Well, it's Thanksgiving (and the start of hearing godawful holday season music everywhere) yet again!
Thanksgiving means turkey songs!
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog posts the same Thanksgiving turkey cartoons every year. Alas, we have no plans to stop that practice anytime soon!
We'll start, not surprisingly, with an inexplicably odd one from the oddest and most inexplicable of all cartoon studios, Screen Gems. I personally get a big kick out of these cartoons but can certainly imagine the likes of Sid Marcus and Cal Howard pondering "what weird bit can we do to vex audiences now?"
There are a bunch of Warner Bros cartoons about Thanksgiving and turkeys. We've posted several repeatedly over the years. As fervent Daffy Duck fans, we note that at least two of the very best Thanksgiving cartoons feature the wacky fowl.
While it's tough to pick one favorite Thanksgiving-themed cartoon, the following ranks high on the list.
It's directed by Art Davis and stars a diabolical but not-too-bright Daffy Duck who becomes Tom Turkey's personal trainer, while devouring food in mass quantities.
Hugh Harman made a pleasing cartoon for MGM starring an all-turkey ensemble patterned on Borrah Minnevich & His Harmonica Rascals. Seems like I post this one every year!
Happy Thanksgiving! Keep calm and watch cartoons before and after the courses (and between football games)!
And, along with Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, tomorrow's Turkey Day entertainment shall include George Pal Puppetoons!
Been watching Puppetoons volume 1 and eagerly await the latest volume (#3) on Blu-ray.
Well, here we are in November 2022 and, lo and behold, another Thanksgiving has just about arrived. Happy and very thankful to still be here and drawing breath? Yes! Feeling big time gratitude? Heck, yeah! Thankful for numerous blessings and lots of dumb luck? Indeed!
Thankful for the spectacle of Thanksgiving Day parades gone wrong, terribly wrong? Er. . . uh. . . that would be stretching it just a tad, although I am ever-thankful for giant Bullwinkle and Rocky balloons.
Do I take some measure of guilty pleasure in the unfortunate impalings of gargantuan and not terribly well thought-out parade inflatables? Absolutely, provided I was definitely NOT there in person to witness the balloon-bursting disasters and get clobbered with flying debris!
Thankful for first responders and others with the task of dealing with the aftermath of parade disasters? YES - more than can be expressed!
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As anyone who reads this blog well knows, we're also thankful for classic and not-so-classic movies and cartoons.
Posted the following MGM cartoon here 10 or 12 years ago.
Like it so much we're bringing it back: Tom Turkey & His Harmonica Humdingers, directed by Hugh Harman and starring a turkey variant on recording artists Borrah Minevitch & His Harmonica Rascals. This cartoon, IMHO, is not without its charms!
Hugh Harman could never quite successfully emulate Disney (although the Harman-Ising produced Silly Symphony Merbabies comes close) or the post-Avery and Tashlin Warner Brothers cartoons, he did make many very interesting and imaginative animated films over his years as an independent producer in the 1930's and then as one of the official MGM cartoon-meisters in 1939-1942. Unfortunately, Hugh's pet projects, an animated version of Gray's Elegy and a live-action/animation version of The Little Prince (collaborating with Orson Welles), were never realized. Ironically, Hugh was succeeded as director of MGM cartoons by . . . Tex Avery.
Yes, Tex Avery, the guy who changed the face of animation practically the moment he arrived in 1935 as the new director at the Leon Schlesinger/Warner Brothers cartoon factory and would be the leader of the Termite Terrace gang that included Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett, as well as the creator of the Bugs Bunny we know and love in A Wild Hare (1940).
Tex also made a delightfully twisted Thanksgiving cartoon for MGM in 1945.
It features a "Droopy" pilgrim and a wisecracking Jimmy Durante turkey.
First posted it in the very first Thanksgiving-themed entry on this blog, back in 2006. 16 years later, it's back for an encore!
As Jerky Turkey fell into the public domain, it very likely remains, along with the public domain Fleischer Popeyes and Supermans, and the epic MGM Happy Harmonies opus TO SPRING, in the most frequently shown cartoons in public screenings of 16mm.
We are also thankful for classic comedy films.
Remain steadfastly and endlessly thankful for the great comedians and comic actors/actresses of silent and early sound era movies.
Here's the 1940 Harry Langdon 2-reeler COLD TURKEY, produced by the Columbia Shorts Department and directed by Del Lord.
