Tex Avery Gives Us "The Straight Dope" in UNCLE TOM'S CABAÑA (YOWSUH!)--1947

Uncle Tom seems quite...interested in Little Eva's dancing in the original theatrical movie poster...
(Thanks to puzzlesdirect.com)

Uncle Tom's Cabaña
Release Date: July 29, 1947
Director: Tex Avery
Music: Scott Bradley, Imogene Lynn (vocals)
In short: The story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"--the way it "really" happened...

"One o' them Hollywood cartoon companies..."

With the fate of the "Censored 11" on this blog hanging in the balance for the time being, it's only appropriate to take a slight detour to 1940's Culver City, to take a look at a Tex Avery rarity from MGM.

Parodying a classic of literature as hoary as Uncle Tom's Cabin seems a bit dated even for 1947, and in the hands of anyone but Tex Avery, redundant--but for Tex, that was precisely the point. To him, the more ossified the source material, the better. He'd already mangled the fairy
tale--or Disney's re-invention of it, anyway--in such cartoons as CINDERELLA MEETS FELLA (with Egghead as the unlikeliest of Prince Charmings) and LITTLE RED WALKING HOOD at Warner's. At MGM, he gave audiences a Red Riding Hood the likes of which no one had ever seen, with a Wolf who still wanted to pursue her (to use the politest term possible) but for reasons decidedly not G-rated. The mawkish and melodramatic "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was just too good--or bad--to pass up. And with that story, he was treading on familiar territory.

He'd already taken aim at the story once before, for Leon Schlesinger (UNCLE TOM'S
BUNGALOW, 1937) but the maddeningly even pacing of the '30s Schlesinger cartoons made it something of a misfire. (Although he did give us the immortal line, "My body may belong to you, but my soul belongs to Warner Brothers!")

Ten years later, under the banner of a new studio, his comic timing sharper than it had ever been, the time couldn't have been better to revisit old material. Only this time, he makes a direct hit.

All the Avery trademarks are there: non-stop action punctuated by a jazzy Scott Bradley sound track, cuts so quick they pass by in an eye blink, visual hyperbole stretched to its most ridiculous--and funniest--limits. Not to mention a generous helping of sex, just barely slipped under the Hays Office radar. 1947 was a particularly good year for Avery--he released KING SIZE CANARY that year, generally considered to be his masterpiece. As with KING SIZE CANARY, UNCLE TOM'S CABAÑA starts slowly, but like a pebble rolling down a snow-covered hill, grows and gains momentum until it bowls the viewer over. We hardly have time to breathe by the time the film reaches its high point.

In the decade separating the two versions, the change in style and attitude coudn't be more obvious, especially toward the characters. Little Eva, portrayed as a chatty six-year-old in the Warner's version ("I'm in the first grade, an' I got a dolly, an' a teddy bear, and I can spell
"cat"--c-a-, c-a--well, anyway, I can spell "dog...") is no adorable little innocent here. She--like Avery's cartoons--had grown up, her little shoes filled by none other than Avery's "Red" from RED HOT RIDING HOOD, SWING SHIFT CINDERELLA and WILD AND WOOLFY. Albeit in more clothes than we had seen her in before, or since.

Little Eva (Red) struts her stuff in this Preston Blair animation sketch..

Save for the first fifteen seconds or so, the mythical Old South of the original story is nowhere to be seen--this was 1947, after all, so while Uncle Tom still has his cabin, it's in the middle of a towering urban landscape. Little Eva lives in the requisite antebellum mansion, but perched atop a New York-style skyscraper--her own little Tara-On-The-Hudson.

Simon Legree is still evil, so proud of his treachery he advertises it (signs on his downtown office building read "OLD LADIES TRIPPED, KITTENS DROWNED") but here he's also lecherous, proving an able stand-in for Avery's Wolf as he drools over Little Eva/Red. He and the Wolf could, in fact, make pretty good drinking buddies.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let's visit UNCLE TOM'S CABIN--er, CABAÑA, as only Tex Avery could tell it:

We can see the opening titles superimposed over the traditional "Old South" background of mansions, cotton fields and steamboats--much like the opening seconds of the Bugs Bunny cartoon MISSISSIPPI HARE, but at night. The camera tracks over this landscape and zooms in on a lone little cabin in the midst of a vast field. Take a good look, should you get a copy of this, because that's just about the last connection to the original source material we're going to see in this cartoon.

Uncle Tom (here voiced by Charlie Correll, one half of AMOS 'N' ANDY) sits on the front porch of his cabin, surrounded by little black children lying on the ground in front of him. This "Uncle Tom" isn't quite the kindly, bowed old gent we're used to--in another, more subconscious connection to AMOS 'N' ANDY, he looks very much like an animated Andrew H. Brown, down to the big cigar, battered derby hat, and cocky attitude. Like more traditonal depictions of the "Uncle Tom" character, however, he has a fringe of white hair on the sides of his head and thick white eyebrows. He sits tilted back against the wall, and blows a bit of smoke from his cigar.

(Cut to medium shot). Picking up one of the children and putting him on his knee, he starts to tell his story, as Scott Bradley plays "Old Black Joe" on the soundtrack:

"Well now, chillun," he begins, "tonight ol' Uncle Tom's gonna tell you the real true story about 'Uncle Tom's Cabin...'" He absently flicks ashes from his cigar, seemingly on the child's head!

Uncle Tom turns his head from left to right as he addresses the off-camera children: "..Now, this is the first one o' them Hollywood cartoon companies ever got the straight dope on this Uncle Tom stuff. This is the way it really happened...once upon a time, in the big city..." (Fade to cityscape, presumably New York) ...live a character name Simon Le-gree." (Camera zooms in on office building, then fades to a shot of the entrance).

(V.O.:"He was sho 'nuff a scoundrel...") A marble sign above the door reads LEGREE BUILDING: LOANS, MORTGAGES AND CROOKED DEALS--on the left of the set of double doors, we see a sign proclaiming WIDOWS EVICTED, DOGS KICKED. On the right, it says OLD LADIES TRIPPED, KITTENS DROWNED. Etched into the walkway is a sign reading WELCOME SUCKER, in huge black letters. Refreshing to see truth in advertising for once...

The camera pans upward, then dissolves to Legree's office. We see Legree for the first time, in a black suit with tails--he has slicked hair, a waxed mustache, and even pointed ears--presumably to make him look more evil. Instead, he more closely resembles a cross between Bob Clampett's "Dishonest John" and an attendee at a Star Trek convention. (One anonymous poster to an online animation bulletin board I visited actually refers to him as "Dishonest John," apparently unable to distinguish between Avery's characters and Clampett's).

(V.O.:"That no-account crook was just rolling in dough...") If you know Avery cartoons at all, you know what's coming. Yep, money's strewn ankle-deep on the floor, and he leaps into the pile and rolls in it, as Bradley plays "Happy Days Are Here Again." Not only does money litter the floor, but one can see bags of it strewn randomly throughout the room, and on every available surface.

(Cut to medium shot of Legree, sifting coins through his fingers. V.O.: "And on top o' that, he was two-faced...") Right again--when we see him in profile, he literally has a face on each side of his head. For you Roman mythology buffs, something like the god Janus.

(Cut to Legree walking camera left, full-figure. V.O: "But he sure was powerful...") Legree walks up on top of a desk, then back down to the floor, his legs lengthening and shortening
accordingly--like the "bridge gag" we saw in THE MAGIC PENCIL.)

(V.O: "Why, he done own that whole town--'cept for one little spot...") Legree continues walking screen left as the camera follows, then stops when he comes to a wall map, which shows one lone tiny square of land. He circles it with a pencil.

(Cut to close-up of circled area on map. V.O: "...And that was your Uncle Tom's cabin!")

(Dissolve to an impressive aerial shot of downtown, as the camera zooms down toward a tiny plot of land between two skyscrapers, with an equally tiny shack on it. Dissolve to Uncle Tom, tending his crops. V.O.: "I was sure happy...") Undoubtedly the most impressive scene in the picture-- nothing better illustrates to me the difference between cartoons of the Golden Age and today. Rarely will one see a camera angle so unusual in any of today's animated product, not even CGI.

(Cut back to Legree in his office, as he draws an "X" through Uncle Tom's property on the map).

(V.O: "But Mister Le-gree was figurin' on foreclosin' the mortgage on my cabin, so he could own the whole town.") Legree takes his incredibly broad-brimmed hat off a hook on the wall to his right, turns and puts the hat on his head--in a bit of exaggerated movement only Avery's unit could acomplish, for a moment it seems almost to stretch over his entire torso, then snaps back.

"He was sho' a low-down snake..." Uncle Tom continues. As if on cue, Legree's body stretches to become serpentine, as he slithers on the floor among his piles of money. The camera follows him to the left as he slithers out the door.

(Legree slithers out into the hall, then stands as he comes to a door on the other side. V.O.: "Of course, the first thing he do is go for them bloodhounds...")

