From 1978 to 1982 CBS aired a sitcom called WKRP in Cincinnati that was about the hijinks at a fictional radio station. The show received many Emmy nominations and enjoyed a cult following.
Its most famous episode was called “Turkeys Away.” TV Guide included the episode on a 1997 list of the 100 Greatest TV episodes of all time. In that episode WKRP ran a promotional stunt during Thanksgiving that involved dropping live turkeys from a helicopter. The stunt went very wrong, and at the end of the show the apologetic station owner uttered the line, “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
As absurd as the premise sounds, in 1953 LIFE covered a turkey festival in Arkansas that included—in addition to a turkey call contest, a turkey auction, a turkey shoot and a beauty contest—turkeys being dropped from an airplane. Somehow no turkeys seemed to have been harmed, and LIFE devoted only one line to the drop in its brief story: “Sixteen turkeys, tossed from a plane, sent celebrators up trees and down streets in quest of a free bird.”
Judging from the photos by LIFE staff photographer Wallace Kirkland, the Arkansas turkeys were dropped from a much lower altitude than the estimated 2,000 feet that the helicopter flew in “Turkeys Away.” Here the plane doesn’t appear to be much higher than the tops of the buildings in the modest downtown of the town of Yellville, population 1,000.
Indeed, while Kirkland devoted some attention to the turkey drop, the main objects of interest may have been the turkey calling (made for Yellville puns) and also the beauty contest—called “Miss Drumsticks” because the women were judged solely on their legs.
Is there any chance that LIFE’s story on the Yellville event inspired the WKRP in Cincinnati episode 25 years later? Not really. According to an oral history of “Turkeys Away” that appeared on The Classic TV History Blog, show creator Hugh Wilson drew from a real-life event relayed to him by the station manager at WQXI, an Atlanta station that was the model for WKRP. Wilson recalled, “…Jerry Blum, the station manager [at WQXI], told me about a promotion – I believe in Texas, and I want to say Dallas, but I’m not sure – in which he threw turkeys out of a helicopter, and they didn’t fly. They crashed to the ground, it was just a horrible disaster, and he wound up losing his job over it. So I said to him at the time, “Jerry, I think you just won me an Emmy.”
Why things went better in Yellville will just have to be chalked up as one of the mysteries of LIFE.
During a turkey festival, people watched for birds to be tossed from a low-flying plane, Yellville, Arkansas, November 1953.
Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Children watched as people scrambled up a tree to collect a turkey that had been dropped from a low-flying airplane during a turkey festival in Yellville, Arkansas, 1953.
Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A man climbed a tree to collect a turkey that had been dropped from a low-flying place during a turkey festival, Yellville, Arkansas, November 1953.
Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Ten-year-old Alvin Daniels caught this bird during a kids’ scramble at a turkey festibal in Yellville, Arkansas, November 1953.
Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
78-year-old A.F. McMurtrey competed in a calling competition during a turkey festival in Yellville, Arkansas, November 1953.
Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Women at a turkey festival competed to see who had the most winning “drumsticks,” Yellville, Arkansas, November 1953.
Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Seventeen-year-old Peggy Mears won a contest for having the best “drumsticks” during a turkey festival in Yellville, Arkansas, November 1953.
Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
