It's All Greek to Me-Ow (1961)

 

This short film marks the third final Tom and Jerry short of 1961, which proved to be a very poor year for the cat and mouse duo. 

In this short film, we find Tom and Jerry in ancient Greece, where they are chasing each other as always. 

As is common with these Gene Deitch directed shorts, on paper it seems like this should be a strong cartoon. However, it fails to live up to its potential. Having Tom and Jerry have their usual battles in the setting of ancient Greece is a great idea and should lend itself to some great variations on typical Tom and Jerry gags. The idea of that their fighting inadvertently led to the creation of the Greek Acropolis is also a very clever idea. That makes it unfortunate that the execution is so poor. The drawings and character animation are often downright poor. The characters are too rubbery, which takes away any sort of weight from them, making the slapstick much less effective. One of the worst examples is the scene where Jerry uses the mace on Tom. The action has little weight and Tom's reaction is completely minimal. This is the top of gag that needs over the top action or a Tex Avery like take or even just an exasperated reaction from Tom. Without any of these things, the gag is just kind of there leaving no effect on the audience. However once again, the sound effects are the worst offender. They are simply bizarre and completely ill-fitted to the actions on screen. Rather than add to the humor (as the sound effects in the Hanna and Barbera directed shorts did), they distract from it. It doesn't help that the volume on these sound effects is often much too loud. The music, meanwhile, tries much too hard to emulate Scott Bradley's music from the Hanna and Barbera directed shorts. Instead, though it also comes off as distracting and sometimes ill-fitting from the action on screen. I will admit however the background art is very nice. 

A similar gag to the one where Tom uses the garbage can as a type of armor would be used in the Chuck Jones produced short, Filet Meow (1966). 

Once again there are no animation credits for this film. However, Eli Baurer receives a story credit, Tod Dockstader receives a sound effects credit and Allen Swift receives a voice credit (he provided the narration at the start of the film). This marks the 117th Tom and Jerry cartoon short overall. It is available on the DVD sets, Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5, Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection and Tom and Jerry: Once Upon A Tomcat. 

-Michael J. Ruhland

Down and Outing (1961)

 

This short film is the second Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by Gene Deitch. It is definitely not an improvement over his first Tom and Jerry film. 

In this short film Tom's owner takes him fishing. Unknowingly to Tom's owner Jerry tags along on this trip. Tom's attempts to eat Jerry end up ruining the whole trip. 

This is another very weak Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry short. Once again, the story is a promising one for Tom and Jerry. It may be basic, but it fits in the mold of some the Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry shorts quite well. Some of the gags would have been strong if William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had been directing as well. However, under Deitch's direction, the whole film falls flat. The timing is consistently off, some of the drawings are often downright poor, the sound effects are bizarre and ill-fitting and many of the slapstick gags come off as more painful than funny. It also doesn't help that Tom's new owner is distinctly unlikable, come off as overly cruel to Tom to the point of unpleasantness. It makes you wonder why this guy even has a cat. Especially when he seems to hate him so much.

I will admit this cartoon has a few things going for it. The background art is quite pleasing to look at. Also, the use of Scott Bradley's Tom and Jerry theme music adds a bit of life to the otherwise uninspired proceedings. 

This is the first appearance of Tom's new owner. This new character visually resembles Clint Clobber, a character from Deitch's time at the Terry Toons studio. Some online have even referred to this character as Clint Clobber. However, the two are actually quite different. Underneath his rough exterior Clint Clobber actually has a good heart. The same cannot be said for Tom's owner, who is often extremely abusive to Tom and loses his temper very easily. He is voiced by Allen Swift. Swift is best known as the voice for the villainous Simon Bar Sinister on Underdog. He also worked as a kiddie show host. He hosted the popular kiddie show, The Popeye Show from 1956 to 1960. He would play a sea captain named Captain Allen Swift in live-action segments between the cartoons. He also voiced and played plenty of characters on the kiddie show, Howdy Doody. Tom's owner would only appear in two more cartoons, High Stakes (1962) and Sorry Safari (1962). 

