by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2013 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Charles and I ran a couple
of archive.org downloads last night. One was a Tex Avery cartoon from MGM
called Jerky Turkey which we
watched because it was obviously appropriate for Thanksgiving eve — and which
turned out to be quite good, basically Avery’s “take” on a Bugs Bunny short
with a turkey replacing the rabbit and a pilgrim replacing Elmer Fudd. The
gimmick is the Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock (which is actually shaped like a
giant turkey) — only they do it in 1945, when the film was made, and the Mayflower has to become part of a giant convoy to avoid
being sunk by a U-boat. Once the Pilgrims make it, the leader has to feed his
people, and after some quite funny sight gags making fun of wartime rationing
(the Mayflower lands in sight of a
billboard reading, “Is This Trip Necessary?” and the Pilgrims encounter long
lines for cigarettes once they land) he heads to “Ye Black Market” for a turkey
— only the turkey (using the voice of Jimmy Durante) decides to sell himself to
the Pilgrim but leave the package untied so he can escape. Throughout the
action there’s a large bear walking through the action with a sandwich sign
reading, “Eat at Joe’s,” and after various abortive attempts by the Pilgrim to
shoot the turkey (in which Avery rips off one of the Road Runner cartoonists’
favorite gags — the “target” reverses the piping of the hunter’s gun so the gun
shoots the hunter instead of the prey) they give up, end up eating at Joe’s —
only they turn out to be the meal and the bear, with the Pilgrim and the turkey in his stomach, turns his back to the
audience and it reads, “I’m Joe.”
