Tom And Jerry - 02/02/02

[Dub]

Hope I'm not intruding or anything. I'm just surprsised no one posted the T&J's already. So I figured I would *^^*


"Dog Trouble"
"Polka Dot Puss"
"Its Greek To Me-Ow"

It would have been an overall OK ep. But why'd they have to throw in a Gene Deitch on Saturday night :P I thought that Saturdays were reserved for the Mammy T&J's?

[J Lee]

Dog Trouble (1942)
Polka-Dot Puss (1949)
It's Green to Me-Ow (1961)

Mini-Mammy tonight -- She only appears at the end of the first cartoon and at the beginning of the second.

Special Trivia Notes -- "Polka-Dot Puss" was the cartoon that introduced Scott Bradley's Tom and Jerry theme used throughout the 1950s and 60s, while "It's Greek to Me-Ow" was the last cartoon made by MGM under the Lowes Corporation before the Tisch family decided that construction and real-estate (and buying CBS and part of the New York Football Giants) were more to their liking than owning a movie studio.

[Dub]

I read in a previous post that Mammy was supposed to have (MAYBE) been the owner of T&J into the 50's. But some supreme court law halted that. Out of curiosity - what was the law and what was the last mammy Two Shoes appearance in T&J?


OT but - Its too bad really - for the longest time Mammy dubbed (or undubbed, it doesnt matter to me) was one of my fave characters in T&J. I always wondered why future generations of T&J cartoons didnt just give the duo to a black "suburnan" couple instead of a white suburban couple. It doesnt matter really, but it woulda made more sense in that matter and if the complaint was that Mammy was too much of a "uneducated fat black maid stereotype" then why not just dispell that stereotype with something else more modern that wouldnt be considered offensive?

But I suppose there were different times and different ways of thinking back then :( Oh well.

[Jack]

In the later cartoons Mammy comes off as a black middle class woman rather than the maid.


Jack :bosko:

[J Lee]

Brief history lesson here:

In 1953, the Supreme Court handed down Brown vs. Board of Education which outlawed desegrgation in public schools, while five years earlier President Truman eliminated segragation in the U.S. Army.

The last Mammy cartoon "Push Button Kitty" was released in 1952, as "Brown" was widing its way through the federal court system. The Montgomery bus boycott that brought Dr. Martin Luther King to prominenence was still three years away, so the civil rights movment really hadn't started to gain the national prominence that it would. But there was enough going on by 1952 so that MGM or Hanna-Barbera probably decided "why go asking for trouble" and decided to make Tom the pet of the suburban white couple (since people after WWII were also moving to suburbia, this also could have been a factor).

Anyway, it's notable that a cartoon like "Polka Dot Puss" was re-released sometime in the mid-1950s, so MGM didn't have that great a fear about Mammy as they would a decade later when Tom & Jerry went to CBS. And it does serve to make the release of Paramount's "Chew Chew Baby" in 1958 even more astounding....

[DarthGonzo]

Originally posted by J Lee


Anyway, it's notable that a cartoon like "Polka Dot Puss" was re-released sometime in the mid-1950s, so MGM didn't have that great a fear about Mammy as they would a decade later when Tom & Jerry went to CBS. And it does serve to make the release of Paramount's "Chew Chew Baby" in 1958 even more astounding....

Polka Dot Puss was made in 1949. Are you thinking of a different cartoon?

[J Lee]

Polka Dot Puss was made in 1949. Are you thinking of a different cartoon?

Nope. I said re-released -- the opening titles on the cartoon as shown now has the blue MGM logo graphic that the new releases didn't start using until 1954, while the lettering on the title cards is the shaper, stylized kind that nobody (outside of maybe UPA) was using in 1949.

Other than "Puss Gets the Boot" and "The Night Before Christmas" all of the T&Js between 1941 and 1951 were re-released at sometime. I think either "Nit Witty Kitty" or "Triplet Trouble" is the oldest T&J other than those two that still carries its original titles, and those were released in late 1951 and early 1952 respectively.

[Thad Komorowski]

Originally posted by J Lee
And it does serve to make the release of Paramount's "Chew Chew Baby" in 1958 even more astounding....


Yeah, I wonder how Paramount got away with it......





-Thad

[Matthew Hunter]