The credited writer for this film is Larz Bourne and Tod Dockstader is credited as the sound effects artist. This is a rare Tom and Jerry short where no animators are credited. This marks the 116th Tom and Jerry short overall. This film is available on the DVD sets Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5, Tom and Jerry's Summer Holidays, Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection, Tom and Jerry: Tough and Tumble and Tom and Jerry: Mouse Trouble as well as the VHS Tom and Jerry: Little School Mouse. 

-Michael J. Ruhland

Switchin' Kitten (1961)

 

It seemed like 1958 would be the end of the theatrical Tom and Jerry shorts. Though the previous shorts were sometimes reissued to theaters (and Dell Comics was continuing to make new comic books starring the cat and mouse), new Tom and Jerry cartoons would be off the big screen for three years. As well as this the MGM cartoon studio had seemingly permanently closed. Meanwhile William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who not only created the characters but directed all their films up to this time, have started their own TV studio and were having great success with such characters as Huckelberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw and The Flintstones. However, with the success of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, MGM felt that possibly there was money to made off of having new Tom and Jerry cartoons. However, MGM wanted to make these new films as cheaply as possible. There was no love of these classic characters in this decision by MGM. Instead, all they saw in the idea was money. An offer to make these films rather cheaply had come from Willaim Synder, who represented Gene Deitch, a talented animator who was living in Prague. Deitch had no illusions about this assignment. He would later state, "The reason Metro did them had nothing to do with bringing Tom and Jerry to life. They simply wanted to cash in on their popularity as cheaply as possible. Any qualities the finished pictures have is strictly the result of the craftmanship of the artists." Though Deitch had previously lived in and worked in the United States, the rest of the animators and filmmakers working on these films due to living in Prague had no familiarity with these characters. They were shown only six of the Hanna and Barbera cartoons in preparation.

Gene Deitch was an odd fit for the cat and mouse duo. He was not a product of the old-fashioned slapstick cartoon school but rather of the more stylized and artistically inclined UPA school. He had begun his film career at UPA as an apprentice. However, by this time his greatest achievements were at the Terry Toons studio. In 1956, he took over as creative director of this studio. Not a fan of the previous Terry Toons shorts, he retired the studios characters such as Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle. He would redefine the Terry Toons studio into something quite different. These films would abandon much of their previous rough house slapstick and reliance on typical cartoon formulas. The new shorts of the studio would on a new stylized look reflecting the modern art of the 1950's. The films' humor would now become much more satiric and occasionally even cerebral.

You might be wondering how this Amercian filmmaker found himself in Prague. This came about because of the aforementioned Willaim Synder, whom Deitch referred to as “a man who could talk anybody into anything.” Synder had wanted to create an animation studio communist Czechoslovakia (in the midst of the Cold War yet). This idea was simply because he could pay them much less than Amercian animators. All he needed was to have an American to direct these films. This ended up being Gene Deitch who moved to Prague to take the job. With this group of Czech animators, Deitch had already had some success before these Tom and Jerry films. They had made the brilliant Oscar winning short, Murno (1960). 

When Synder had given Deitch and the Czech animators, the assignment for making Tom and Jerry cartoons, it was hardly an assignment they relished. A student of the UPA school of making animation, Deitch was hardly what one would call a fan of Tom and Jerry. He referred to the Hanna and Barbera films as " senselessly violent, and downright racist." Though he admitted, "But as gross as many of the Hannah Barberra [sic] cartoons were, the outrageous pain the Tom and Jerry characters inflicted on each other did make me laugh out loud."  Still, he felt an obligation to try and capture the feel of the Hanna and Barbera shorts as well as he could. He would state, "Being assigned to recreate Tom & Jerry, I knew that I had a tough act to follow. I resolved to make them look as much like the late period Hanna Barberra [sic] originals as I possibly could. H&B themselves had of course altered the models and animation style as they went along. I tried to continue the look of their later series., using the final MGM model sheets as my starting point. I was determined that audiences would accept my recreations as really being Tom & Jerry! I could not worry what the critics would think. Without question, times had changed, even in 1961. And some aspects of T&J had to change also. I drew the line at the H&B racial gaffs. I immediately retired the black housemaid. I tried for fresh venues in the stories. Fortunately, H&B had also ventured out of the household, with period pieces and exotic locations, so I did have some wiggle-room in stories." The comments about the black maid come as strange as the character he is referring to had not appeared in a Tom and Jerry cartoon since, Push Button Kitty (1952). 