And of course, they literally are "blood" hounds--just after the camera cuts in closer to show Legree opening the door, it cuts again to show the dogs in hospital beds, hooked to IV's, pumping a rubber bulb with their paws. (A sign above them reads RED CROSS BLOOD BANK). This
indicates the cartoon, though released after World War II, had its genesis in the last days of the
war, as blood donations were highly encouraged then. Scott Bradley even accompanies the scene with a little bit of patriotic music ("Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.") So much for my belief that Avery's last wartime gags were in JERKY TURKEY.

In an abrupt, instantaneous cut, we see the city in long shot, with Uncle Tom's tiny home among the towering buildings. A red helicopter lands in front of it. (V.O.: "So he come after me
personal...")

(Cut quickly to a view of Legree and Uncle Tom in medium shot. Legree gestures wildly, shakes his fist in the air, then literally sticks his nose in Uncle Tom's face, jabbing him in the chest with his finger. He mouths words, but we can hear no dialogue. Then again, we don't need to--he's obviously pretty irate. V.O.: ..."And he say that if I don't have the money by twelve o'clock tonight, he gonna take my little cabin...")

Legree pounds Uncle Tom on the head with his fist, squashing poor Uncle Tom's head down into his body as we hearthe last few words of the naration.

(Cut to the interior of the sparsely furnished cabin, where Uncle Tom sits dejectedly, his right arm slung over the back of the chair, his left elbow on a small table with a checkered tablecloth. He rests his head on his left hand. V.O.: "Oh, me--worry, worry..."). Scott Bradley, ever helpful, plays "Hearts and Flowers" on the sound track. (V.O.: "I didn't have a penny...")

Uncle Tom turns one of the pockets of his overalls inside out--not only is the inside of the pocket full of holes, but a swarm of moths fly out, illustrating his distressed financial state. (He casts a pathetic --yet somewhat funny--glance toward the audience.)

He turns and puts both elbows on the table as we hear the voice over: "And starvation was staring me in the face.." The camera pulls back to reveal a Grim Reaper-like figure across the table from him, reworking (or stealing) a gag used not only in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon PANTRY PANIC, but Norm McCabe's DAFFY'S SOUTHERN EXPOSURE for Warner's. But as with anything else Avery put his hand to, it comes off funnier in this cartoon.

Just above and behind the Grim Reaper figure, by the way, we can see a little shelf with a can on it, covered with cobwebs. More proof that poor Uncle Tom's in dire straits...

(V.O.: "But I got one last hope--my only friend, Little Eva..."). Uncle Tom walks slumped over to the right of the screen--the camera speeds past him in a patented Avery "jerk-pan" (see the
JERKY TURKEY review from December '06). We see two phones--the small one on the left has a sign above it that says "Local", while the absurdly elongated one on the right says "Long
Distance"--another reworking of an earlier gag, this time from Avery's own RED HOT RIDING
HOOD (the short and tall cigarette girls selling "Regular" and "King Size" cigarettes.) Uncle Tom enters the frame and picks up the "Local" phone...

(Cut to an exterior view of a skyscraper as the camera pans up its endless stories. V.O.: "She
got this scrumptuous southern penthouse, you know...")

The camera continues upward until we see a long shot of Little Eva's home on top, looking like a piece of the GONE WITH THE WIND set grafted onto the Empire State Building: complete with magnolias, a fountain, and a columned portico.

(The camera zooms in, then cuts to the interior to show Little Eva, a.k.a. "Red," in her boudoir.)

She's wearing the expected anachronistic "southern belle" flowing dress. She picks up the receiver on her phone, which is sitting atop a little end table with a gauzy pink lace material around it. Her vanity table is just to her left. Uncle Tom, in voice over, adds the aside, "and that
ain't all she got, neither..." (Remember that statement, because I'll be coming back to it in my closing remarks).

(V.O: "She say she come right over...but we can't figure nothin' out.") During the narration, the scene wipe-dissolves to show Eva and Uncle Tom inside his cabin, with Tom seated in front of an upright piano. Little Eva stands next to it toward the left of the screen. Uncle Tom's dejected
expression hasn't changed: he sits with his head cradled on one hand while he idly plunks a few keys with the other. Little Eva echoes Uncle Tom's body language, with the exception that she appears deep in thought.

(V.O.: "Yeah, I was sittin' there, worryin', foolin' around with the pie-ano...") Uncle Tom stops pecking at the keys and launches into a lively boogie tune. Eva, getting into the spirit of the
moment, starts dancing. The camera follows her across the room as she continues her dance
(the cabin appears to be twice as large inside as it did originally, thanks to cartoon magic. She needed room to dance, so there it was). The camera pans back to Uncle Tom at the piano, his expression changed dramatically. He has an idea! ("When all of a sudden it come to me..." the
voice-over says.) His mouth is in a wide-open grin as he slams down hard on the keys. (V.O.:
..."the big idea!!")

The "big idea", as he tells us, is to open his little cabin to paying customers, remaking it into
"Uncle Tom's Cabaña!" ("Yowsuh!"). He says in voice-over, "We done turned that cabin into a
nightclub--the place was packed!" We see an exterior shot of the transformed cabin at night, with a blinking neon sign proclaiming the establishment's name in lights--underneath, in smaller letters, are the words "Dining and Dancing." Cars pop up into newly-constructed parking lot from out of nowhere, multiplying in a pixilated sort of effect. Scott Bradley contributes a lively version of the "Tiger Rag" as the scene wipe-dissolves to show a poster of Little Eva: if you look closely--very closely--you can see a small blinking sign in the background that reads, "No Dogs Allowed...Wolves Welcome." (Good one, Tex. Too bad your Wolf didn't get an invitation. But as I've already mentioned, he had a more than worthy substitute).

Bear in mind, this is all in the space of a couple of hours, supposedly. Money can indeed work miracles, especially in a cartoon.

(V.O., as we cut to a scene of a dinner-jacketed Uncle Tom behind a counter, pulling in huge
piles of money and stuffing it into a cash register: "We was really coinin' [or was it "cornerin'] the dough!")

(The camera pans right. V.O.: "'Course, Uncle Sam was gettin' his share..." We literally see the
figure of an ecstatic Uncle Sam, as he rakes money into a bag marked TAX $$. Bradley, of
course plays "Yankee Doodle").

Cut to a shot of Legree looking at the nightclub through a telescope pointed out of his office window. (V.O:..."But Legree wasn't gettin' his...and he was gonna do somethin' about it!") He throws down his telescope disgustedly, turns and stomps off through the piles of money carpeting the floor. (Cut to Legree outside the window of the cabin, where he grabs himself by the seat of the pants and lifts himself up to sneak inside).

(V.O: "Next thing I know, he got me tied to that powder keg and lightin' the fuse..." We see the interior, with Uncle Tom tied to gigantic barrel of gunpowder about half the size of the room, while Legree holds the fuse. He lights it and zips out of frame to the right.)

Cut again--bear with me, this is an Avery cartoon--to a shot of Legree grabbing the cash register, hiding it under his cloak, and tiptoeing away. (V.O: "And he done take every penny of that money and get out of there...")

(V.O.: "But he done forgot somethin'...it was Little Eva.") Legree turns when he hears off-camera applause--the camera pans right to the stage, where Little Eva makes her entrance, carrying a parasol. (Cut to a shot of Little Eva as the camera zooms in closer).

(Cut back to Legree. The cash register he'd been carrying swells under his cloak as he looks
lustily off-camera. The cash register drawer bursts open, spilling its contents all around Legree.) I hadn't made the connection when I first saw this, but a fellow online reviewer happened to comment this was perhaps Avery's wildest erection gag to date. I have to admit he's right.

To the sound of a horse whinnying and galloping, Legree runs offscreen camera right--we cut to him atop a table where he stiffens into the pose of a hunting dog who's just spotted his prey. His head's flattened, making his pointed nose resemble an arrow, while the tail of his coat resembles a real "tail." Accompanied, of course, by a nice "boing!" on the soundtrack. Tex was anything but subtle.

(Cut to a medium shot of Little Eva, who looks somewhat disdainfully in Legree's direction.)
She starts to sing a slow, sweet rendition of "Carry Me Back To Old Virginny..." As she gets to the line "That's where the cotton and the corn and taters grow..." we cut back to Legree, who levitates up to the ceiling with a stupefied look on his face. We cut back to Eva as she sings the next line, then to Legree, who's attempting to pour salt on a stalk of celery. He's so entranced, though, that he gets a little mixed up--he shakes the celery and takes a big bite out of the salt shaker. He opens his mouth to reveal his teeth crumbling to pieces.

Suddenly, Eva tosses down her parasol and launches into a swing version of the song. Legree attempts to light a cigar, but instead lights his nose. Unfazed, he pulls a "Lucy Ricardo," merely removing his flaming nose and snuffing it out in the ashtray.

