BC The Frist Thanksgiving


B.C. The First Thanksgiving
1973 | Color | 25 Min | Comedy | G | Levitow/Hanson Films

Director: Abe Levitow

Writers: 
Johnny Hart
Jack Caprio

Stars: 
Daws Butler
Bob Holt
Don Messick





To add flavor to her rock soup, the Fat Broad commands Wiley, Peter, Thor, etc. to catch a turkey. The problem is that no one knows what a turkey is except for the turkey himself. In spite of this, the chase is on. Mostly a series of running gags, this animated special did a superb job of capturing the humor of Johnny Hart's B.C. comic strip.


Wow, who remembers this TV show? I loved reading the Sunday paper comic and I remember all the holiday specials. What I did not remember was how silly this was and how it felt like an hour watching this thirty-minute cartoon. 



This story has a basic plot about the turkey that starts about halfway through the show, the first half is mostly unrelated gags strung together. This animated special was made for T.V. that first aired on November 19, 1973, on NBC Television. So I was 3 so pretty sure I'm remembering the reruns at this point. The jazz soundtrack is by Danny Darpino and gives you a nice Pink Panter style vibe. The jazz fits the bill very well.


At one time these were fun for us to watch as a family but fast forward 44 years later and my girls thought I was nuts for watching this old looking cartoon. Well, they had a good point it is not really about Thanksgiving and the pace is pretty slow with gags are no longer funny. And that is sad it still has the charm for those of us that grew up watching these specials. Seventies cartoons sure have an odd look that you instantly know it was from that decade.  


On a good note if you have Amazon Prime you can catch this today. But through some quick research, this has fallen into public domain and can be watched anytime for free at the Archive.org website.

Sorry B.C. I can only give you...

2 Turkey Legs out of 5



2 comments:

  1. I always enjoyed the newspaper comic of BC, but I've never even heard of this! Sounds terrible.

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  2. I enjoyed this special when I saw it in syndication in the late 80s, but I saw it again last year and thought "oh boy." Pretty prehistoric in it's treatment of the female characters too. This would NEVER get made today.

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