The Draft Horse is a Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 cartoon released in 1942

1942 in film

The year 1942 in film involved some significant events, in particular the release of a film consistently rated as one of the greatest of all time, Casablanca.-Events:...

, directed by Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...

. Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...

 provided the voices. Robert Cannon

Robert Cannon

Robert Cannon is an American sculptor. He holds a BA with distinction from Yale University. While attending Yale, Cannon studied under the American Sculptor Alice Aycock.- Work :...

 is the animator, Tedd Pierce

Tedd Pierce

Tedd Pierce , was an American animated cartoon writer, animator and artist. Pierce spent the majority of his career as a writer for the Warner Bros. "Termite Terrace" animation studio, working alongside fellow luminaries such as Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. Pierce also worked as a writer at...

 is the screenwriter and the music of this cartoon was done by Carl Stalling

Carl Stalling

Carl W. Stalling was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.-Biography:Stalling was born to Ernest and...

.

A farm horse sees a poster that says the U.S. Army needs horses. The horse goes to the recruiting station and tries to volunteer, but is eventually rejected, labeled "44-F". Leaving the station dejected, he wanders into a wargames situation, and the flying bullets frighten him so much he makes a dash for home. At the end, he is serving the war effort in another way, knitting "V for Victory" sweaters for the boys overseas.

One amusing bit that highlights the Warner cartoonists' penchant for going to the edge of general public taste without quite crossing over, is this "eye chart

Eye chart

An eye chart is a chart used to measure visual acuity. Types of eye charts include the logMAR chart, Snellen chart, Landolt C, and the Lea test.-Procedure:Charts usually display several rows of optotypes , each row in a different size...

 test", underscored by the music connected with this limerick

Limerick

Limerick is the third largest city in the Republic of Ireland, and the principal city of County Limerick and Ireland's Mid-West Region. It is the fifth most populous city in all of Ireland. When taking the extra-municipal suburbs into account, Limerick is the third largest conurbation in the...

 song:

You're in the Army now [normal size letters]

You're not behind the plow [smaller letters]

You'll never get rich [very small letters]

.... [letters too small to read]

YOU'RE IN THE ARMY NOW! [huge letters]

The missing line can either be rendered "You son-of-a-bitch" or "By diggin' a ditch", depending on the audience. A similar gag was employed by Tex Avery in MGM's 1942 cartoon, Blitz Wolf

Blitz Wolf

Blitz Wolf is an early anti-German World War II Hitler-parodying cartoon produced in 1942 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by Tex Avery and produced by Fred Quimby. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons.-Plot:...

.

Trivia

• A character who would go on to be Private Snafu
  Private Snafu
  Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional cartoon shorts produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The character was created by director Frank Capra, chairman of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit, and most were written by...
  
  gives the horse a brushing, only to end up being brushed by the horse himself. Private Snafu as a series character did not officially debut until 1943.