The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't (Hanna-Barbera Productions) 1972, a half-hour television special, is the chronological next of my Thanksgiving TV memories. Were we beginning to see a sort of pattern in the framing here?
“A family of three
squirrels, a father, a mother, and a son, observe a human family having their
Thanksgiving dinner. They begin to prepare for their own feast. The father
tells the son about their ancestor, Jeremy Squirrel, who interacted with the
Pilgrims and the Native Americans, and saved the lives of Pilgrim boy Johnny
Cooke and Native American boy Little Bear, who went missing in the woods on
Thanksgiving Day back in 1621. After the father ends the story, the three sit
down to share a large walnut, but the father accidentally destroys it while
trying to crack it open. The son wishes Jeremy was still around to join them,
whereupon the portrait of Jeremy comes alive, and nibbles a nut hidden under
his Pilgrim hat.” – Hanna-Barbera.fandom.com/wiki.
The special was written by Ken
Spears and Joe Ruby, the famous team who produced a lot of work for
Hanna/Barbera. Hal Smith (most famous for being Otis the lovable town drunk on The
Andy Griffith Show) voices Jeremy Squirrel and is supported in minor roles by
June Foray and Don Messick (who supplies the growls of an evil wolf who is the
main antagonist here). Other voices include Don Riha, Kevin Cooper, and Marilyn
Mayne, who, if you are a certain age, will be recognized as the voices of kids from
dozens of cartoons of the time.
What are my memories? Well, oddly enough they are about the songs, of which there are three, sprinkled throughout the half-hour. In one, Jeremy rhymes ‘kettles’ and ‘vittles’ which, even then, scraped my blackboard the wrong way. There was another line in a song that went ‘Don’t tell me your belly’s achin’!’ in a very Thurl Ravenscroft-like deep voice, though apparently it wasn’t him. The special had a brief resurgence (in the 90’s?) on Cartoon Network and is now available on YouTube.
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