this short in numerous interviews.