We make another couple of quick cuts from Eva back to Legree--this time, he's got a plateful of ham and several slices of bread on the table in front of him. Intending to make a sandwich, he instead butters his own hand, puts a slice of ham on it, places his other hand on top of that, and proceeds to munch on his own fingers all the way up to the elbows.

We make yet another couple of cuts from Eva back to Legree, who this time is trying to slice the pie in front of him. Instead, he takes an enormous pie-shaped slice out of the table and chomps on it.

Little Eva finishes her song with a flourish, kicking and flinging up her skirts, ending her number with by sliding on her knees to the edge of the stage. (A real testament to Preston Blair's animation abilities here--she was never quite this spirited in the other "Red" cartoons.)

(V.O.: "Wow! That done it!") Legree goes crazy with desire, smashing dishes over his head and for some reason known only to him, pours an entire bottle of ketchup on himself. He proceeds to pick up the table--now miraculously whole after Legree cut a chunk out of it--and slam it down on his head several times.

He runs up on stage toward Little Eva as we hear galloping noises on the soundtrack, only to race past her and grab a support beam. He breaks off a piece of it and starts to kiss it passionately, then runs off with it in the other direction. Realizing what he's just done, he stops, throws the beam down and disappears from frame, only to return a half-second later with the right quarry--Little Eva--this time. (V.O.: "Now he gon' get the gal...")

(V.O.: "That's what he thinks...") Cut to Legree running toward the door, only to find Uncle Tom waiting for him when he opens it. Uncle Tom clobbers Legree with a huge mallet (surprisingly few mallet hits here for an Avery cartoon) sending him through the floor. Legree's head pops up as the camera zooms in closer--it closely resembles a large tack.

Meanwhile, we return to the present, where Uncle Tom is still regaling the children with his story.

The child on his knee says, "But Uncle Tom, why wasn't you blown up on that powder keg?" (What happened to Little Eva, for that matter? Legree was still carrying her when he got clobbered.)

"Why, that was nothin'!" he says, waving his hand. "That sweat pourin' off me just naturally put that fuse out!" Before he finishes saying this, we cut back to a shot of him tied to the powder keg--he's sweating so profusely the liquid's halfway up the wall, soaking the fuse.

(Cut to a shot of Uncle Tom, on the left of the screen, with Legree on the right. V.O.: "Then
Legree came at me with that machine gun..." The bullets, surprisingly, bounce harmlessly off him as he stands in the doorway with a hand on one hip).

Midway through the shooting, the listening child interrupts, and we cut abruptly back to the present. "But Uncle Tom," the child says. "Didn't dem bullets kill ya?"

"Why, of couse not boy..." Uncle Tom says. He flicks the ashes off his cigar and we fade to black
for a second. We then dissolve back to Uncle Tom standing in the doorway of his cabin, bullets still flying off him. "I had on my 'Superduperman' suit!" He opens his shirt to reveal red flannel long johns with a large "S" imprinted on them, as the bullets continue to bounce off harmlessly.

We make another quick cut (V.O.:"Then he tie me on them railroad tracks, and the train run over me!") Then another (V.O.: "Then he throw me in that sawmill!"). Here we see Legree pulling the lever to operate the huge buzz saw, which literally saws Uncle Tom in half. The train sequence is especially good here, if only for his grimace as the train literally runs over him.

--"but Uncle Tom," the child interjects as we cut back to his front porch. Uncle Tom scowls at the interruption. "Don't bother me now, boy, I'se really goin'!" (My second-favorite line in the picture, in case you were wondering. My favorite? You'll soon find out).

He resumes his story, which builds to its ridiculous climax with a series of cuts no longer than about three seconds each. He says, "Then he shove me off that cliff...then I jump on that camel...then he chase me with that elephant...then he throw me to that alligator..and here come that steamroller...and that P.T. boat..."


The sequences accompanying the above are textbook pieces of classic animation, worthy of study by contemporary film students. We see:

a) Legree on the cliff, in extreme long shot, at the very top of the screen, as he tosses Uncle Tom over...

b) a long shot of the two of them running through the North African desert on camels that resemble dromedary versions of the horses from WILD AND WOOLFY: spindly, knobby legs with huge feet, narrow, almost pinpoint heads and huge snouts. Legree pounds Uncle Tom with a mallet that frankly, would be too heavy for him to lift in the real world--it's twice as big as he is. There's some classic "squash and stretch" on Tom as he flattens and straightens out with every blow, while Legree seems suspended in midair as he clobbers Tom.

c) Legree standing on a goofy-looking elephant at full gallop--the elephant has a body like a gray
beach ball, and feet that look too small to support it. Legree sends an unbelievable hail of bullets
down on Uncle Tom.

d) Uncle Tom being thrown right into the mouth of an enormous alligator, which seems about three times as big as any actually on Earth...he literally rolls down the creature's throat, and the beast's enormous mouth snaps shut like a living valise--perhaps the only instance in which a person being eaten alive seems funny.

e) A steamroller which takes up most of the frame, as we're looking from Uncle Tom's eye level.
He's literally flattened like a piece of paper on the pavement, cartoon-style.

f) An extreme long shot of a PT boat chasing after the swimming Uncle Tom, its huge guns trained right on him. Yet another indication this project began in the closing days of the war. (Or maybe Legree was just able to get Navy surplus...) The boat is, of course, seemingly twice as large as any actual PT boat.

Cut back to the present with Uncle Tom still going, gesturing with his arms as the child on his lap looks increasingly incredulous: "And then them rocket guns, an' them 'bay-zookas'...an' them machine guns, an' them alligators, then all of a sudden..." (The camera pans down toward the child, who shakes his head in pity and disbelief--then the scene fades out.)

(Note: Kevin has since informed me that our skeptical little friend was voiced by veteran radio performer and voice artist Sara Berner.-R.)

When we resume, we see the exterior of an enormous-beyond-enormous skyscraper, which the tiny figures of Legree and Uncle Tom scale like spiders crawling up a wall at about 700 mph.
(V.O: "Then he chase me up that 'Umpire State Building', and pushes me right off the top...") On the words "pushes me right off the top", the scene cuts to another extreme long shot of Legree and Uncle Tom atop the building. It cuts again to another "bird's eye" view, even more impressive
than the first one earlier in the picture, as Uncle Tom rapidly moves away from the viewer toward the ground. This may have been reused in DROOPY'S GOOD DEED, in the scene in which the bulldog, in baby get-up, plummets from the top of a building.

(V.O: "Then I fall down fo'teen miles and hit on the pavement!!") As he says this, we cut to a shot of Uncle Tom hitting the sidewalk with a bounce, arms and legs splayed out. The sidewalk
appears made of rubber, much as in THE CAT THAT HATED PEOPLE.

Here we get perhaps the best line in the picture, and my favorite: "And right there is where I gets mad!!" After all that wild exaggeration, the ultimate Droopy-like understatement.

(V.O. "And I grab up that Umpire State Building with Le-gree up there on top! Then I throws him clean over the moon!") The camera follows the building's flight through the air as it arcs toward the ocean and lands with a splash.

(Dissolve back to Uncle Tom and child on porch) "And that was the end of Mister Le-gree!" Uncle Tom at this point takes a self-satisfied puff of his cigar.

The child who's been sitting through this snow job the whole time says, "Uncle Tom, are you sure all you been tellin' us is the truth??" Giving the child a momentary scowl, Uncle Tom takes the child off his lap. He says, "Now wait a minute there, boy...(at this point we cut to a shot of him and the rest of the children gathered around him--Uncle Tom points at the child who'd been on his lap) .."if it ain't the truth, I hope that lightnin' come down and strike me dead..."

The cosmos, which apparently has some credibility problems with Uncle Tom's story also,
complies. We cut to a shot of storm clouds as a lightning bolt issues forth. The scene again cuts to the bolt of lightning hitting Uncle Tom square in the back, killing him on the spot. A ghost version of him with angel wings and robe (complete with ghostly cigar, no less) rises from his
lifeless body, playing a harp. The camera zooms in on the small child who'd been on Uncle Tom's lap, who delivers the payoff line: "Y'know, we lose more Uncle Toms that way!" With that, we bid farewell to a great storyteller (if not, perhaps, a truthful one) and iris out.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Tex Avery's portrayal of black characters has always been somewhat problematic, prompting some--admittedly, even me at times--to wonder if he was indeed racist. His jungle natives in THE ISLE OF PINGO PONGO at Warner's, and HALF-PINT PYGMY at MGM, are the most extreme caricatures of black people imaginable: pinheaded, with lips that would surely make them too top-heavy to stand. There's also the thorny little matter of his Texas upbringing--surely, some believe, the prejudices of the people around him had to have rubbed off just a little.

Of course, in making that assumption, we're guilty of a bit of prejudice ourselves, in assuming that just because a man comes from an area in which prejudice predominates, he must himself be prejudiced. So did Elvis Presley, and he loved black culture and music--as did Elvis' mentor, Sam Phillips.