Making the films proved to be difficult as the Czech animators had a hard time getting used to working on these cartoons. At the studio Deitch referred to himself as “the only one present who could draw American-style cartoon characters.” Because of this he ended up doing most of the key animation himself. At the same time, he admitted, "Not only had no one in the Prague animation studio ever even seen a Tom & Jerry cartoon, but I had never tried to draw the characters! They were out of my way of drawing." Meanwhile at the height of the Cold War, even as they were releasing these films, MGM kept being uneasy with the idea of the cartoons being made in a communist country. Because of this in the credits for these films, the names of the animators were often Americanized. For instance, Štěpán Koníček became Steven Konichek. 

In this, the first of Gene Deitch's Tom and Jerry films, Jerry is living in the castle of a mad scientist, who is working on experiments where he exchanges brains between various animals. Tom comes into the castle to get out of the rain, but he has trouble with a cat who thinks he is a dog. 

It is rare that I have ever tried so desperately to like films but failed as I have with Gene Deitch's Tom and Jerry shorts. I am a fan of much of Gene Deitch's work and consider his work at Terry Toons nothing short of brilliant. My love of the director's other work has made me want to reevaluate his Tom and Jerry films, but no matter how hard I have tried, I find them terrible. The reason is not because of the story or the gags but because of the execution. 

This is perfectly on display in this first short film. The story line is an original one for Tom and Jerry and some of the gags are clever. Yet these ideas are executed terribly. The timing is incredibly off. While the timing on the Hanna and Barbera shorts was so perfect that it made typical cartoon gags seem better, here the lack of comedic timing makes gags that should have been funny fall flat. The animation doesn't help much in this respect either. The characters are too rubbery for the violent gags to have any real weight and because of this they are simply not funny.

Helping even less is the sound effects, which are very poorly recorded and often ill-fitting. Sound effects can add a lot to slapstick comedy (just watch any Three Stooges film with the sound off and see the difference). However here instead of enhancing the comedy, the sound effects detract from it. About the sound effects Deitch would state, "I often tell film students and others that I have always considered the soundtracks as at least 50% of the movies. Obviously, there was no digital recording anywhere in those days, but here it was dreadful, working with Soviet equipment! They used sprocketed 55mm East German coated sound film. What I couldn’t tell anybody at the time is that I brought my own Ampex 1/4” tape recorder into the studio, and recorded the orchestras myself, with little more than a volume control and only two microphones, all my own property! The engineers here thought I was crazy, but I got brighter results than they did. (They had only one-channel mono recording. I recorded all the tracks in stereo. Stereo did not exist here at all in 1961! I also created all the sound effects at home, except the sounds Tod Dockstader made, and sent me on quarter-inch tape!" 

Gene Deitch may have been a very talented filmmaker, who made some truly great films. However, in my mind his Tom and Jerry cartoons remain the nadir of his work. He simply was unable to overcome the insurmountable odd against him in this case.  

One of Deitch's greatest supporters in making these films was MGM executive Joe Vogel, who liked Deitch's work on these films and was impressed by how he could make them for such a low budget. Deitch and Vogel however disagreed on the title of this film. Deitch would recall, "The one and only issue I had with Joe Vogel was the title of our pilot episode. Over my bruised body, it went out with the totally idiotic title, Switchin’ Kitten. My original title was “Dog My Cats”. As the story centered on a mad scientist turning cats into dogs, I thought my title was funny and apt. Besides being a play on words, it was actually about the story! But the mighty Metro moguls simply didn’t get it."

