Monday, July 8, 2024

Smitten Kitten (1952)

 



This short film is a "cheater" cartoon meaning that it is a short that uses clips from previous Tom and Jerry films. This cartoon uses clips from The Mouse Comes to Dinner (1945), Solid Serenade (1946), Salt Water Tabby (1947) and Texas Tom (1950). 

In this short film, Tom falls in love with a female cat. Jerry's evil side (a green devil looking version of Jerry) tries to convince Jerry to break up the romance by reminding the mouse of how bad things go for him whenever Tom falls in love. 

This is one of the weaker cheater cartoons. The main problem with it is that most of the clips from previous shorts (with the exception of one), are not exactly the strongest moments from those cartoons. Those previous shorts are real classics, but you would never know from the brief clips used here. As for the wrap around segments they are mostly devoid of gags themselves with the end joke being the only new gag here. The new scenes don't even give Tom something new to do. The saving graces of this film are that the ending gag is quite funny and the clip from Solid Serenade is a great clip. 

The little girl devil version of Jerry had previously appeared in the short, Springtime for Thomas (1946).  This character would later appear in a 2014 episode of The Tom and Jerry Show called Pranks for Nothing. This character would even be a playable character in the 2019 mobile game, Tom and Jerry Chase. He also appears (though he isn't playable) in the 2000 Gameboy Color Game, Tom and Jerry in Mouse Attacks! Tom and Jerry fans will immediately notice that his Jimmy Durante inspired voice is the same as Spike the Bulldog. By this point that voice had been used by Spike only in a few cartoons and back when people saw these films only in theaters many audience members would not have seen those previous shorts. So, while this is obvious to us now, it was not to most anyone watching the short back then.

Perhaps because there is so little new footage, Kenneth Muse is the only credited animator. The short would be reissued to theaters in 1958 and again in 1966. 

Below is the movie poster for this film. What the heck even is Jerry here?



-Michael J. Ruhland 





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