Having seen interviews done with Avery toward the end of his life, however, I'm forced to conclude he was incapable of such behavior--he was far too gentle and soft-spoken a man to practice such extreme hatred. Beloved by everyone who had the privilege to know him, there is absolutely no account, anywhere, of him expressing anything close to animosity toward other races.

Though really, if one wishes definitive proof, one need look no further than his cartoons
themselves, especially this one. In some respects it's surprisingly progressive for the era--though still caricatured, Uncle Tom and other black characters aren't the google-eyed, white lipped monstrosities of earlier such cartoons, and are certainly less extreme than those of Clampett's COAL BLACK. Uncle Tom himself could have fit well into a FAT ALBERT cartoon of the seventies, sharing characteristics with that show's character "Mudfoot"--including his tendency to tell wild stories. A credit, certainly, to Preston Blair's Disney-influenced character design in particular.

Further, and even more shocking for the time, Uncle Tom is friends with a white woman--and even goes so far as to express an interest in her--ahem!--attributes: "And that ain't all she got,
neither..." Behavior that would surely have gotten him killed had he been a flesh-and-blood
individual in the South of the day. Even if it all turns out to be Uncle Tom's fantasy, it still
represents a step forward for the time--yet overlooked by just about everyone, critics and fans
alike.

Uncle Tom is also surprisingly human (that is to say, flawed like the rest of us--something that,
incidentally, has nothing to do with race) coming across as a sort of humanoid version of Foghorn Leghorn--with a little bit of Tex Avery himself thrown in, not to mention every grandfather we've ever known. He shares Avery's love of Texas-sized tall tales, giving us a story second only to the previously-mentioned KING SIZE CANARY in its speed and exaggeration. In the scenes in which Uncle Tom goes through a rapidly-escalating series of perils, it might even have surpassed it.

Charles Correll deserved a lot of credit for giving personality to what might have been a
one-dimensional character--though a white man, here was someone with--at the time--nearly
twenty years of radio experience, who know how to make a character come alive through voice
alone. And one who didn't merely say funny things, but say them in a funny way--much like Avery himself. As for the black dialect, it may surprise some people how restrained it is--Uncle Tom says "these," them," there," and "those", not "dese," dem," dere," and "dose." While his grammar isn't perfect, having him speak the King's English perfectly would have been as out of place as it would be with Popeye.

Finally, critics of this cartoon seem to forget that it's a parody, meaning everything--and I do mean everything--is subject to ridicule. Race stereotypes here are presented only to be shot down and given a contemporary spin, as with anything else in Avery's cartoons. In other words, Avery kids the image of black people presented in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," not black people themselves. The same, perhaps, could even be said of his more grotesque caricatures--the blackface gags common to his cartoons, for instance. To his mind, the more extreme something was, the funnier it was--and that included characters as well as actions. Visual exaggeration was his business, almost a mission--and as we've seen, there weren't many who could do it any better.

Tags: Tex+Avery, Uncle+Tom's+Cabana, racial+stereotypes, Charles+Correll, parody, review-synopsis, orphan+toon, MGM, banned

"Don't Eat At Joe's": JERKY TURKEY (1945)

The original content has been edited for inexcusably moronic typos--R.)

This little stream-of-consciousness essay developed out of a desire to do something special for Thanksgiving, but circumstances took a decidedly different turn, as you may already know. So here for your consumption is a little Thanksgiving "leftover," in which Tex Avery takes on Thanksgiving. And I take on Tex Avery.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Tex Avery is the reason I love cartoons.

No surprise there. Tex Avery is probably the reason most cartoon fans love cartoons. Let me revise that statement: Tex Avery is the man who made me want to do more with cartoons than simply watch them.

And I had the good fortune to be introduced to his insanity in the unlikeliest of places.

Sierra Vista, Arizona didn't have much going for it in 1973--just a dusty, slightly dumpy little Army town that had popped up like a blemish around nearby Fort Huachuca in the mid-1950's. When I arrived there with my family at the age of eleven, it could boast a population of barely 10,000 and a once-weekly newspaper. Not to mention countless tumbleweeds, and a few thousand locusts, who descended on the town annually like tiny winged Shriners.

Nestled as it was among the Huachuca Mountains, even other communities in the state were barely aware of its existence. But that isolation would prove to be its greatest asset.

You see, the mountains made television reception impossible, unless you had a roof antenna the approximate size of the Eiffel Tower. Or what was then known as Community Access Television (CATV). In other words, cable.

You can guess what most people in the community chose--including my parents. We'd already experenced three TV-less years in Germany, and frankly wanted to look at something besides the dust bunnies under the sofa. So cable we got.

To say my prepubescent mind was stunned would be an understatement. I could actually find something on all twelve VHF channels--something other than snow, that is. And that something was usually cartoons, carried on stations as far away as Phoenix and Los Angeles. Hours and hours and hours of them--if I couldn't find something I liked on one channel, I surely would on one of the other eleven. In that pre-internet, pre-videotape, pre-DVD Jurassic era of mass entertainment, that's really saying something.

For a kid with CP who couldn't run around outside with flesh-and-blood friends (and didn't want to--I'd been plopped right in the middle of the blazing desert, after all) those ink-and-paint characters became my playmates.

Granted, some were more entertaining company than others: the first thing I remember seeing when I turned on the set was an almost hallucinatory little piece of film featuring a character named "Betty Boop." She had just run away from home into a cave filled with sights that made no sense: a ghost walrus sings a song called "Minnie The Moocher," although there was no one named "Minnie" in sight. Four ghost kittens suckle a ghost cat until it's a desiccated shell. All in rather ugly, garish color.

Unknown to me at the time, I had not seen a *real* Betty Boop cartoon, but a "colorized" imposter, hand-retraced and splashed with paint by dutiful little Korean "artists." I wouldn't see the real thing (in glorious black and white) for at least another fifteen years.

But they were drawings, and they moved--and for a while, that was enough. Until I saw something by a fellow named "Tex Avery."

One afternoon I stumbled upon a cartoon called SCREWBALL SQUIRREL--at first glance, there was nothing "screwball" about it. A nauseatingly cute, Disneyesque squirrel skips along, picking up acorns and depositing them in his little basket.

He comes upon a considerably goofier-looking squirrel with a distinctive sinus condition. When asked just what this picture is about, our cute little friend explains his name is Sammy, and the picture is all about him and his friends, the "cute little creatures of the forest." The goofy squirrel slaps his head and groans, "Oh, no! Not that! Not that!!" (He's psychic--that's precisely what I'd been thinking).

As the fuzzy-wuzzy little squirrel drones on, his goofy conpanion leads him behind a nearby tree--and proceeds, unseen, to beat the living bejeezus out of him. Re-emerging, the goofy squirrel says to us, "You wouldn't have liked that picture anyway..."

A cartoon character had just staged a coup d'etat and taken over the picture. That's entertainment--and it made me love Tex Avery forever, enough to want to know more about him. And eventually, the fellows he worked with, like Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Bob McKimson and Preston Blair. And all the people they worked with, and so on, and so on....I was hooked, gone, corrupted beyond redemption: I had become a toon fanatic.

All because the U.S. Army had deposited my family and me in the middle of nowhere.

Maybe I should write a thank-you letter to the Pentagon...

JERKY TURKEY, released in April 1945, shows the Avery style still in a transitional stage, but already speeding toward the full maturity he would exhibit in KING SIZE CANARY. This cartoon is a curious mixture of Avery styles, resembling a machine-gun version of his Warner's spot-gag shorts in the first minute or so, with joke after joke after joke fired at us in rapid succession. It then switches gears faster than a hopped-up Ferrari, to become more like the wild chase cartoons for which he had become known at his newly-adopted studio

Like SOUTHERN FRIED RABBIT, this cartoon is an "orphan toon" only in the broadest possible sense, by way of overzealous editing. Yet even less than fully intact, JERKY TURKEY has been a Thanksgiving staple on television for decades, as much as football and the Macy's parade.

Hitting theaters just five days before Franklin Roosevelt's death and exactly a month before V-E day, JERKY TURKEY is crammed with wartime gags, at the time still very much a part of the Avery arsenal. It would also be one of his last of that genre, ending a series of cartoons that began with Avery's first MGM release, THE BLITZ WOLF. As with a Thanksgiving meal, you go away from it feeling stuffed, but satisfied.

The roaring MGM lion dissolves to a title card showing our main character chasing after a turkey with an axe. It then dissolves to another card, in which the tables are turned and the turkey wields the axe. Preston Blair, Ray Abrams, and Ed Love are Avery's "usual gang of idiots," to borrow a phrase from MAD magazine. Blair in particular was instrumental in defining the look of this cartoon and others in the Avery unit from 1942 to 1945. Thanks to his later instruction books, Blair's scenes are instantly recognizable.

