Back in the day, one of the New York independent stations — WWOR to be exact — devoted a good portion of its Thanksgiving Day airtime to multiple airings of the original King Kong, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young, with a liberal seasoning of vintage Warner Brothers cartoons to round out the menu. So here’s some nostalgia to go with your stuffing, beginning with Tom Turk and Daffy, a 1944 Chuck Jones short featuring Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Note that the cartoon is credited to “The Staff” rather than an individual writer. Note also that great Daffy line — “The yams did it! The yams did it! Those nasty yams!” — which may have been an early influence on Karen Finley.
Another great Daffy and Porky cartoon is My Favorite Duck (1942), from the early period when Daffy Duck was anarchy incarnate rather than the feathered version of Sylvester he became during the late Chuck Jones period. Porky’s attempts to overcome his epic stutter while singing “On Moonlight Bay” are great stuff.
Continuing our camping theme . . .
Wabbit Twouble (1941) is often dismissed as a weak item from Bob Clampett, but I think it’s a riot. On the other hand, everyone agrees that Clampett’s take on Daffy Duck defines the character:
That’s The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946), which has to rank among the Top Ten Warner Brothers cartoons.
That’s all well and good, you say, but what about King Kong? Here you go:
All right, that was “King Kong” from Uncle Meat as performed by the classic Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention lineup, taken from a 1968 BBC broadcast. Man, do I love that gold-top Les Paul Zappa’s playing.
And now, the big sendoff:
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. And a nod to Glenn Kenny for the inspiration.
We were discussing with the Young Lady our childhood Thanksgiving TV viewing. Back when there were only a couple of channels, manual switching, heck…black and white (for years, I never knew about that change in “Wizard of Oz”). Our traditional viewing for the day included the Kong movies but also “Babes in Toyland” and “Wizard of Oz”.
I miss the 4:30 movie on ABC. And The Million Dollar Movie. Not to mention Chiller Theatre, etc.
Here at Villa Villekulla, the Hellspawn can hardly conceive of black-and-white television. I told Dances With Mermaids about the night we trooped over to a friend’s house to watch “Fantastic Voyage” on the ABC Sunday Night Movie because they were the only people on the block with a color set. In her mind, I realized, she was picturing all of it like one of the historical re-enactments on “Connections.”
“The yams did it! The yams did it!”
Are you sure Karen Finley was involved?