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
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://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/animating-tom-and-jerry-behind-the
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/tom-jerry-the-gene-deitch-collection/
Would you place the Popeye cartoons Deitch and Snyder were putting out at the same time above their Tom and Jerrys? The artwork may be a draw (no pun intended), but at least the Popeyes had better stories.
ReplyDeleteWhile neither his Popeye or Tom and Jerry cartoons show Deitch to his best advantage, I do feel his Popeye cartoons are the better of the two. The art problems aren't as much of a hinderance in cartoons with dialogue as they are in pantomime shorts like these.
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