We open on a long shot of a fairly accurately-rendered wooden sailing ship bobbing up and down over the waves. All pretense to historical fidelity ends, however, when a title appears below the ship: "Landing Of The Pilgrims, 1620 7/8." It's shredded beyond all repair when we dissolve to a closer view of the nameplate on the ship's bow: YE MAYFLOWER, built by "Henrye J. Kiser Construction." (Henry J. Kaiser, by the way, was a well-known shipbuilding contractor of the era, supplying America's warships during WWII).

Not content to leave us with one topical gag, Avery piles them on as the camera does a long pan to the left, along the length of the ship. (The "C" card on the ship's hull, a reference to wartime gas rationing, is only the beginning.) The camera moves slowly at first, to show us a motley-looking group of Pilgrims lounging around, leaning against the masts and the rope ladder, and so on. The sharp-eyed viewer might notice a string of three or four individuals in the background with their backs to the camera, apparently heaving their lunch over the side (some traveled by ship and others "by rail", you might say).

Despite having seen this cartoon dozens of times in the last thirty years, I'm ashamed to say I'd never noticed that little detail before. Though I suppose, with cartoons like Avery's, I shouldn't be. Like the AIRPLANE and NAKED GUN features of decades later, more things occur than can be seen in one viewing. (It's easy to see who inspired Abrahams and Zucker). Thank goodness for the "pause" button...if ever there were an excuse to get a big-screen TV, moments like the above would be it.

Another, more surprising little tidbit unearthed in freeze frame: the ship is painted loosely, almost impressionistically, with little blending. Very unusual for an era noted for painstaking background detail in animation.

The camera goes out of its slow pan and jerks suddenly toward the other end of the ship, to reveal a contemporary Navy gun crew (labeled, appropriately, "Ye Navy Gun Crew", consisting of sailors wearing WWII-era uniforms and helmets) surrounded by anti-aircraft guns. To punctuate the gag, Scott Bradley plays an upbeat version of "Anchors Aweigh" on the sound track--which he continues as the camera trucks back to a long shot, revealing the Mayflower in the midst of a similarly anachronistic fleet of destroyers and aircraft carriers. In yet another heretofore-unnoticed detail, the stern of the ship is painted in camouflage...

The scene dissolves to a close-up of the main mast; the camera trucks upward to "Ye Crow's Nest" (with real crows, no less. What do you expect in an Avery cartoon, subtle jokes?) The lone human lookout peers through his spyglass, does an excited take and yells in a loud, raspy voice, "LAND HO!" (His lips distort into an exaggerated "O" shape, revealing lots of teeth).

Cut to a shot of the scene in the spyglass, which according to the label is a view of Plymouth Rock. This being an Avery cartoon, however, we soon discover it really IS a "Plymouth Rock"--a gigantic stone rooster, that is. The camera jerks right--which tells us immediately a joke is coming--to reveal a billboard with the perennial wartime admonition, WAS THIS TRIP REALLY NECESSARY? (Which Bradley accompanies with the song "Where Do We Go From Here?").

We iris into the next scene, which reveals a Pilgrim village exactly one year later (1621 7/8). "Villages" would probably be a more appropriate term: two identical communities, literal mirror images of one another, separated by a path down the center. On the left dwell "Ye Democrats"; on the right, "Ye Republicans."

The above is, of course, a semi-reworking of a gag in an Avery Warner Bros. picture, showing different Thanksgiving dates for Democrats and Republicans. It's a roundabout reference, not only to the friction FDR had with Republicans (some things never change) but his ill-conceived effort to stimulate the Depression-era economy by moving Thanksgiving up one week, to allow for more Christmas shopping time. It proved largely unpopular, and not all states adopted the measure. With Avery's sense of hyperbole, different holidays for each political party easily escalated into entirely separate communities.

The communities are so identical the people on both sides move in unison--obviously the animation was "flipped" and reused--creating a rather amusing, almost robotic effect. Those Pilgrims were even more conformist than we thought...

We dissolve to one of two favorite gags of mine in this picture (we'll discuss the other one soon enough)--a long line of various and sundry goofy Pilgrim characters, which on closer inspection are caricatures of MGM animation staff members standing at the corner of "Ye Hollywood" and "Ye Vine". I recently wrote Jerry Beck asking for their identities, so I'll let him field that one:

According the Martha Sigal, who worked in MGM's Cartoon Department in the 1940s... The pilgrims are Irv Spence (the heavy grumpy one), Mike Lah (the short mustashioed one), Heck Allen (the tall blond one) and Tex Avery (the heavy one wearing glsasses).

The camera pans right to reveal they're waiting in line for cigarettes at "Ye Cut-Rate Drug Store." Somehow I think the animators were drawing on personal experience there...

Avery used the "Hollywood and Vine" gag in a number of cartoons from this period, usually as a hangout for his oversexed Wolf. That corner was apparently disreputable even in the 1940's--in other words, the gag implies, a perfect spot for Avery's animators.

The camera does another lightning-quick jerk to the right (why didn't Avery just put up a road sign saying GAG AHEAD, NEXT EXIT?) revealing a man sitting under a sign reading, "Ye Town Crier." He's crying, all right--literally, even sounding like a bawling infant. Why is he crying, you ask? We find out when he produces a slip of paper labeled "1-A." (For you folks not old enough to remember the draft, "1-A" was the draft board's designation for those fit for military service).

But Avery's not done with the gags yet--we get another camera jerk to the right, revealing a modern (1940's) trailer covered with patches, amidst a snow-covered (and trash-littered) landscape. Come to think of it, it would fit into a present-day trailer park quite well. Its lone window is cracked. A license plate on the hitch reads OKLAHOMA 4-F ("4-F" is another draft designation, the exact opposite of 1-A. Appropriate when you consider the sorry specimen who lives there). A clothesline is attached to the trailer on the left of the screen: we see, among other things, a pair of overalls with the label "Lockheed Department 37." (Lockheed, of course, being the place they built all those Flying Fortresses and other war planes).

We dissolve to a shot of the trailer's front door, which reveals (finally) the unlikely "hero" of this picture: a fat, dumpy, and rather dense-looking pinhead (literally). He's essentially a white version of "Heel-watha" in Pilgrim garb, right down to the bulbous nose covering his mouth and the Bill Thompson Droopy-like voice. He's shaped a bit like those "Bop-'Em" bags you might have had as a kid--narrow at the top, wide at the bottom, with tiny feet. Carrying a musket over one shoulder, he says to the audience, "I'm going to shoot ye turkey for ye Thanksgiving..."

Only Avery would take this long to reveal the star of his picture, which gives us a pretty good idea of the regard in which he held his characters. Or lack thereof--for Avery, the gags came first, last, and always. Even character voices weren't sacred--he thought nothing of using the "Droopy" voice for other characters, just as he had tried out Arthur Q. Bryan's "Elmer Fudd" voice on the star of the Warner's cartoon DANGEROUS DAN McFOO.

The pilgrim turns to the right and skitters along on his tiny feet to "A-Hunting We Will Go" on the sound track...the scene dissolves to show a large rock, from which the pilgrim emerges. We cut to a medium shot of the pilgrim, who has taken from his pocket what's marked as a "Turkey Call." When he takes a deep breath and blows, the turkey call inflates, and proceeds to sprout fingers, which it uses to whistle. It then sprouts a mouth complete with teeth and a tongue, yelling "HEY, TURKEY!!" (If you didn't see that one coming, tell me so I can come over to your house and whack you upside the head).

The call nonetheless had the desired effect, as the camera jerk-pans right to an exterior shot of a large cabin, "Ye House Of Seven Gobbles" (a reference to the book--and movie--"House of the Seven Gables.") The dormered windows on the house are even numbered for our convenience.

Cut to a medium shot of the open front door (located to the right of the screen), from which emerges our co-star, a Jimmy Durante caricature turkey. He has three hairs sticking out of the top of his head and a "schnozzola"-like beak containing crooked, broken teeth.

"Well, whaddaya know! Anudder customer!" the Durante turkey says, chuckling. He figures he's hooked a live one (and he's right). As the camera follows, the turkey exits out the back of the cabin toward a canvas backdrop with a tree painted on it. Raising the backdrop like a curtain, he reveals a sizable building behind it marked YE BLACK MARKET. (Which, as you no doubt have figured out by now, is another wartime reference). Naturally, the building is actually black (what other color would a black market be, after all?)

In long shot, we see the turkey quickly run inside the "black market" building; in medium shot, he sticks his head out the front entrance, yelling "GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!" in a raspy voice similar to the "turkey call."

Our hapless hero the pilgrim zips into frame from the left, frantically looking around for the source of the noise, his musket aimed and ready to fire. The turkey, whom we now see has been hiding around the side of the building, says "Hey, Junior! Ya wanna buy a hot turkey?"

The pilgrim, clearly the "Elmer Fudd" in this pair, asks, "Is it fresh?"

