Texas Tom (1950)

 

The above image of Tom of Tom serenading a lovely cowgirl cat is one that is rightfully ingrained in the minds of classic cartoon fans. That is because the scene it comes from is true classic Tom and Jerry at its best. In fact, the whole cartoon is a delight.  

The film begins with Tom and Jerry having their typical slapstick fight, this time out west. Suddenly a big car drives by and drops off a beautiful cowgirl cat and Tom is immediately smitten. Tom serenades her by lip-syncing to a record he makes Jerry play. This naturally makes Jerry very angry, and he does all he can to spoil Tom's chances at romance. 

This is a top-notch film in every respect. This is another fast-moving cartoon that brings us gag after gag. The pure energy this film moves with, makes it hard not to have a good time watching. On top of this, every single joke lands here. This is only helped by William Hanna's timing again being absolutely perfect. The whole film is again full of great character animation. The scene with Tom serenading the cowgirl cat is not only great because of the gags, but also because of the great animation. The look on Tom's face as he tries to keep the lip-syncing ruse up when Jerry messes of the speed of the record is even funnier than the gags themselves. This animation as well as being funny also makes Tom more real to us as well. We can see what is going through his mind as he tries to figure out how to continue to lip-sync to this. 

This cartoon is also a pure delight for fans of cowboy music (like me). A couple of Cowboy songs are used on the soundtrack, and both are a lot of fun. If You're Ever Down in Texas Look Me Up is a great novelty song written by Terry Shand and 'By' Dunham. Phil Harris had a hit off this song in 1946, which you can listen to below. In this cartoon Ken Darby sang the song. 

I Tipped My Hat and Slowly Rode Away, a novelty song written by Larry Markes and Dick Charles is used in the film's opening. This duo wrote such songs as Mad About Him, Sad About Him, How Can I Be Glad Without Him Blues, Along the Navajo Trail, It Takes a Long, Long Train with a Red Caboose to Carry My Blues Away and May You Always. In this cartoon the song is sung by The Kings Men, who had previously recorded the song in 1947 for an episode of the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show. You can listen to that below. 

The cowgirl cat, who Tom falls for would later appear in an episode of TV's The Tom and Jerry Show entitled Day of the Jackalope (2014). She would later be a playable character in the 2019 online game Tom and Jerry Chase. That game would give her the name Tara. 

The credited animators on this film are Ed Barge, Kenneth Muse, Ray Patterson and Irven Spence. Clips for this cartoon would later be used in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, Smitten Kitten (1952) and Cruise Cat (1952). Tom's cowboy outfit from this film was later used in the 2003 video game, Tom and Jerry in War of the Whiskers.

Below is the movie poster for this film. This is much better than the average Tom and Jerry movie poster of this time.