Thanksgiving Friday with George of the Jungle

It's the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. This Sunday brings to mind four-day vacations from school. It also meant more cartoons--I don't recall if it also meant more Broadway musicals, because I don't think Macy's parade did numbers from Main Stem tuners back then. Anyway, one Thanksgiving we were visiting relatives in Massachusetts and the Friday after Thanksgiving, ABC was showing its entire Saturday morning line-up. They even had a commercial promoting it with an animated turkey playing a rock guitar. I recall watching it with my brother in the basement of a cousin's house. I had to be 1968 and the shows included the Hanna-Barbera version of The Fantastic Four, which was pretty sophisticated for a kid's cartoon, Spider-Man, also sophisticated, and George of the Jungle, a very funny parody of Tarzan made by the same people who did Rocky and Bullwinkle, Hoppity Hooper, the Quisp and Quake and Cap'n Crunch commercials.

When I recently visited my parents in Philly, a Blockbuster video store was going out of business and I found a DVD of George of the Jungle episodes (all 17) for $10. I had earlier not bought a Jonny Quest DVD for $10 which I had regretted ever since. So I snapped it up. Very funny, grown-up humor. George is a clumsy, hunky apeman who perpetually crashes into trees while swinging to the rescue and is so dumb he thinks his elephant Shemp is a big, long nosed doggie. As an example of the sophiticated humor, in one episode, an evil witch doctor is aiming darts at a board which reads "Medicare." In another George is exhibits his skill in animal calling. He calls for hippos and a tribe of long-haired weirdos shows up. "George, you called for the hippies, not the hippos," explains his assistant. an Ape named Ape who speaks with a Ronald Coleman accent. The George cartoons are not as funny as the supporting features which appeared weekly--Super Chicken and Tom Slick.

Super Chicken is a riotous send-up of superheroes with millionaire playchicken Henry Cabot Henhouse III who is in reality the super-powered fowl battling for truth and justice against such villains as the Zipper, the Oyster, the Noodle, the Fat Man, Salivador Rag Dolly, Merlin Brando (who lives on the Isle of Lucy), and the Laundry Man (an incredibly racist stereotype of a Chinese villain). In one episode, a mad scientist creates a giant raging toupee which Super Chicken subdoes by causing it to worry thus making its gigantic hair fall out. He is assisted by a lion named Fred who appears to be his butler, but is dressed in a red sweater with a backwards F and sneakers. (I found the above illustration with Super Chicken and Fred which is a panel from a George of the Jungle comic book which I had as a kid.)

Tom Slick is a race car driver whose overwhelming goodsportsmanship is a source of annoyance for his main nemesis Baron Otto Matic. Every week Tom would convert his car the Thunderbolt Grease-Slapper into a balloon, drag racer, locomotive, snowmobile, submarine, skateboard, etc. for a big race. He was accompanied by Marigold, a lovely young lady, and Gertie Growler, a caustic old lady (with the same voice as Super Chicken). owner of a garage and presumably his mechanic. My favorite villain on Tom Slick was Sonia Nar and her Aqua-Nuts who lived in Drown Town (a metropolis beneath the waves) and who supplied the dirty tricks to stop Slick during a submarine race. June Foray gave her the same voice as Natasha Fatale on Rocky and Bullwinkle.

This Thanksgiving in between cleaning out the gutters and putting up the fake Christmas tree, I watched a few George of the Jungle episodes and they made me feel nine again. Other cartoons of the era I remember enjoying are Frankenstein Junior and the Impossibles, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, the Super Six, Underdog ( I recently met George S. Irving who was the narrator on that show at a reading of a George Bernard Shaw play), and the Superman-Batman Adventure Hour. You can tell I spent entirely too much time in front of the TV just like now.