This month has just flown by. I was originally planning to devote separate posts to all of the following, but instead I will be presenting them as one giant Thanksgiving-themed post.
First, here's a fairly recent Thanksgiving card from Hallmark with some nice original artwork.
back of card -
Coming up next...
There aren't that many animated Thanksgiving TV specials. However, the Looney Tunes gang can boast that they appeared in TWO different specials themed to the holiday. The first of the two was 1979's Bugs Bunny's Thanksgiving Diet. It's nothing really remarkable and at least it's not unwatchable like Bugs Bunny's Howl-o-Ween was. In new wraparound footage, Bugs is a diet doctor who gives advice to various patients (including June Foray's "Millicent" character from "Rabbit Romeo").
Next up, we have Chuck Jones' "Daffy Duck's Thanks-for-Giving Special" from 1981. This special seems to have been done mostly to showcase Jones' "Duck Dodgers" sequel. The second Dodgers cartoon was originally made at the request of George Lucas to be shown in front of The Empire Strikes Back. However, those plans fell through and the short didn't surface until this primetime special (Production problems? Rejected by Lucas? Anyone know the story?). The version of "Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2 Century" here actually includes some more footage that wasn't included in the stand-alone version of this short (most notably Marvin advising us Earthlings we have three days to prepare for Earth's destruction).
(On a sidenote, rewatching this special reminded me how funny "His Bitter Half" is. That shooting gallery gag makes me laugh every single time. Hopefully it'll be on a Golden Collection soon!)
I have always wondered if the final bit in this special ("Why don't we remake it before we shelve it") was Jones' commentary on the actual production of the second "Dodgers" cartoon?
And now for a TRUE Thanksgiving classic. Here's Art Davis' "Holiday For Drumsticks" from 1949:
Happy Thanksgiving!
3 comments:
Wow! This post was amazing! I enjoyed in particular the greetings card!Happy Misce-looney Thanksgiving!
I think the reason Duck Dodgers got pulled from one of the Star Wars films was that it was deemed too long of a short (8 minutes) to run with a Star Wars movie that it self is very long (2 hours), and Chuck Jones didn't want to cut the short down, so the deal ended there.
There's a scene in the cartoon that unfortunatly is usually censored out for time (and I think it's one of the only funny moments in the short),is when Porky is trimming Gossamer's hair. Porky just starts asking Gossamer random questions, taking on the stereotype of a barber asking his customer nosey questions while cutting their hair. Maybe that scene was deemed too un-PC towards barbers. LOL.
Just a heads-up. I uploaded the Thanksgiving Diet clip from a promo I found from the 1989 Garfield Thanksgiving special under the name "WVECSpirit".
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