Jerky Turkey - [1945]

Jerky Turkey is an animated theatrical short, directed by Tex Avery, released on 7 April 1945 by MGM. The story for this cartoon was written by Heck Allen, the music by Scott Bradley, and the animation was done by Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams. Voices were provided by radio actors Harry Lang, who appeared on the Cisco Kid, and Leone LeDoux,^[1] who specialised in baby cries. Internet sources claiming Daws Butler provided a voice are incorrect, as he did not arrive in Hollywood until after World War II.^[2]

The Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock and found a colony. A very large number of Pilgrims (some of them caricatures of Avery's animation crew) can be seen standing in line... for their cigarette rations. A Pilgrim goes hunting for a turkey for Thanksgivingdinner. The turkey outsmarts the pilgrim many times and eventually the two make up and decide to eat at "Joe's restaurant" which is being advertised by a bear, at the end the bear has eaten the two and reveals that he is Joe and the two complain inside the bear's stomach. Many of the gags revolve around life on the home front in the United States during WWII, rationing and the black market. The turkey is a caricature of the comedian Jimmy Durante.

Some Cartoon Network and TBS showings remove the "half breed" scene, depicting an American Indian who is dressed in native garb on one half of his body and a suit and tie on the other side. TNT aired this scene uncut.

Instruction: Preston Blair’s Advanced Animation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Blair

http://animationresources.org/instruction-preston-blairs-advanced-animation/

 

Preston Blair (October 24, 1908–April 19, 1995) was an American character animator, most noted for his work at Walt Disney Productions and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation department

A native of Redlands, California, Blair began his animation career in the early 1930s at the Universal studio under Walter Lantz and Bill Nolan. He later moved over to Charles Mintz's Screen Gems studio, and in the late 1930s moved over to the Disney studio. At Disney, Blair animated cartoon short subjects, Mickey Mouse scenes in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" section of Fantasia, and the hippo-alligator dance in Fantasia's "Dance of the Hours" sequence. He also did some work on Walt Disney's Pinocchio and Bambi.

Blair left Disney after the 1941 Disney animator's strike, and was hired to work for Tex Avery's unit at MGM. There, he became particularly noted for animating the titular female character in Red Hot Riding Hood. "Red" later re-appeared in more Avery cartoons, including Swing Shift Cinderella, Little Rural Riding Hood, Uncle Tom's Cabana and the Droopy cartoons The Shooting of Dan McGoo and Wild and Woolfy, with animation by Blair. In the late 1940s, Blair teamed with Avery animatorMichael Lah to direct several Barney Bear cartoons.

Blair continued his career in animation into the 1960s, working on The Flintstones at Hanna-Barbera. He is most noted, however, as an author of animation instructional books for Walter Foster Publishing. His first book, Animation, was published in 1948 and originally included images of the famous MGM & Disney cartoon characters he had animated, who were redrawn to obscure their origins in the second edition of the book. Blair would write many more animation how-to texts over the next forty years, culminating with 1994's Cartoon Animation, a 224-page book which compiles most of the content from all of his books.

Preston Blair was the brother of artist Lee Everett Blair [1] and the brother-in-law of artist and designer Mary Blair. He died on April 19, 1995.

External links

• Preston Blair at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Preston Blair in libraries (WorldCat catalog)