A Tax from the Rear
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Jerry struggles to file his income tax report.Jerry struggles to file his income tax report.Jerry struggles to file his income tax report.
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Did you know
- TriviaReleased as part of Goldwyn-Bray Pictograph No. 7034 (aka No. 434), along with "The Silent Witness" (showing the use of models and figurines to break through language barriers in traffic court), "How We Hear" (an animated scientific subject about the human ear), and "Leviathans of the Lakes" (showing the machinery used to load and unload ships carrying coal and ore on the Great Lakes). This Pictograph is reviewed in the April 17, 1920 edition of The Moving Picture World, the April 25, 1920 edition of Wid's Daily, and the May 1920 edition of Moving Picture Age.
Featured review
Jerry on the Job
While Walter Hoban, the creator of Jerry on the Job was off fighting the First World War, the Hearst syndicate filled in by various means, including this Bray cartoon.
As Jerry and his boss fill in their income tax forms, we see various mechanisms take place. Although comic strips were still learning their way at this time, Hoban was one of the leaders in what serious people would call surrealism, along with Krazy Kat and later, the heights of Smoky Stover. Here we see various bits that indicate the cartoon mentality that would later evolve into what are today called the cartoon laws of physics: the clockwork brain trying to comprehend the tax forms and even the exaggerated leap-and-roll that Jerry does at the end -- a hallmark of the cartoon strip.
It's all very primitive to modern sensibilities in which Chuck Jones' Wile E. Coyote is considered an ur-figure, but this is a remarkably advanced cartoon for 1918 and still quite watchable --- I've spent the last week working on my own taxes and feel the pain.
As Jerry and his boss fill in their income tax forms, we see various mechanisms take place. Although comic strips were still learning their way at this time, Hoban was one of the leaders in what serious people would call surrealism, along with Krazy Kat and later, the heights of Smoky Stover. Here we see various bits that indicate the cartoon mentality that would later evolve into what are today called the cartoon laws of physics: the clockwork brain trying to comprehend the tax forms and even the exaggerated leap-and-roll that Jerry does at the end -- a hallmark of the cartoon strip.
It's all very primitive to modern sensibilities in which Chuck Jones' Wile E. Coyote is considered an ur-figure, but this is a remarkably advanced cartoon for 1918 and still quite watchable --- I've spent the last week working on my own taxes and feel the pain.
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- boblipton
- Feb 21, 2010
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