Here’s the strangest cartoon with an automotive theme you’ll ever see. From the delightfully demented mind of comedian Charley Bowers comes the 1930 stop-action classic, It’s a Bird. Ever see a bird devour an entire Model T Ford? Watch this.
Charles Bowers is virtually forgotten today except among silent film buffs, but in the 1920s he was a well-known cartoonist, comedian, movie maker, and actor. Though only some of his films are known to survive, they all demonstrate a flair for slapstick and the surreal, produced using a novel stop-action technique he called the Bowers Process. He eventually made a couple of talking pictures, including this 1930 comedy short, It’s a Bird.
And a very strange bird it is. In this story, Bowers travels to deepest Africa on the trail of a rare metal-eating bird. As Bowers watches, the bird gobbles up a trombone, and then even more incredibly, a Model T Ford one piece at a time. When the meal is completed, the bird then lays an egg, which hatches into a brand new Model T roadster. “We’ll start a flivver factory,” Bowers exclaims, “and hatch five million cars a year!” But alas, the bird lays but one egg every hundred years. It seems Bowers was fascinated with the Model T’s high-volume production. The subject is also given his wildly imaginative treatment in another Bowers film, Egged On.
(via Mac’s Motor City Garage)
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