Sorry Safari (1962)

 

Sorry Safari marked the 11th out of 13 Tom and Jerry films directed by Gene Deitch and the 125th Tom and Jerry short overall. 

In this short film, Tom's owner (who is not Clint Clobber) takes Tom along with him on a hunting trip in Nairobi. However, Jerry sneaks along in the luggage and causes lots of trouble that Tom is blamed for. When a loin and an elephant get involved, our friends find themselves in quite a bit of danger. 

This is a very weak short. It starts with a decent little gag, admittedly one that is more charming than funny, with a regular lion roaring in the jungle rather than Leo the MGM lion. However, after this the rest of the cartoon is very lackluster. Despite taking Tom and Jerry into a new environment, this cartoon does nothing special with this new setting. The gags are all very typical chase cartoon gags and not especially funny ones at that. What hurts these gags the most though is that they come off as meanspirited thanks to Tom's owner. Why this guy owns a cat is beyond me as he seems to hate Tom with a passion. While we are always supposed to feel a certain sympathy towards Tom, we are never supposed to feel this uncomfortable when he is the brunt of slapstick gags. However, with how overly cruel and violent his own owner is with him the slapstick gags come off as simply unpleasant to watch. This cartoon is also hurt by the same flaws that are found in all these Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry shorts. The sound effects are rather annoying and often distract from the gags instead of adding to them. There are some rather poor drawings of Tom and Jerry (but especially Tom). The designs of various jungle animals would feel at home in a European art film but feel at odds in a short of all American slapstick. 

Credit where credit is due, the background art is quite pleasing, and the musical score is better than in other Tom and Jerry shorts of this era. 

The credited writer on this film is Larz Bourne. Štěpán Koníczek receives a music credit. Wáclaw Bedřicz is credited as animation director. Luckily this marked the last appearance of Tom's constantly angry owner who only appeared in these Gene Deitch cartoons. This film is available on the DVD sets, Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5 and Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection. 

Box Office, 1962

-Michael J. Ruhland

Tall in the Trap (1962)

 

Tall in the Trap marks the only Tom and Jerry cartoon to be written by Tedd Pierce. Though he wrote cartoons for other studios, Tedd Pierce is best known for his work at Warner Brothers where he was a writer on some truly great Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts. As well as writing for these shorts, Pierce also provided voices. He voiced Bertie in some of the Hubie and Bertie cartoons and Babbit in Babbitt and Catstello, Looney Tunes' version of the comedy team Abbott and Costello (who first appeared as cats and then later as mice). 

In this short film, Jerry is a cheese bandit in a western town. Sheriff Mutt Dillin (a play on Matt Dillon on the popular TV western Gunsmoke) hires Tom, "Fastest Trap in the West" to stop Jerry. Tom naturally finds this a much harder job than he anticipated. 

In all these Gene Deitch directed Tom and Jerry cartoons, the European visual style seems at odds with the essentially Amercian slapstick of Tom and Jerry. Never is that more evident than in this short. With a writer well versed in American cartoon slapstick, this film is full of great slapstick gags. However, these gags don't mesh well with the art style and therefore are never as funny as they ought to be. The European art style and feel here also seem at odds with the very American western setting. Once again, I must complain about the sound effects which often come off as distracting and annoying. However, I very much enjoyed the musical score here. Having much of it being played on guitar and featuring old cowboy song helped make it stand out.   

This is the 10th of 13 Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Gene Deitch and the 124th Tom and Jerry short all together. Wáclaw Bedřicz receives credit as "Animation Director." Štěpán Koníczek and George Jirmal receive credit for the music. This short film is available on the DVD sets, Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5 and Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection. 

This marks the last Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoon short to feature a western setting. Previous films in the series with a western setting include Texas Tom (1950) and Posse Cat (1954). The duo would later return out west in some of their TV adventures as well as the direct to video movie, Tom and Jerry: Cowboy Up! (2022). 

According to the Tom and Jerry Wiki, "The cartoon's concept was originally written by Warner screenwriter Tedd Pierce and co-writer Bill Danch for a Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies short featuring Speedy Gonzales and Sylvester the Cat, which may explain the presence of the light-switching gag previously used in the Bugs Bunny cartoon The Windblown Hare. It was pitched to director Robert McKimson, but McKimson decided against purchasing it (or, according to some other sources, was not able to purchase it due to the imminent closure of Warner Bros' cartoon studio). Instead, Pierce sold it to Deitch, who was desperately looking for suitable storylines for Tom and Jerry. Ironically, McKimson would later do his own Have Gun – Will Travel parody with the cartoon Feather Finger about three years later, which like the original story for this short, featured Speedy Gonzales (though with Daffy Duck as his opponent instead of Sylvester)." If you can find any other sources confirming this story, please let me know. It is a fascinating story but one should not take what they read on any wiki as automatic truth. 

-Michael J. Ruhland

The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit

 

Though still quite flawed The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit is easily the best of the 13 Tom and Jerry films directed by Gene Deitch. 

In this short film we are given an insight into how to make a Tom and Jerry cartoon ourselves with The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit. A narrator explains to us how to properly use this kit to make our own Tom and Jerry cartoon. 