While there are difficulties in translating Harry's manchild space cadet character to his middle-aged 1940 incarnation, Harry still periodically summons his blazing comic mojo and felicitously, his perennial onscreen nemesis (and offscreen best friend) Vernon Dent is on hand.
One could never entirely steamroller such outstanding and original silent movie comedians as Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon and Charley Chase, even with the most threadbare of budgets and accelerated shooting schedules.
While much missing those friends and family members who are no longer with us, we are nonetheless preparing to enjoy a delicious turkey dinner later today!
There will be two video selections for 2021 Turkey Day that originally appeared on NBC's Saturday Night Live way back when. First is a Thanksgiving sketch from the SNL show hosted by Pee-Wee Herman, which originally aired on November 23, 1985 - and, indeed, this blogger taped it on the ol' reliable VHS recorder!
Love the sketch co-starring Jon Lovitz' inimitable Tommy Flannagan a.k.a. "The Liar." Both worked together in The Groundlings, as did future cornerstone of SNL Phil Hartman.
The Pee-Wee Herman SNL, in the opinion of the sketch comedy nuts at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, remains tied with the excellent episode featuring George Wendt and Francis Ford Coppolla as hosts (in which, as a running gag, Coppola takes over the direction of the show) as the favorite from the 1985-1986 season.
To some degree the mostly young Season 11 cast was not necessarily all that well-suited to Saturday Night Live back in 1985, in large part due to the constrictions of the program itself. This would subsequently be confirmed by the non-prototypical performance of Robert Downey Jr. as most non-prototypical superhero Iron Man, any Damon Wayans sketch from In Living Color and all stage, screen and TV presentations featuring Joan Cusack and Obie Award winner Danitra Vance (1954-1994). Squeezing these expansive talents into the fairly rigid parameters and format of SNL turned out to be problematic.
Nonetheless, there was no shortage of talent both in front of behind the cameras and on the writing staff in this season noted for the return of Lorne Michaels.
Much of the 1985-1986 season's cast made their mark after leaving SNL, while others would return for Season 12 and be involved in the series' late 1980's - early 1990's resurgence. For more, check out the SNL Review Index from Nova Scotia writer/photographer Bronwyn Douwsma's Existentialist Weightlifting website.
The second Happy Thanksgiving video selection, Wally Ballou Interviews a Cranberry Grower in Times Square, features a comedy team beloved by Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog and KFJC's Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show, "the two and only," Bob & Ray.
This was from a special produced by the SNL crew and featuring the comediennes from the cast. It aired on NBC in the Saturday Night Live 11:30 - 1:00 a.m. time slot.
This was not the only time the team was slated to make an appearance in the late-night comedy universe. In a 1980 pilot, From Cleveland, Bob & Ray are deejays in their own radio station and introduce sketches starring Eugene Levy, Catherine O Hara, Andrea Martin and Dave Thomas from SCTV. This would appear to have been shot in the break between season 2 and season 3 of SCTV, after Global dropped the series and before ITV picked it up.
Tomorrow morning, shall drink a pot of coffee and enjoy the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. We'd like Mr. and Mrs. Patton Oswalt to host - that would be great!
Strongly suggest avoiding family discussions, especially those involving current events, and either binge-watching football, talking baseball Hot Stove League or doing the following instead.
Monsieur and Madame Blogmeister wish all readers, wherever they are, a Happy Thanksgiving, whether you smoke Old Golds, Lucky Strikes or Bob Marley's favorite brand!
Alas, will not be seeing the family and friends who live across this coronavirus-riddled country in person. Won't be wearing cheesy pilgrim outfits or brandishing muskets.
Also won't just say to heck with it and go to Canada for the Thanksgiving weekend, especially as Canadians would prefer we sub-literate dimwit Americans, busy spreading COVID-19, stay here.
Won't see any ventriloquists or dummies on Thanksgiving, unfortunately.
It will be a Zoom Thanksgiving for many of us in 2020.
So, before hanging out with family members via Zoom, we will observe the Thanksgiving tradition of watching that Tex Avery MGM cartoon starring the Jimmy Durante turkey and the Bill Thompson pilgrim yet again.
And, as the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog does every year, will watch the following video starring an ornery, persistent and obstinate gobbler who frightens the easily scared individual handling the camera.
So what the hey. . . let's adapt and raise a toast - white bread, Dave's 21 seed whole wheat or the first holiday quaff (Anchor Brewing's festive Christmas Ale? Dan Akyroyd's Crystal Head Vodka? Kick-Ass Bourbons? Aaas Jule Ol?) - to our loved ones, before watching The Courtship Of Miles Sandwich, a Hal Roach Studios 1923 Thanksgiving comedy starring Snub Pollard and Dinah Shore's 1957 Thanksgiving show.
