The House of Tomorrow is a 1949 animated theatrical short directed by Tex Avery. It was part of a series of cartoons Avery did “exploring” technology of the future which included: The Car of Tomorrow, The Farm of Tomorrow, and The TV of Tomorrow. These were satires of live action promotional films that were commonly shown in theaters at the time.

The film is a straight forward narrated showcase of appliances said to be found in a typical house in the year 2050, roughly a hundred years after the cartoon was made, each one actually an outlandish joke. Most of the time the inventions following a similar pattern of being made for each member of the family ending with a fatal version for the “mother-in-law”.

The Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock and found a colony. A very large number of Pilgrims (some of them caricatures of Avery’s animation crew) can be seen standing in line… for their cigarette rations. A Pilgrim goes hunting for a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Many of the gags revolve around life on the home front in the United States during WWII, rationing and the black market. The turkey is a caricature of the comedian Jimmy Durante.

Classic Sutherland animation style mixed with live action.

Probably the most well known of John Sutherland’s animated work.