The credited animators on this film were Lu Guarnier, Gary Mooney and Wáclaw Bedřicz. Gene Deitch and Eli Bauer received story credit on the cartoon. Eli Bauer was a former Terry Toons writer who had worked on some of the Terry Toons made when Deitch was in charge. He also worked as a cartoonist and various of his panel cartoons had appeared in Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, Playboy, Penthouse, and Punch. This marked the 115th Tom and Jerry cartoon. It is available on the DVD sets Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5, Tom and Jerry's Magical Misadventures and Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection. It also is available on the VHS set, Tom and Jerry in Matinee Mouse for which the cover art would be based off this film.

In this cartoon Jerry would roar like the MGM loin at the end. Tom would take the place of the MGM loin in openings during the Chuck Jones era. The gag of Jerry tying Tom's whiskers into a bow was previous done in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse (1947). 

Resources Used

Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/animating-tom-and-jerry-behind-the

https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/tom-jerry-the-gene-deitch-collection/

https://tomandjerry.fandom.com/wiki/Switchin%27_Kitten

   

Tot Watchers (1958)

 

This short film marks the final theatrical Tom and Jerry cartoon to be directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. As such it represents the end of an era for our favorite cat and mouse but a start to a brand-new era for Bill and Joe. In his autobiography Barbera remembered, "... the bad news had not come to Bill and me, who were running the studio, but to the business manager. A phone rang, a bookkeeper answered, and the message was 'Close the studio! Lay everybody off!' We built what by rights should have been an impregnable fortress, an unassailable monument to success. But Arthur Loew, Sr., heeded the advice of his financial people, who told him that the old Tom and Jerry cartoons could be rereleased at will, and each would bring in 90 percent of the revenue that a brand-new cartoon will produce - without having to spend the thirty thousand, forty-five thousand, even sixty thousand each new cartoon cost the studio." William Hanna remembered, "We were working on the last year of a five-year contract, and as we went into our last year, they said they were closing it down. We stayed on to supervise, the completion of the work that was in there - the animation. the backgrounds, the whatever it was, during that year. We were on the payroll there for a year, knowing that at the end of that year, if we did not do something more with MGM, we would be on our own." In an interview with Animation Historian Jerry Beck, Bill expanded on this stating, "No. No notice at all.  They just said they were discontinuing production.  Fortunately, we had started enough cartoons that it was going to take us at least six months to finish those.  We had six months to decide what we wanted to do, which was a real blessing." He expanded even further stating, "We immediately began to plan: What could we do? What kind of characters? How were we going to do it?  We both knew that it was a pretty bad scene for animators out there, and we’d been successful doing Tom & Jerry.  We felt we should do our own thing, start our own company, from the day they said ‘Closed.’  We had a plan in place by the time we got our last MGM paycheck." Of course, the next course of action would be to work in TV animation. They would create their own studio, Hanna-Barbera, which would go on to become the most important American animation studio of the late 1950's, 60's and 70's. This studio would bring us such beloved characters as The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, The Jetsons and Quick Draw McGraw. So, what at first seemed like a major setback turned into one of the best things that could have ever happened to the creators of the cat and mouse. Bill and Joe had tried to talk MGM into letting them make TV cartoons before this happened, but MGM felt there was no future in cartoons for TV. 

In this short film, Tom and Jerry are fighting as usual. However, when Jeannie the baby-sitter doesn't notice the baby wandering off, Tom and Jerry put aside their differences to help keep the baby safe. This proves to be difficult when the baby wanders on to a construction site. 