Unlike his previous Tom and Jerry films, this cartoon plays to Deitch's strengths as a filmmaker to a certain extent. Deitch often excelled at clever satire but was nowhere near as gifted at slapstick, which made him a poor fit for Tom and Jerry. With this cartoon you can see both the strengths and weaknesses of Deitch as a filmmaker. When this cartoon is satirizing the Tom and Jerry formula and the familiar nature of many chase cartoon shorts, it is actually quite good. This is actually the only of Gene Deitch's Tom and Jerry cartoons that ever made me laugh (the narration at the start and finish are especially funny).However when the attention turns to the physical slapstick, it often falls flat. Some of the stylized artwork is very pleasant and the transitions can be pretty clever. However the gags themselves don't even elicit a smile. Instead these slapstick gags feel uninspired, poorly-timed and most of all unfunny. It is strange to say that the slapstick is the weakest part of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but strangely that is the case here. 

This film was submitted for an Academy Award but ended up not being nominated. The other cartoons submitted but not nominated were Abner the Baseball (Paramount, 1961), Catch Meow (Columbia, 1961) (Loopy De Loop cartoon directed by Tom and Jerry creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera), Drum Roll (TerryToons, 1961, Hector Heathcote), Hawaiian Guy (UPA, 1961, Dick Tracy), The Lion and Albert (Contenintal, 1961), Red Riding Hood Magoo (UPA, 1961, Mr. Magoo), Sleeping Beauty (Jay Ward, 1961, Fractured Fairy Tales), Snidely’s Monster (Jay Ward, 1961, Duddley Do-Right) and Tree Spree (Terry Toons, 1961, Sidney the Elephant (a character created by Dietch)). Interestingly Hawaiian Guy, Sleeping Beauty and Snidely's Monster were all original made for TV which is perhaps why they weren't nominated. The films that were nominated were Aquamania (Disney, 1961, Goofy), Beep Prepared (Warner Brothers, 1961, Coyote and Roadrunner), Nelly's Folly (Warner Brothers, 1961),   The Pied Piper of Guadalupe (Warner Brothers, 1961, Slyvester and Speedy Gonzles) and Ersatz (Zegrab, 1961). Amazingly Ersatz was the winner marking the first time this award was won by a non-American film (It came for the country of  Yugoslavia). You can watch the acceptance speech for the winner below. 

The credited writer was Chris Jenkyns. The music is credited to Štěpán Koníczek. Wáclaw Bedřicz is credited as animation director. This film is available on the DVD sets, Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection, Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5 and Tom and Jerry: Paws for a Holiday. It marks the 123rd Tom and Jerry cartoon overall. 

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used

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

https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/cartoons-considered-for-an-academy-award-1961/

https://www.toonopedia.com/sidney.htm

Dicky Moe (1962)

 

Dicky Moe marks the eighth Tom and Jerry film directed by Gene Deitch and 122nd Tom and Jerry cartoon overall. 

In this short film, Tom is shanghaied by a Captain Ahab like sea captain, who has driven the rest of his crew insane with his pursuit of Dicky Moe, the pink whale. On board Tom finds Jerry and the two's fighting makes capturing Dicky Moe even more difficult for the sea captain.

This cartoon is one that is well remembered by many cartoon fans, because of how strange and bizarre it is. However just because it is memorable doesn't mean it is good. It is in fact a very bad cartoon. The sea captain's very stylistic design (which would look more at home in an art house film), and his various mumblings make him feel like he should be in a completely different film than Tom and Jerry. He simply never meshes well with the cat and mouse duo. The sound effects are always one of the worst aspects of the Gene Deitch directed Tom and Jerry shorts. However here it is even worse than in the other cartoons. The noise of the captain's peg leg as he walks is annoying enough to drive a sane man crazy. The other sound effects are as always incredibly ill-fitting and often distract from the action instead of adding to it. Jerry's vocal effects (which are also quite annoying) also feel quite ill-fitting for the character as well. The music is better (at least it is not annoying) but it still doesn't add anything to the action, the way Scott Bradely's music did in the 1940's and 50's shorts.  The gags themselves are somewhat typical Tom and Jerry gags but here they feel rather phoned in. They are quite predictable, and the pacing being off makes it so we can always see what will happen before it happens. 

Eli Bauer and Gene Deitch receive story credit, Štěpán Koníczek gets a music credit and Wáclaw Bedřicz recieves a credit for animation direction. This film is available on the DVD sets, Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection and Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5. References to the film can be seen on the menu screen for the DVD/Blu-Ray set Tom and Jerry: The Deluxe Anniversary Collection, though the cartoon itself is not on that set. 

This cartoon appeared in the Toon in with Me episodes, Bill the Pirate (2021), Fan-Tastic Friday #5 (2021), Fantastic Friday #34 (2022), Ride Along with Bill (2023), Yachts Rock (2024) and Throwback Thursday: 1962 (2025)

This film was inspired by the 1851 Herman Melville novel, Moby Dick. Later this same decade, Tom and Jerry's creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera would create a TV series that was extremely loosely inspired by Moby Dick. This series was Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor, which first aired on September 9, 1967. Each action-packed episode would contain two segments featuring the superhero Mighty Mightor (who bears some resemblance to the Marvel hero Thor) and one featuring Moby Dick. This cartoon reimagines the titular whale as a benevolent character, who helps two kids Tom and Tubb as they face many dangers. The series also featured a seal named Scooby, two years before the name would be more famously used for a cartoon dog. Tom and Tub would later appear in an episode of Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated entitled The Midnight Zone (2012). Moby Dick himself would later appear in the made-for-TV movie Yogi's Ark Lark (1972) and the Jellystone episode, The Sea Monster of Jellystone Cove (2022). 

-Michael J. Ruhland