Tex's Worm Take

Tex Avery’s first cartoon in production at MGM (and second released) doesn’t exactly have the wild takes he would soon be known for.

In The Early Bird Dood It (1941), a Lou Costello-type worm thinks he’s disposed of a bird. He greets a friend and shakes its wing. After looking away, he realises it’s the bird. There’s a head shake, then the take, ending with the worm’s hat popping up.

Avery has the worm doing little bits of business, perhaps because he now had artists who could effectively animate them. Eventually, Avery would discard a lot of that and stick to outrageous gags, like the ones that found their way into the chase scenes in this cartoon (interruptions, signs and so on).

Irv Spence, Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love are the animators. Rich Hogan was still under a Warners contract when Avery started at Metro; it’s possible he wrote this on the side.