Jerky Turkey

It's the first Thanksgiving, as imagined by Tex Average and his screenwriter Heck Allen, as Bill Thompson voices a Puritan who hunts a Jimmy Durante-voiced bird for the feast.

I enjoy this as much as I do every Avery cartoon I see, but I wonder if it's aged out of consideration for younger people. Not only is memory of Durante fading even among older people, but there are a lot of jokes that reference World War II minutiae; Henry Kaiser's shipyards, gas-rationing stickers, and so forth.

Still, Avery fills this with his usual assortment of gags, big and little, old and new (at the time this came out; almost eighty years later, they're all old), and if one joke doesn't connect, they next thirty-five in the following minute likely will.

Consider pilgrims standing in line waiting to be passed their weekly ration of ... cigarettes? Then consider a pilgrim not wanting to stand in line, and goes to the black market to get hold of a turkey. This one he meets after having called by a lure-whistle, that sounds: "HEY, TURKEY!!" - However, the turkey and the pilgrim are both caught up by the owner of Joe's Diner...

Jerky Turkey (1945)

*** (out of 4)

The pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock and soon after one wants to catch a turkey for his family's dinner. The big-nosed, large-belly Pilgrim goes out into the woods and finds a turkey but it's not going to be easy to catch him. This Tex Avery short is a pretty good one that features a couple memorable characters going through various violent things that these MGM shorts always seemed to feature. There are several funny gags to be seen here including one that has Plymouth Rock actually being a rock looking like a turkey. Another funny gag deals with a bear walking around advertising for people to "Eat at Joe's." I found both the Pilgrim and the turkey characters to be quite good and memorable. They have a good comic timing against one another and I thought they helped make the action go by at a quick pace. The animation is nice and certainly helped the film as well.

I find Tex Avery's cartoons hugely variable. His Screwy Squirrel toons are hilarious, and I regret that he made only three of them. His best Warners toons ('Thugs with Dirty Mugs') are both innovative and uproariously funny. But his Droopy cartoons just stink, and far too much of his other work is quite dire.

'Jerky Turkey' just isn't funny at all. Allegedly depicting the voyage of the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock in the year 1620-7/8 (ha bloody ha), this 1945 toon is firmly stuck in World War Two, with topical references (such as 'C cards') that will be utterly incomprehensible to modern audiences. The animation is poor to the point of neglect: one long sequence features a protracted pan across a single drawing, with no movement at all ... which would be acceptable, if something funny was happening.

The main character is voiced by Bill Thompson, using the same adenoidal whimper that he had previously used for portraying Wally Wimple in the radio programme 'Fibber McGee and Molly' and would later use for the unfunny Droopy. I wonder if Avery designed this Pilgrim, who doesn't resemble a typical Avery character. The Pilgrim has an absolutely enormous nose that looks distressing rather than funny. He stalks a turkey (definitely designed by Preston Blair) who sounds and acts like Jimmy Durante ... but who, alas, isn't remotely as funny as the genuine Schnozzola. It doesn't help that the Durante character has a SMALLER nose than the Pilgrim. There's a very weak running gag which has a very weak and obvious pay-off. (First rule of survival in the cartooniverse: Never trust a bear.)

Tex Avery, I forgive you for this 'Turkey' because you gave us so many laughs elsewhere. 'Jerky Turkey' barely merits a rating of 1 out of 10.

An amusing Tex Avery cartoon made near the end of World War II. Basically, a pilgrim who doesn't want to wait in line goes to "Ye Black Market" building to get a live turkey. The turkey who offers himself sounds like Jimmy Durante. Various chase gags are executed like the one where the pilgrim paints on a brick wall outside scenery to fool the turkey. Turkey goes through that scenery. Pilgrim tries to chase turkey through only to smash himself. The kind of gag that would be more perfected in Chuck Jones' Road Runner cartoons. Many other gags involving modern gadgets follow. Highly worth seeing for any Tex Avery fan. Don't miss a final gag involving someone constantly carrying the sign, "Eat at Joe's"...