Punchline: "Hold On To Your Hats, Folks, Here We Go Again

[Carryon]

If that’s the punchline, what’s the joke?

From Wikipedia

Tex Avery’s tenure at the Schlesinger studio ended in late 1941, when he and the producer quarreled over the ending to The Heckling Hare. In Avery’s original version, Bugs and hunting dog were to fall off a cliff three times, milking the gag to its comic extreme. According to a DVD commentary for the cartoon, the historian and animator Greg Ford explained that the problem Schlesinger had with the ending was that, just before falling off the third time, Bugs and the dog were to turn to the screen, with Bugs saying “Hold on to your hats, folks, here we go again!” It is thought that this was the punchline to a well-known risqué joke of the day. The Hollywood Reporter reported on the quarrel on April 2, 1941. Avery was slapped with a four week, unpaid suspension.

[Ethilrist]

Previous thread on the subject.

@flug

OK, 10 years late, but here’s the answer:

The joke is recorded in Gershon Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke, p. 59, which quotes sources from 1907, 1933, and 1934.

Apparently the joke was current in the 30s and 40s and was even the reason for the ban on the phrases “Hold your hat” and “Hold your hats” from movies during the period by the Motion Picture Production Code.

The mountaineer and his wife and their three little boys all sleep in the same bed together, the boys wearing their coon-skin hats to keep warm. During the parents’ intercourse, the bed collapses several times, the boys’ hats flying in all directions. The parents wait till the children are asleep and try again. Just as their orgasm is approaching a tiny voice shouts, “Hold onto your hats, boys! Here we go again!”