Cut to a medium closeup: "Is it fresh! Look at that white meat!" the turkey replies, opening his feathers like a vest to reveal a vast expanse of breast meat (and you thought they didn't show bare breasts in cartoons..heh heh!) "Look at that dark meat!" (he raises his leg feathers up like a pant leg to reveal a "drumstick" about five times the normal size of his leg). "Feel the material on that wing!" (He pinches his arm when he says this).

Reaching underneath the feathers on his chest as if he had an inside pocket, the turkey produces a gargantuan wishbone, remarking, "Look at that wishbone!" Leaning toward the pilgrim, he asks, "Ya wanna eat it here, or take it wit' ya?"

The camera cuts to a full-body shot as the pilgrim, not knowing what to make of this inexplicable generosity, stammers, "Well, I...don't.--"

Interrupting the confused pilgrim, the turkey leaps up toward his face, almost cheek-to cheek with him, and says, "OK, Junior, I'll wrap it as a gift!!"

Morphing into a massive blur, the turkey streaks inside the black market building. Cut to an interior shot, showing the turkey at a butcher's counter; he grabs a roll of paper and leaps onto it, unzipping his feathers like a suit. (And revealing the blue striped boxer shorts he's wearing underneath).

In a particularly funny bit of business, the turkey scratches his bare sides and back to the sound of scratchy violins on the sound track. Rolling himself up into the paper along with his discarded feather "suit", his two arms emerge from the bundle and grab a length of ribbon, tying it around himself. He cuts, then splits the ribbon lengthwise with the scissors, to make a nice fancy bow.

His bare feet emerge from the bottom of the bundle, and he hops from the counter. We cut to an exterior shot, with the Pilgrim standing in front of the building. In a bit of typical physics-defying Avery logic, the turkey lifts himself up while still in the package, hangs in midair for a couple of seconds, then deposits himself in the Pilgrim's arms. He says "Here ya are, pal, happy T'anksgivin'!"

Cut to a close-up shot of the Pilgrim carrying the package over his shoulder, moving from the right of the screen to the left. As he does, we catch a glimpse of a sign attached to the package reading, USE NO HOOKS.

Note: I'd appreciate input from readers as to the identity of the song playing on the sound track during this scene. I only know it's an old folk song...

Unknown to the oblivious-as-usual Pilgrim, the turkey's arms emerge from the bundle, holding a cannister of gunpowder. Pulling open the back of the Pilgrim's pants, the turkey pours in an emormous quantity of the gunpowder (enough to make the Pilgrim's pants drag the ground) strikes a match, and....

....the resulting huge explosion lasts for about twelve frames (half a second), consisting of alternating flashes of red, yellow and black. The smoke clears to show the turkey marching in front of the Pilgrim, dressed as one of the figures in the "Spirit of '76" painting, complete with head bandage. He plays "The Girl I Left Behind Me" on a fife. The Pilgrim, meanwhile, marches behind him, with a bandage on his left foot and right arm, his gun tucked under his left arm like a crutch. There's an enormous hole in the back of his pants, and we can see that he and the turkey apparently get their boxer shorts from the same store--they're identical to the ones the turkey has on.

When the battered Pilgrim finally realizes he's been had, he grabs his musket and beginis firing it at the now off-camera turkey like a modern machine gun, oversize shells spewing in every direction. Cut to a full-figure shot of the turkey, still playing the fife as bullets zing around him. He does a quick take and runs toward the left of the screen, as the camera follows him. Reaching an area marked "Fox Hole", he dives inside, only to be tossed out again by its inhabitant, a real fox (what else?) The fox hitches up his chest with both hands (an old cartoon gesture for "determination", dating back to the twenties Oswald cartoons), spits, then drops back into the foxhole, slamming a wooden door. The "Fox Hole" sign turns around to reveal NO VACANCIES written on the other side.

Cut to a medium shot of the turkey, who looks disgustedly in the direction of the foxhole. Turning his head toward camera right, he does a startled take, as the Pilgrim runs into frame in about a half-second. He edges up so close to the turkey that the turkey's head ends up inside the barrel of the musket.

Before the Pilgrim can do anything, the camera pans suddenly left as we hear a slow, loping piece of music on the sound track. A bear walks along in time to the music--he's wearing one of those "sandwich board" advertising signs, on which is printed EAT AT JOE'S. (Every diner owner named "Joe" must have been grateful for the free advertising--that gag is in a lot of cartoons).

Avery used this sort of gag frequently, interrupting the action as an incongruous character passes through for no apparent reason. He used it to good effect in LITTLE RED WALKING HOOD and BELIEVE IT OR ELSE; it even influenced Chuck Jones, who used a similar bit in THE DOVER BOYS.

The momentary distraction over, the turkey goes into a fast, whirling run, zipping out of frame. The scene dissolves to a shot of the Pilgrim on the left of the screen, facing right and standing behind a hollow log with his musket ready to fire. He leans his musket against the other side of the log. Unknown to the Pilgrim, however, the turkey is hiding inside: he grabs the musket and quickly reverses the barrel, then puts the musket back in its former place.

The Pilgrim reaches for the musket, not knowing that the barrel is now pointing striaght toward him. He looks toward the left of the screen while the turkey sneaks up behind him and hits him in the rump with a two-by-four. He turns to face the turkey, who's standing on the log, and attempts to aim the musket at him. The turkey blows him a "raspberry" and exits to the right of the screen. The Pilgrim fires, with the gun inevitably going off in his face.

We cut rapidly to a shot of another hollow log, from which the turkey emerges. He does another startled take as the camera pans left, showing what appears to be the Pilgrim, sans head. The Pilgrim's hands open his coat, from which his head pokes out. Annoyed by now, the Pilgrim pops his head through the collar of his suit and sets off in pursuit of the turkey. The camera pans right to show three feathers sticking out from behind a log, which seems to be the turkey ("seems" being the operative word here). The Pilgrim grabs the feathers, only to find they're attached to an Indian; the Indian jabs his finger in the Pilgrim's nose, saying "Who...you?"

The flustered Pilgrim can only stammer, "W-why I'm just a hunter...a turkey..a gun... uh, Thanksgiving..." While he says this, he nervously "mimes" the actions of marching and hunting, and waves his hands aimlessly in the air.

He zips out of frame camera left, so quickly his dentures don't have time to catch up with him. They remain in front of the tomahawk-wielding Indian, suspended in mid-air, still stammering..."uh, I'm just a Pilgrim...ooh, pardon me!" The dentures then zip out of frame.

Cut to a shot of the toothless Pilgrim--the dentures enter his mouth from the right of the screen with such force his hat spins.

Cut to a full-figure shot of the Indian, who turns and bumps into another Indian, whom we see only from the side. The first Indian asks "Who you?", to which the other Indian replies "Me..half-breed!" He turns to the audience to reveal he's literally "half and half", sort of like the Batman character "Two-Face": his left half is white with blond hair, and clothed in a 1940's-era suit and tie. The right half is his Indian half, with braids, feather and buckskin. The hand on his "Indian" side produces a sign saying, HEAP CORNY GAG!

This gag, of course, quickly disappeared from the cartoon in showings after the late seventies--to my never-ending disappointment. It's the best gag in the picture, and my favorite (probably because, like our ethnically confused friend, I'm also a "half-breed" Indian). Some showings have eliminated everything involving both Indian characters.

Cut to a medium shot of the Pilgrim: the turkey zips into frame, grabs the Pilgrim's nose, pulls it and snaps it as if it were a fake rubber nose attached with string. (Repeating a gag from BIG HEEL-WATHA).

The camera follows our heroes as they run to the left, the Pilgrim's musket drawn. The turkey's running in mid-air, hovering just inches above the barrel of the musket.

The turkey hops back on the ground with the Pilgrim in close pursuit--a little too close, enough for the turkey's rear end to get caught in the barrel. The Pilgrim scoops him up and fires, releasing a hail of bullets--the turkey has barely enough time to escape.

Cut to a medium shot of the fleeing turkey as bullets burst around him like artillery shells. This must be a Preston Blair scene, as the turkey is in a classic textbook "fast run" right out of Blair's book on animation. I haven't seen all of the first edition of Blair's book, which contained actual MGM animation drawings, but it wouldn't surprise me if this very scene were included.

The turkey skids to a stop, spins, and appears in a Superman suit: the bullets merely bounce harmlessly off his chest. He whirls again, zipping out of frame to the left.

Cut to a long shot of the Pilgrim and turkey running along an anachronistically modern highway with an equally anachronistic stop signal. They skid to a halt at the intersection as our friend the "Eat At Joe's" bear returns, crossing in front of them to the same loping musical score.

As soon as the bear passes out of frame and the sign switches to "Go," the chase is on again, We cut to a medium shot of the turkey, still scrambling along the highway toward the left of the screen, until he reaches the end of a cliff that would make Wile E. Coyote nervous--there must be a drop-off of about a thousand feet. A sign where the road abruptly cuts off reads END OF PAVEMENT (no kidding--the guy who put that there must be the one who puts up all those "Dip" signs next to Grand Canyon-sized drop-offs). The turkey calmly leans against the sign as the hapless Pilgrim blunders forward--and over the edge. Classic Avery split-second timing, as this takes no more than about eighteen frames.