Inevitably as death and taxes, The DInah Shore Show is followed by a 1938 Merrie Melodie cartoon starring "Egghead," in which Tex Avery happily skewers American history and mythology, complete with jokes about "scalpers" selling Rose Bowl tickets on the 50-yard line!
Take-out Thanksgiving dinner? Go with the flow! After all, options are limited!
This Blogmeister personally wants a Tex Avery "Masks Of Tomorrow" setup. Push a button and a mechanical hand (A.K.A. the Mechanical Arm Of Tomorrow) promptly stuffs hot turkey, "smashed" potatoes and generous servings of stuffing and cranberry relish in your kisser, then promptly slaps a genuine N95 mask featuring Bugs Bunny on your fat face!
Now it's time for some Thanksgiving-themed Three Stooges, directed by Jack "Preston Black" White (seen in this photo with unlikely pilgrim and excellent movie comedian Lloyd "Ham" Hamilton).
To make the holiday just right, here are some clips from The Three Stooges in Back To The Woods!
It's Thanksgiving 2019! Still here - YAY and Hallelujah!
Here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we champion mindless laughs - and lots of 'em - throughout the holidays.
Elmer Fudd re-enacting the Miles Standish story with Edna May Oliver - and Hugh "Woowoo" Herbert? Yes!
Nobody was better at mindless laughs than Moe, Larry and Curly, the poet laureates of nyuk nyuk nyuk woowoowoo.
While our favorite thing about the following Thanksgiving opus de Stooge - even more than the presence of both Bud Jamison and Vernon Dent - is the Big Apple dance number (starting at 4:45), utter ridiculousness remains the order of the day throughout. This includes the would-be Native American braves who look like the cast of Sgt. Bilko or McHale's Navy; no doubt Chief Dan George's agent would never let him work in a cheap 2-reeler. The only disappointment is that Back To The Woods does not have a "topper" involving wild turkeys chasing Moe, Larry and Curly off into the distant horizon.
Back To The Woods was directed by the gentleman on the right in the following photo, Jack "Preston Black" White, here being targeted by silent movie comedian (and most unlikely Puritan) Lloyd "Ham" Hamilton.
Although this isn't in the 20th century pop culture focus of this blog, we recommend the new video The Turkey Strikes Back | GOOD EATS: THE RETURN with Alton Brown. It is sensational, as have been the Good Eats programs going all the way back to the halycon 20th century days of the 1990's. Happy Thanksgiving!
Time spent waiting for the turkey and pies to finish cooking constitutes as good a time as any for comedy - such as this holiday entertainment starring Harry Langdon and a turkey.
If one feels bad about how the dinner came out, take heart, one could be Mr. Bean.
It just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without Stan Freberg.
And for that matter, the holidays just wouldn't be the same without Bob & Ray. Forget football - here's Wally Ballou!
Smoke a few Lucky Strike "LSMFT" cigarettes back in the 1940's and the next thing you know. . . well, you're so darn "Happy-Go-Lucky" you're sitting in a wheelbarrow straddling a pumpkin and next to a live turkey! While the gobbler will not be thoroughly baked for Thanksgiving, you are - now that's smoking pleasure! After all, Luckies' slogan was "It's Toasted" - and, indeed, so are you, if not necessarily in deeply obliterated 1967 style.
Luckies were so good that physicians, convinced momentarily to abandon the hippocratic oath, claimed the smokes were. . . "less irritating." Not quite a ringing endorsement, said 20,679 docs notwithstanding.
Glamorous movie stars got into the act, too, stressing how their golden throats appreciated the light taste of Luckies. Still looking for a matinee idol endorsement that claims Lucky Strikes were "a lot less irritating than that director on my last picture."
Even Janet Gaynor, star of the brilliant 1920's William Fox Productions - F.W. Murnau - Frank Borzage movie milestones Sunrise, 4 Devils, 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Lucky Star, as well as the 1937 David O. Selznick version of A Star Is Born, got into the act.
Found on Bangshift.com: the following "Road Roller" commercial starring one of the subjects of our post from last weekend (March 18), celluloid heroine Doris Day. This print ad from 1949 plugs tractors and her latest movie, It's A Great Feeling, in one fell swoop!
One imagines Doris would have enjoyed plowing a few dishonest husbands and ex-husbands into the ground with this beauty from International Harvester.
