Beaky Takes His Turns

Why does Bob Clampett have a flying dragon in a cartoon? Well, why not?

Clampett gets some interesting visuals out of it in The Bashful Buzzard (1945), as it chases after Beaky.

After a twisting pan of the curled-up dragon’s body, Clampett cuts to a close-up roar. He quickly cuts to Beaky zooming away from the creature, and cuts again to a long scene where the dragon zooms after Beaky in mid-air, turning in two circles before the pair jump into a cloud that appears on the scene. The animator goes for perspective.



The cloud starts changing shape with fight sound effects in the background. We now reach to the finale with Beaky returning home.



“You never, never, bring-a home one teensy-weensy piece of-a meat!” Mama Buzzard shouts at Beaky. Cut to the final scene where the camera pans down the side of a cliff, with Beaky holding on to the dragon, who says “Well, now, I wouldn’t say that.”

Radio references? What were you expecting in a Clampett cartoon? The dragon’s doing the catchphrase of Peavy the druggist in The Great Gildersleeve. Beaky (voiced by Kent Rogers) is an imitation of Edgar Bergen’s dullard dummy, Mortimer Snerd.

And for years I’ve wondered why Mama speaks in Italian dialect. Nobody else does in the cartoon. I have now concluded it’s yet another Los Angeles radio reference. Minerva Urecal appeared on variety shows on stations in the 1930s as “Mrs. Pasquale,” shouting in an Italian accent in the exact same way Sara Berner does as Mama Buzzard. I’m not saying this is the origin of the voice in the cartoon, but I can’t think of any other explanation. (As a side note, Mrs. Pasquale appeared on the syndicated “The Mirth Parade.” Another actor on the show was Bob Burns, known as “The Arkansas Traveller,” the name of a song that appears in this cartoon with some new, bumblebee lyrics).

As for animators, Bob McKimson and Rod Scribner’s work can be seen in this cartoon and Bill Melendez and Manny Gould must be here, too.