Tot Watchers is a perfectly fine cartoon, but as a finale to the Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry shorts it is a little disappointing. Tom and Jerry are very likable here and the character animation is often excellent. Even if the story is very reminiscent of Busy Buddies (1956), it is still a delightful departure from the typical Tom and Jerry formula. The construction site setting and the fun ending help it not simply feel like a retread of Busy Buddies. The background artwork may be sparser than one would see in the 1940's shorts, but there is a fun stylized to this film.  What keeps this from being one of the best Tom and Jerry cartoons is that while some of the gags are fun, none of them are laugh out loud funny. I chuckled and smiled a few times watching this, but I still wished for something funnier to mark the end of this era. Like most of the shorts from the mid to late 1950's this cartoon is more charming than actually funny. 

Production Drawing

Other than just being the final theatrical Tom and Jerry short to be directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, this film also marked other lasts for the series. It was the last short to be released in CinemaScope. This was the last appearance of Tom's owner Joan (her husband George does not appear) as well as her baby. It would also be the last theatrical short to feature Spike the Bulldog, whose role here is reduced to a non-speaking cameo (with the exception of reused footage in the cheater cartoon Matinee Mouse (1966)). The Tom and Jerry Wiki refers to the dog in Rock 'n' Rodent (1967) as Spike, but that dog hardly resembles the character we know, and love and I don't think the filmmakers ever thought of this as the same dog.  

Rock 'n' Rodent, does this look like Spike to you?

In the Animaniacs episode, Cat on a Hot Steel Beam (1993), Buttons the dog is trying to keep baby Mindy safe when she finds herself on a construction site. There is a quick gag where caricatures of Tom and Jerry (as well as Popeye and Sweet Pea) are also seen trying to protect a baby. This is obviously a reference to this cartoon. 

Tom and Jerry's "Cameo" in Animaniacs

Tom and Jerry would later have more traditional chases taking place on a construction site in Pent-House Mouse (1963) and Bad Day at Cat Work (1955).


The credited animators on this short are Kenneth Muse, Lewis Marshall and James Escalante. The credited background artist is Robert Gentle. Robert Gentle would not only work with William Hanna and Joseph Barbera on these theatrical shorts but also many of the Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons. He worked on such Hanna-Barbera shows as The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Yogi Bear Show, Quick Draw McGraw, Top Cat, The Flintstones, Wacky Races, Scooby-Doo Where Are You, Super Friends and many more. The credited layout artist is Richard Bickenbach. Richard Bickenbach not only worked on William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's Tom and Jerry shorts but also on their later TV work. He would work on such Hanna-Barbera TV series as Quick Draw McGraw, The Huckleberry Hound Show, Top Cat, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo Where Are You and many more. He would also work on the Hanna-Barbera feature films, The Man Called Flintstone (1966) and Charolette's Web (1973) as well as the Loopy the Loop theatrical shorts. You can see some of his background art for the Hanna-Barbera TV shows here. The credited writer on this film was Homer Brightman, the only person to receive a writing credit on a Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry short. Brightman’s name however can be seen on many Walter Lantz shorts as well as some Disney films of the 1940’s. 

This film is avilable on the DVD sets, Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5, Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection, Vol. 2, Tom & Jerry's Greatest Chases Vol. 5, Tom and Jerry: In the Dog House and Tom and Jerry: Pint-Sized Pals. It is also avilable on the Laserdisc set, The Art of Tom & Jerry: Volume II and the recent Blu-ray set Tom and Jerry: The Complete CinemaScope Collection. 

Though this was the end of the Hanna and Barbera shorts, it was not the last theatrical short film for the cat and mouse as you will see next week on this blog. 

Resources Used

Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin

Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in its Golden Age by Michael Barrier
My Life in Toons: From Flatbush to Bedrock in Less Than a Century by Joseph Barbera 

https://tomandjerry.fandom.com/wiki/Tot_Watchers

https://www.simbasible.com/tom-and-jerry-review-70/

https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/my-conversation-with-hanna-and-barbera/