Cut to a medium shot of the Pilgrim lying in the snow--this being an Avery cartoon, he's unscathed when he should be a hundred-foot spot on the landscape. He does a quick take while the camera does another jerky "Joke Warning" pan to the left: we see a long, winding, mountain road, along which a figure approaches the camera. It's the turkey, naturally--the camera pans the opposite direction to reveal a brick wall, as the Pilgrim attempts the old "Phony Background" gag. He paints a quick landscape on the wall only to discover the turkey can run right into the scene. Figuring he can do it too (he should know better--doesn't he watch cartoons?) the Pilgrim backs up a bit in anticipation, and speeds off. Of course (as if I had to explain it) he instead crashes headlong into the wall. When he peels himself free, the painted lanscape literally covers him from head to toe.

The turkey zips into frame from the right, remarking "Ha hah! Funny joke!" He grasps the Pilgrim's hand and shakes it, causing the Pilgrim's head to ratchet upward like a tire jack. When it rachets down again, we cut to a shot of the turkey running, bouncing left to right off a rock, into a barrel, then a log, and into a hollow tree. It's not much different from a gag in Avery's ALL THIS AND RABBIT STEW, in which Bugs leaps in and out a series of holes like a demented "whack-a-mole."

The Pilgrim enters the frame, jerking his head around wildly as he looks for the turkey. He actually splits into four to search all the hiding places at once, something we've seen in Avery's Screwy Squirrel cartoons.

The turkey--in extreme long shot--sticks his head out of the hollow log and whistles for the Pilgrim, who "pulls himself together" and heads off in pursuit. They run through the log and up a tree, as the camera pans right.

Meanwhile, we see the "Eat At Joe's" bear again, disinterestedly leaning against the tree...

Cut to a bird's eye view from the top of the tree--it's a high one. Very, very high, making the ravine over the cliff look like a pothole. The turkey reclines on the topmost branch as the pilgrim inches his way up. We cut again to a medium shot of the tree branch, which the turkey is rapidly sawing, to Scott Bradley's rendition of the "Irish Washer Woman's Jig" on the soundtrack. Instead of the branch breaking loose and sending the turkey plunging to his death, however, the tree falls, leaving the turkey and the branch suspended in mid-air. (Now you know who originated that bit).

The turkey removes his feathers to reveal a striped bathing suit underneath; he does an elegant swan dive off the floating tree branch, In a pair of quick cuts, we see the turkey from an arial shot falling downward, then move to a medium shot of a tank of water, which the Pilgrim promptly moves several feet to the left.

The turkey stops in mid-air to the sound of screeching brakes (repeat after me: "This is an Avery cartoon...") moves sideways until he's just over the tank, and drops in. Cut to a close-up shot of the Pilgrim as he takes a baseball bat and prepares to club the turkey--the turkey surfaces, pretending to "shoot" the Pilgrim by making machine gun noises, spitting water in his face.

In about half a second, the Pilgrim produces a weapon marked "Ye Bazooka": the turkey upon seeing this does the wildest take in the picture--his eyes bug out and leave his face, traveling down the length of the weapon and back again. The Pilgrim fires, narrowly missing the turkey as he dives back into the tank. Tossing "Ye Bazooka" aside, the Pilgrim decides to jump into the tank after the turkey and throttle him with his bare hands. As soon as he puts his hands around the turkey's throat, he's interrupted by (guess who?) the "Eat At Joe's" bear--still wearing his sign, no less--who calmly climbs out of the tank and walks off camera right, as the confused Pilgrim and turkey look on.

Cut to a close shot of the Pilgrim and turkey, still in the tank. The turkey leans forward into the Pilgrim's face, in true Durante style, and says, "Listen, Junior--you ain't never gonna catch me! Derefore, why don't we eat at Joe's?" The Pilgrim, who's clearly had enough, agrees: "All right--we'll eat at Joe's..."

They take their positions behind the bear, copying his slow, rhythmic walk. The camera pans right to reveal "Joe's", one of those classic converted-railroad-car diners so popular when this cartoon was released. There's a sign on one side of the door reading "Steaks", and on the other side reading "Chops."

The bear opens the door to the diner, followed closely by the turkey and the Pilgrim. The moment the door closes, an immediate ruckus ensues, that we can hear but can't see. The camera vibrates, indicating one lulu of a struggle.

The bear emerges from the diner, alone. He's wearing a bib, and picking his teeth: we get a pretty good idea of what became of our poor heroes. Sure enough, when the bear turns around, we see a sign on his back which reads: I'M JOE. (Hey, the advertisement said "Eat at Joe's"--it didn't specify who'd be doing the eating.)

Cut to a shot of the bear walking along as he continues to pick his teeth. The camera closes in to reveal an "X-ray" or "cutaway" view of the bear's stomach, revealing our poor friends the Pilgrim and turkey--apparently devoured whole--crammed inside. They're sitting with the hands under their chins, annoyed, as they bounce along. The Pilgrim produces a sign, the payoff gag: DON'T EAT AT JOE'S. Good advice to ponder as we iris out.

In reviewing this cartoon, I could not help but realize how basic, even juvenile, Avery's gags were. You or I could probably have done as well. The secret of Avery's genius, however, lay not in the sophistication of the jokes, but in their presentation. Avery is not, according to the classic definition of a comic versus a comedian, a person who says funny things, but a person who says things funny.

Joe Adamson, in his book on Avery, gives two perfect examples, both from THE SHOOTING OF DAN McGOO. When the pompous narrator solemnly describes one character as having "one foot in the grave", we see it's literally true, as the poor slob drags an entire cemetery plot with headstone on his right foot. When he calls for "drinks on the house," the saloon patrons dutifully head to the roof to continue drinking. Reading this, they seem trite; but one look at how ridiculous the characters appear when carrying out these pedestrian gags can put a person in hysterics. Avery was a visual comedian in the same sense as Chaplin or Keaton; he merely chose the pencil over pratfalls, creating animated characters to carry out his bidding. And like Chaplin and Keaton, his influence had a ripple effect on entertainment, affecting it to this day.

What better definition of "genius" could there be?

Tags: review-synopsis, Tex+Avery, Jerky+Turkey, Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, Indians, racial+stereotypes, orphan+toon

Introducing Alicia: Tex Avery Review

Rachel here. In actuality, the duet between Kevin and me is really more of a trio. I'd like to introduce my co-contributor Alicia Wishart, a talented cartoonist from Canada who has her own wonderful page on Blogger. Take it away, Alicia:


This is my first contribution to the blog so I've put in a conversation I had with Rachel that I think would bring up some good chat. Rachel's responses are in italics.

Alicia

Hi Kevin & Rachel,

The other night I was finally able to start going through the stack of video tapes that are sitting on my end table and start watching them. The fist package of tapes I recieved was the Complete Tex Avery so here's my review of what I've watched so far. Now I warn you that my review is going to be totally half-assed compared to what you guys write but hey, it's something.

I found my filmography of Tex Avery and started watching right from the beginning. I should also note that I dubbed to dvd at the same time and the guide which tells me how to make my edits universal for all players is full of lies, but that's for another time.

The first cartoon was Blitz Wolf which I have seen before but who cares, let's watch it again. While watching Blitz Wolf and even further along and into other cartoons, I have come to the blief that Tex's cartoons were truly made for a adult audience rather than a more universal audience.

If there were any doubt about that, I think the "Red" cartoons Tex was famous for dispelled it completely. RED HOT RIDING HOOD, after all, was banned from TV for years because of a scene in which he (Avery's Wolf, I meant to say--R.) becomes stiff as a board at the sight of Red. Too much of a sexual metaphor for the censors, though I doubt any kids would have caught on.I would have liked to have known that Tex, who pushed the limits of censorship almost as far as his protege Bob Clampett. The man who, when a narrator remarks that a hunting dog is "almost human", shows a dog with a naked human lower body. The aging Tex that Mark Evanier writes about, the one who openly expressed regret at much of the violence and other non-"family friendly" content in his cartoons, seems like an entirely different person.In his prime, though, he was a one-man argument against the notion that American cartoons were "kid stuff." (An argument I've heard more than once from anime snobs). My response is usually, "You've never seen a Tex Avery cartoon, have you?"

Of course, compared to todays cartoons like South Park or Family Guy, these cartoons are tame but it's really refreshing to see cartoons that are capable of hitting to an adult audience without an abundance of sexual or language vulgarity.

