The Impatient Patient is a 1942 Looney Tunes short directed by Norman McCabe.
Plot[]
While traipsing through a swamp, Daffy Duck seeks to deliver a telegram to "Chloe." He finds the home of "Dr. Jerkyl", and hopes that the physician can cure his hiccups. Daffy's hiccups are so severe that they cause him to damage or destroy everything around him.
Dr. Jerkyl captures Daffy and restrains him to a doctor's chair. Hoping to scare Daffy in order to cure his hiccups, Dr. Jerkyl drinks a potion that turns him into an ogre. Terrified, Daffy asks him who he is, and he responds, "I'm Chloe." Daffy then reads him the telegram, which is a cheerful Happy Birthday message from apparently Frankenstein.
Chloe chases Daffy around the laboratory until the radio is accidentally switched on, prompting him to dance. Once the music ends, the chase resumes. Daffy scrambles to the lab table and mixes a potion, which turns Chloe into an infant. Daffy hits the infant with a hammer. "He don't know me very well, do he?"
Caricatures[]
- Napoleon Bonaparte - Cuckoo
- Red Skelton's Mean Widdle Kid
Availability[]
Streaming[]
Notes[]
- This is the final cartoon to use the "Porky on the Fence" opening.
- The initial soft chanting of the name Chloe and the opening swampland setting are a reference to the 1927 song "Chloe (Song of the Swamp)", written by Gus Kahn and Neil Moret and performed by artists like Eva Taylor, Bessie Brown, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Spike Jones.
- Dr. Jerkyl and his alter ego Chloe are a reference to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a story by Robert Louis Stevenson about a man with a severe split personality.
- Chloe's birthday message comes from Frank N. Stein, a reference to Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, a novel by Mary Shelley.
- The scene where Dr. Jerkyl mixes the potion would later be reused in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse" (1947), a Tom and Jerry cartoon from MGM.
- The computer-colorized version and certain prints of the black-and-white version have the wrong opening music playing over the opening logos, i.e. the 1939–41 arrangement of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down", instead of the correct 1941–45 arrangement of the theme music. Additionally, the 1939–41 arrangement is sped up to better suit the timing of the title cards.
- This cartoon entered the public domain in 1970.
- Some prints of the redrawn colorized version use the opening rings from "Good Night Elmer" (1940).
- This cartoon premiered with Across the Pacific.
- Vitaphone release number: 774