I imagine Paramount could get away with releasing such a cartoon because maybe back then, it didn't cause so much of a stir. The Civil Rights movement was beginning for sure, but I would imagine that people picked their battles...more than anything they were concerned about the U.S. Government and its views, about segregation, about prejudiced police, hate crimes, etc....and while I'm sure a cartoon like that (and from what I've heard it's not a pretty one) would've ticked a lot of people off, I doubt anyone really took it seriously. It is only a cartoon, for crying out loud. Surely, the reason MGM stopped doing Mammy cartoons in Tom and Jerry was that MGM may have been a step ahead of Paramount on the social-consciousness path. Though there probably was very little risk to them at the time, maybe they just thought it best not to make a recurring black character in a cartoon made by two white guys, they may have felt nervous about what might happen later on, and they didn't want to get negative publicity for one of their hottest properties, Tom and Jerry. I see nothing wrong with the Mammy cartoons, and she is certainly a lot less stereotypical in later films like "Push Button Kitty" and "Nit-Witty Kitty"....but maybe either the big studio or just the cartoon division under Fred Quimby told Hanna and Barbera to stop doing the character. Obviously, though, the older films were popular and good enough to be approved for rerelease, and so they made it to TV. My parents remember seeing some of those, so I imagine a few of them were on TV in the 60's and 70's. I was a little kid in the late 1980's and early 90's, and there was a syndicated afternoon show of Tom and Jerry that had all those, plus Tex Avery/Michael Lah's Droopy and some 'Happy Harmonies". Nobody seemed to have any problem with Tom and Jerry or Mammy Two Shoes cartoons then. I used to see them when I first got Cartoon Network too, but they disappeared about the same time Speedy Gonzales did. Ted Turner must've sent in the P-C police about 1998 or so, 'cause it went all downhill from there.
-Matthew

[J Lee]

It may have been that MGM was just paying more attention than the Paramount execs were to their cartoon studio, though internal feeling on the part of Quimby, Hanna-Barbera and others may have had some role -- Warner's last cartoons that use a black character were "Which Is Which?" and "Caveman Inki" both of which IIRC made it onto the original rotation for ABC's "The Bugs Bunny Show." So the attitude may have been "We don't think these cartoons are bad, but we're not going to go looking for trouble." Obviously, they did not know about el loco gringo Senior Eudardo Turner when they started the Speey Gonzales series in the 1950s...

The odd thing about "Chew Chew Baby" is Paramount's studio was located right in the middle of New York, the media capitol of the country, and the place where many of the cuts we rail about in cartoons were born. The people over at WNEW -- Ch. 5 were sensative enough by at least the early1960s to not run any of the Censored 11, cut the endings to "Fresh Hare" and "Goofy Groceries" and not show some other cartoons, like "Malibu Beach Party" and "Bacall to Arms." And when they got the Paramount/Harvey package, the same type of cuts were made.

It's hard to believe if they were doing that over on East 67th Street, that Kneitel and Sparber over on the north end of Times Square could be that clueless as to the reception that cartoon would get in much of the country. Harvey may have refilmed the titles and it may have aired in some parts of the country, but AFAIK it never aired in the city where it was made, even though WNEW had the rights four years after it came out.

[Thad Komorowski]

Originally posted by J Lee
Warner's last cartoons that use a black character were "Which Is Which?" and "Caveman Inki"


Actually, the last WB to use a black stereotype was "Southern Fried Rabbit".





-Thad

[J Lee]

Was Bugs actually in blackface in "Southern Fried Rabbit?" I just remember him pleading for Sam not to whip "This tired ol' body" and then slipping out of the scene and compe back in as Lincoln, warning Sam against whipping slaves (I may have this mixed up with the ending with Elmer and Daffy to "Wise Quackers" since the gag's the same)

[Jon Cooke]

Originally posted by J Lee
Was Bugs actually in blackface in "Southern Fried Rabbit?"

Yup, Bugs was in blackface as he crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. Here's a picture from the scene.

http://www.toonzone.net/looney/ltcuts/southfried.jpg

-Jon

[Billy]

Speaking of blackface gags,if anyone PMs me and leaves there e-mail address I will send them 2 pictures-one of Jerry in Mouse In Manhattan, and one of Jerry in Casanova Cat-both in blackface.

[J Lee]

I stand corrected on the blackface gag, though I will stubbornly cling to the technical point that "Which is Which" and "Inki the Caveman" are the last two cartoons completely removed from airing due to their black stereotypes (though that doesn't mean much now since Ted Turner's Mexican/Indian restrictions -- I would guess that about 30-40 percent of the WB cartoons made in the 1960s now fall into the same 'banned' category)

[PorkyandDaffy]

Billy, I just sent you a PM.

[DarthGonzo]

Yeah, it's interesting how often the blackface scene from Casanova Cat is overlooked. It's not just a quick gag. It's significantly longer than most of the Tom and Jerry blackface gags and, save for His Mouse Friday, it's also one of the last.

After dropping Jerry into the fishbowl, Tom picks him back up and, smoking a cigar, he breathes black smoke into Jerry's face. He turns Jerry's ribbon around so it looks like a bowtie and stands the mouse on a plate. Tom holds the plate over a lighter and Jerry begins to quickly dance for Toodles, the girl cat. Jerry ends up burning his feet and butt. Now holding Jerry behind his back, Tom tries to kiss Toodles. Jerry crushes Tom's tail in an ash tray, causing Tom to scream in Toodles' face. Tom giggles weakly. The next shot is Jerry by the window.

If you can find a copy of the VHS tape "Tom and Jerry Cartoon Cavalcade", Casanova Cat is there uncut.

Luckily, Mouse in Manhattan in easily available uncut on the DVD.