Tokio Jokio
About Tokio Jokio
The cartoon pretends to be a Japanese newsreel captured by American troops. A vulture in glasses crows over a rising sun, then each boast is a gag: two men with a needle stand in for an air-raid siren, a spotter paints spots on a plane, and the fire-prevention office has already burned. Hideki Tojo, as a cook, builds a club sandwich out of ration cards and hits himself with a club. Isoroku Yamamoto walks out on stilts and says he will dictate peace in the White House. The next shot is an electric chair. A submarine launched three weeks early is still being built underwater and crashes. A minesweeper with arms and a broom hits a mine. A buoy pops up reading "Regrettable incident please."
Cast & crew
More about Tokio Jokio
Norman McCabe directed, billed as Cpl. Norman McCabe. Don R. Christensen wrote the story. I. Ellis animated. Leon Schlesinger produced. Carl W. Stalling wrote the music. Mel Blanc is the voice. Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation released the black-and-white short on 15 May 1943. It was McCabe's last cartoon as director before he was drafted. Frank Tashlin took the unit Ray Katz had managed.
Themes
Background
Released in May 1943, the short mocks Japanese civil defense and the Axis leaders in the racist caricature Warner later pulled from broadcast.
Making
McCabe's unit finished this newsreel parody and he left for the Army. Tashlin inherited the unit.
Music
Carl W. Stalling scores the electric-chair shot with Chopin's funeral march, the submarine crash with "Taps," the arcade-machine controls with "Nagasaki," the Berlin item with "O du lieber Augustin," and the Rome item with "Largo al factotum."
Preservation
Withdrawn from public broadcast after the war for its racist drawings. It is one of 122 Warner Bros. animated shorts whose copyright was not renewed in 1971, so it is in the public domain in the United States.
Notes
- The title puns Tokio, an older English spelling of Tokyo, with joke.
- Yamamoto's plane had been shot down on 18 April 1943, less than a month before the 15 May release.
- Lord Hee Haw, a donkey, stands in for the broadcaster Lord Haw-Haw and flips a postcard of Rudolf Hess.
- Adolf Hitler's hand twitches a mustache. Benito Mussolini sits on a pillar marked Ruin #1 and plays with a yo-yo.
- A man stuck in a human torpedo yells to be let out. Another plane uses a man on a tricycle as landing gear.
Scenes
- Tojo eats a sandwich of ration cards and clubs himself on the head.
- Yamamoto on stilts promises the White House. The card lifts on an electric chair.
- The broom-minesweeper explodes and a buoy apologizes.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Tokio Jokio (1943).webm)
Quotes
Oh, cock-a-doodle-doo, prease
Regrettable incident please.
