A Pest in the House 1947

In a short that opens on a labor market described as so tight that employers would hire “anybody – or anything,” the story centers on a tired hotel called the Gland Hotel and the two staff members who try to keep it running. The hotel bellboy is the comic troublemaker Daffy Duck, while the manager is Elmer Fudd, both caught in a loop of one chaotic misstep after another. The setup contrasts hurried service with a guest who wants nothing more than peace and quiet, setting the stage for a rapid-fire sequence of gags rather than a conventional plot.

The trouble begins when the guest demands tranquility and warns that disturbance will provoke a punch to the nose. In response, the bellboy tries to escort the patron to Room 666, then uses a quick ruse to briefly lock him out. The ensuing workload—noise, interruptions, and missed cues—keeps mounting as the bellboy struggles to do his job, waking the guest repeatedly. Each time this happens, the intruder trudges back toward the lobby to the tune of a lively rendition of Pop Goes the Weasel, and at the exact moment the song hits the “pop,” the guest strikes the manager in the face. The comedy is punctuated by physical splashes of chaos: the manager is knocked through a phone receiver, and at one point even dons a knight’s helmet in a futile bid to block the next blow.

As the tension escalates, the bellboy decides the room is too cold and resolves to fix the radiator. The plan backfires in a cascade of escalating disturbances—the heat vibrates into the guest’s space, whistling sounds prompt the manager to pile on pillows to quiet the noise, and the bellboy, misreading the situation, yells at him with such volume that the sequence repeats with fresh fury. To escape the growing mess, the two men stage a pretend promotion, swapping roles in a parody of efficiency: “Fow vewy mewitowious sewvice, you are hewewith pwomoted to the position of managew. Take ovew.” The ruse only buys a brief respite before another round of punches lands, culminating in a final scene where the guest’s temper reignites the chaos once more.

In the end, the cartoon folds into a wry, self-aware bit of humor as the bellboy closes with a sardonic aside about the situation. The pattern of noise, mistaken authority, and slapstick punches—delivered with a brisk, almost vaudevillian timing—leaves the audience with a comic impression of service industry chaos rather than a conventional resolution.

Noisy little character, isn’t he?