While I'm generally against censorship of cartoons, I do admit that it forces animators to be creative. Avery and Clampett knew just what the limits were, and went just far enough for people to know what they were implying without having to come out and say it. Take Clampett's line from A TALE OF TWO KITTIES, when the Abbott cat tells him to "give him the bird." The Costello cat says, "If the Hays Office would only let me, I'd 'give him the bird', all right!" The implication is funnier than it would have been had he actually done it.This is the problem I have with much of John K.'s stuff. While at Nickelodeon, he made some of the funniest cartoons people had seen in years, because he was engaged in a contest with them to see how much he could get away with--and found creative ways of doing it. Once he started making cartoons for Spike, that barrier didn't exist, so he replaced humor with vulgarity.Good grief, did I say that? Now I know I'm getting old...

It seemed almost surreal that the laserdisks would start out with a war cartoon since so many of them are taboo. I know that chonologically it was Tex's first cartoon at MGM so why wouldn't it be the first but maybe that's one way that the laserdisks are in someways slightly superior to dvds. While dvds have the fabulous special features and restorations, you have to respect laserdisks for putting the cartoons on full content without concern and getting it right the first time.

I have to admit I like the special features, but yes, the laserdisks concentrated on the cartoons themselves, showing them as they were meant to be seen--uncut. I doubt if a Tex Avery DVD set came out now that any of the "blackface gags" would emerge unscathed, but one sees them in all their politically-incorrect glory on laserdisk.While what I've been saying may seem contradictory, the difference lies in where the censorship comes from, and the reasons for it. I don't like being told what I should see, and I certainly don't like what amounts to a rewriting of history-- which is why I'm irritated by the fact that Tex can't be seen uncut, or that cartoons like Clampett's COAL BLACK aren't more readily available. The animation greats of the past censored themselves more than any outside agency did--with the advent of DVD, the tables have turned, and the external censors have the final say. We're adults--let us decide for ourselves what's objectionable.

Tex's cartoons use the medium of animation to it's fullest extent. The best use of animation to me is where eye's can be left behind once the body runs away, and then run to catch up and then bang on a door to be let in. Proportions can change, inanimate objects can be lifeless one minute and then full of life the next but not in that "Beauty and the Beast" kind of way. Strech and squash are used like never before and the relation to the characters with each other on screen and then their inclusion if the audience add for a truly surreal experience that only animation can truly provide.

This is beautiful. It's the best definition of "animation" I've ever heard, far better than any dictionary could manage. To "animate," as Chuck Jones often said, is to "evoke life," but cartoon animation has the power to go beyond that, to enable creatures to do things never imagined in live action. What made Tex's cartoons funny is simple--they start out mundane, almost Disneyesque, then unexpectedly explode into insanity. Whereas Disney asked, "How much like everyday reality can I make this?", Tex asked, "What would the audience least expect?" As so many animation historians have said, if one doesn't push animation to the fullest extent possible, why use that medium at all?

If only someone could tell the film makers today that the point of animation is to do the things that live action cannot rather than to make them look like live action, then maybe we would have great cartoons again.

To do that, we would have to recreate the sort of atmosphere that existed in the glory days of Termite Terrace and MGM. The sort that allowed creators to create without worrying about what demographic they're marketing to, or what group they're likely to offend. It doesn't seem likely these days, but I hold out hope that some small, outlaw studio will have that sort of attitude, and we'll truly see funny cartoons again.That said, I'm not sure today's cartoon creators even know how to be funny anymore. Pop-culture references, over-the-top vulgarity, and pseudo-hipness rule the day, and are more a replacement for humor than humor itself.

Gotta wrap this up, co-workers getting suspicious. My only complaint about Tex Avery is that the cartoons can be formalatic (is that a word?) and repetative at times. After watching about 15 cartoons I felt that there were maybe about 5 or 6 truly original cartoons. Between the numerous disclaimers and the same Red Hot dance in about 3 cartoons, I began to yearn for something new. I feel hypocritical saying this as a person who loves the Coyote series but hey, that's what I felt.

Tex did reuse gags, but then, so did everyone back then. How many times have you seen the same gag in a Friz Freleng cartoon, for instance? That unfortunately was the result of a system that had to crank out cartoons on a very tight schedule. What made Tex's cartoons special is that they managed to be funny in spite of this.

Well there's my half-assed, 15 minutes for lunch review. Let me know your thoughts so we can chat.

Here's Kevins thoughts:

Alicia and Rachel:

One of you said: Tex did reuse gags, but then, so did everyone back then. How many times have you seen the same gag in a Friz Freleng cartoon, for instance? That unfortunately was the result of a system that had to crank out cartoons on a very tight schedule.

True, but at Warner Brothers, sometimes, one animator would "redo" another animator's cartoon, even reusing footage, but that animator would add his own touch to the original. I won't say how the original animator felt about the process, but I think it would have challenged the original animator to come up with something stronger or more outrageous. Othertimes, animators would indeed redo their own cartoons, sometimes speeding up the pace of the original or perfecting the timing a little. Take a look at "NOTES FOR YOU", coming in LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION 4, and then compare it to "BACK ALLEY OP-ROAR" found on the fantastic finale disk of LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION 2, and you'll see how animation or its timing and gag content had developed over the years. The successor has so much more to add, like that funny operatic cat who,at first, stands there turning the page around in her hands as if not really knowing which way to hold it, and then she gets hit on the head and the look on her face as the soundtrack is altered to represent her suddenly slowly losing consciousness--it even stands as a brilliant piece of audio alone if you've seen the cartoon enough times!! But, remember, we are talking here about Warner Brothers, a studio that, in its heyday, created almost twice as many cartoons as its competitors. Sure, you felt that, if a "cheater" was done at MGM, it was unnecessary since there were only a certain number created within a year's time, and nothing was really added to the cheater, especially where TOM & JERRY were concerned, although they'd come up with a thin premise--Jerry is writing a book or Tom finds Jerry's diary and begins reading about the pursuits taken from other cartoons. The audience feels cheated, although these are interesting to watch once you've got the entire series in front of you.

At Warner Brothers, you've got situations like this; for example, you've got "HECKLING HARE" which is a great hunting dog romp as Bugs outwits the dumb hunting dog with every trick in the book, but then comes "HARE RIBBIN'" which not only gives the dog a new voice but takes nearly the whole cartoon underwater, sometimes re-enacting the same bits (the dog again is fooled into thinking that he actually murdered Bugs), and not only did they make *ONE* version of this remake, they secretly made *TWO* versions!! Even after 10 volumes of GOLDEN AGE, there will still be cartoons left to toy with and add as, perhaps, a package marked "THE REST", with disconnected toon titles and tidbits that didn't really belong in any major category but sure deserve to be seen, merely because they are LOONEY TUNES or MERRY MELODIES!! Unfortunately, you can't quite do that with MGM cartoons; I tried, after pushing hard for an extended MGM CARTOON MAGIC type of collection that would do for that cartoon studio what Jerry Beck and the folks are now doing for the LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION series. Oh, it could be done, but the idea of concepts for each disk would wear thin quicker than with the LOONEY TUNES collections. Even if you ran out of concepts and decided to just issue the cartoons in order of their appearance, regarding LOONEY TUNES, you could still make it all entertaining. Oh, I still say that an ultimate two volumes of MGM cartoons could and should be made, but nothing, absolutely *NOTHING* beats what can be and is being done with LOONEY TUNES.

Perhaps what I'm trying to say here is that, although making toons at all major studios was a chore for all involved, it seemed as if those at Termite Terrace were genuinely having fun, even on the darkest days, because you can see just how many titles were done within the same amount of time that MGM or Lantz or Disney or any of the major studios were also at work, and you can see how creative these folks still remained under the pressure to be so!! Yes, sometimes I feel this sense that even Tex Avery became disillusioned. To us, he still was terrific, all the way through his TV work with RAID ads, but there was something missing--he was perhaps becoming sadly aware that the kind of animation enthusiasm for detail and timing and gag content was slowly moving away, and a new attitude was taking over. Design was taking over where fluid animation once held sway, and the animation staff was soon looking at the art form, as far as theatrical stuff was concerned, as that which preceeds a movie and is obviously ignored, even though awards were now being given out. In that sense, again, I will leave it up to those in the know to give us commentaries on any possible MGM set. If there is a COMPLETE TEX AVERY done for DVD, however, I'd heard that Warner Brothers doesn't do much cross-lisencing anymore and, so, won't do their best to acquire the Lantz cartoons or even Avery toons from other sources. Just think how cross-lisencing would even work to the betterment of the LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION sets. Imagine if we had shades of Chuck Jones at other studios. We know that they can now use MGM examples of the work of Friz Freleng or voice work by Mel Blanc. This means that we could get some terrific cartoons that might not see release elsewhere at all, like Freleng's CAPTAIN & THE KIDS cartoons or Jones' "DOT AND THE LINE" or Mel's inventive voices for some Harmon/Ising films. Yet, all these principles did work for other companies and this work definitely should be seen as well and, since the other studios' works are not being used for anything else, why not use this LOONEY TUNES collection as a means for unearthing some of these great films? So many possibilities!!

Kevin

Tags: Alicia+Wishart, Tex+Avery, review