Then, the realisation. There’s a head-spinning take, one of two in the cartoon. Here are some frames.
“Who, you?” asks the chief. The pilgrim is tongue-tied and gesticulates as he tries to answer. The chief hangs in mid-air.
The pilgrim runs away, leaving his teeth behind to continue trying to answer. They eventually race away as well.
Jerky Turkey sat on the shelf for a while. The Hollywood Reporter blurbed on May 2, 1944 the cartoon would be among eight cartoons to be released in the 1944-45 season starting in October. The October 6, 1944 issue of the Reporter said it was in animation (As a side note, the story also says Getting the Air was in ink and paint, and the House of Tomorrow was in animation. Thad Komorowski tells us the latter was rejected, then revived some years later. He believes the former became The Unwelcome Guest).
A short piece in the Dec. 6 edition of the Reporter reported on the “Is this trip really necessary gag” in the cartoon, but it hadn’t been released yet. Showman’s Trade Review of Jan. 13, 1945 reported producer Fred Quimby had set the release for February, but the official date was April 7. An ad for the Dome Theatre in Lawton, Oklahoma, reveals it was screened there on March 31 with Wallace Beery’s This Man’s Navy.
Boxoffice’s review of May 12, 1945 read:
Hilarious. The Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock minus a destroyer escort, gun crew and C card, and the Mayflower was not a Kaiser production. This modernized version of our Thanksgiving legend portrays the unsuccessful attempts of one of the Pilgrims to track down a turkey. The fowl in the case is a Jimmy Durante prototype, and plagues the hunter in a succession of hilarious situations, both are finally lured to Joe's diner, where the proprietor, a burly bear, utilizes them for his own holiday fare.Heck Allen helped Avery with the story, while Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams are the credited animators.
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