Release Date:

May 9, 1942

Main Character(s):

None

Summary:

An overly patriotic horse wants to join the army but only irritates the recruiting Sargent. When eventually rejected and classified as “44-F”, the horse realizes how frightening war actually is when he stumbles into a very realistic sham battle.

That’s Not All, Folks:

This is Chuck Jones’ breakthrough cartoon in his career where after this one was released, no one denied he had a sense of humor and would continue to make consistently funny and fast-paced cartoons.

The scene where the Sargent poses as a doctor and asks the horse to “Say ah” but the horse screams very loudly became a meme.

This is the first Warner cartoon written by Tedd Pierce since “The Night Watchman” (which was Jones’ first cartoon).

What I Like About This One:

The horse visualizing himself in place of the horse on a billboard saying “Horses wanted for US Army”.

The horse then runs off to the recruiting office, but not before coming back to kiss the farmer goodbye. The plough is also still attached to the horse, so he unknowingly causes a lot of destruction in his path, such as turning a bridge of logs into a log cabin (to the tune of the William Tell Overture).

Once at the draft office, the horse gives an overly dramatic speech about how he’s going to fight the enemy, which ends with him pretending to be shot and then playing “Taps”. This has the Sargent shedding a few tears, until he realizes it’s just an act (animated by Ken Harris).

When the horse is instructed to “get in there and strip”, the horse performs a strip tease. The Sargent yells “STRIP, YOU LUG!” so the horse daintily goes out of the Sargent’s sight to remove his harness. He is then given a rubdown by a soldier but the horse soon turns the tables, and is tickling the soldier by giving him a rubdown.

An eye test chart consists of the lyrics of “You’re in the Army Now”.

The Sargent then poses as a doctor and tells the horse to “say aah”. The horse screams, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” The Sargent shouts to “BE QUIET! SHUT UP!” The confused horse says, “I though you said to say “Ah”. The Sargent’s reply is “That I did, but I didn’t tell you to say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” (animated by Harris)

The horse is next told to raise his legs to the point where all four are raised in mid-air. The Sargent asks him in a polite, but somewhat mocking tone, “Don’t you know you can’t do that?” When the horse asks “I can’t?”, the Sargent answers, “No, you can’t”. The horse then falls down.

After receiving a rejection slip, the disappointed horse wanders into the countryside at night and complains that “other horses get to join the Army, I never get to do anything.” As he’s saying this, he doesn’t realize he’s leaning into the barrel of a large cannon. When he hears the cannon fire after sobbing that he’s not good enough for his Uncle Sam, he wanders what it was and nearly gets his head shot off when the cannon fires a second time. He realizes it’s “a gun” before doing a double take (“A GUN!?”).

The horse running away from the cannon only to get caught on another cannon rising from the bushes.

Stuck in the middle of this sham battle, the horse finds he can’t step anywhere without an explosive landing.

In the end, the horse decides there’s something else he can do to serve the country- knit red, white, and blue sweaters with the “V” for victory knitted on them.

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org!

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕🥕