Director: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera Release Date: October 6, 1951 Stars: Tom & Jerry, Mammy Two-Shoes
Rating: ★★★½ Review:
When Mammy hits Tom on his head with a broom, he looses his mind and thinks he’s a mouse. This to great annoyance of Jerry, because Tom eats all his cheese and wrecks his bed.
‘Nit Witty Kitty’ is a well-told cartoon, if a little bit slow and low on gags. Highlight of the cartoon are Jerry’s attempts to deliver Tom a “sharp blow on the head”.
Watch ‘Nit-witty Kitty’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Directors:William Hanna & Joseph Barbera Release Date: September 8,1951 Stars: Tom & Jerry, Spike & Tyke Rating: ★★★ Review:
While chasing Jerry Tom makes Tyke dirty.
Spike threatens Tom he’ll tear him limb for limb, when he makes Tyke dirty again. So Tom does his best to keep Tyke clean. To no avail, because, as expected, Jerry takes advantage of the situation. ‘Slicked-up Pup’ is based on a routine that goes all the way back to Tom & Jerry’s very first film (‘Puss gets the Boot‘ from 1940). Unfortunately, it has all been done before, even with cleaning (‘Mouse Cleaning‘ from 1948), and with Spike & Tyke (‘Love That Pup‘ from 1949). The result is less amusing than any of the previous films. The best gag may be when Tom pretends Tyke to be a chicken.
Watch ‘Slicked-up Pup’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera Release Date: July 7, 1951 Stars: Tom & Jerry
Rating: ★★ Review:
Somehow Tom is shipwrecked. He’s washed ashore a tropical island where he meets a Crusoe-like Jerry, whom he wants to eat.
In what must be the film’s highlight Jerry fools him by pretending to be a cannibalistic native, but in the end both characters have to flee for real cannibals, the first human beings we see in their entirety in a Tom & Jerry film
‘His Mouse Friday’ must be one of the least inspired Tom & Jerry cartoons ever. Not only are the two completely out of place on the tropical island, the comedy feels tired, the humor is offensive, and the designs of our heroes mediocre. Tom’s designs in the opening scene are particularly sloppy. It seems that these designs inspired the Gene Deitch cartoons, because they look remarkably similar, which is no advertisement.
Unfortunately, ‘His Mouse Friday’ is no isolated incident. From mid-1951 on, we see the quality of the series gradually deteriorate: character designs get simpler and sloppier, backgrounds less lush, and stories more routine or uninspired. There were still some great Tom & Jerry cartoons to come, and even two Oscar winners, but one nonetheless gets the impression that by mid-1951 their heyday was over.
Watch ‘His Mouse Friday’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 59
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Sleepy Time Tom
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: Slicked-up Pup
Director: Chuck Jones Release Date: January 3, 1953 Stars: Sam Sheepdog & Ralph Wolf
Rating: ★★★★★ Review:
‘Don’t Give up the Sheep’ is the first cartoon in a series of seven cartoons featuring the excellent duo Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf.
In their first entry Sam Sheepdog is called Ralph, while Ralph remains yet unnamed. Sam goes to work, relieving his colleague Fred in attending the sheep. He has to counter the attacks by Ralph the wolf, who looks like Wile E. Coyote’s scruffy cousin. The cartoon is full of excellent, Road Runner-like blackout cartoons. In his silliest attempt the wolf dresses up as the God Pan to lull the sheepdog to sleep. To no avail, of course.
In this cartoon the backgrounds (by Carlos Manriquez) are becoming more stylized, although they still look like real nature. Sam and Ralph would never become major characters, but their miniseries is a little delight within the Warner Brothers canon.
Watch ‘Don’t Give up the Sheep’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Chuck Jones Release Date: February 2, 1952 Stars: Marc Anthony
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕ Review:
Among all the masterpieces of animation, this must be the most inconspicuous one: it’s a seemingly classical dog and cat story, involving quite some dull dialogue (provided by the dog’s mistress, of whom we only see her legs), and its looks are quite traditional, with unremarkable layouts and backgrounds.
Nevertheless, ‘Feed The Kitty’ is a real masterpiece, and its reputation is entirely due to the acting of its main character, the gentle bulldog Marc Anthony. His facial expressions are so wide ranging, so extreme and so heartfelt that ‘Feed the Kitty’ can almost be regarded as a study in depiction of emotion. Silent acting really reaches its peak here, and director Chuck Jones is without doubt at his all time best in this sweet little cartoon.
In ‘Feed the Kitty’ Marc Anthony adopts a sweet little kitten, but he’s not allowed to bring anything into the house. This leads to various gags with the dog trying to hide the little kitten from his mistress. However, the highlight of the cartoon is the sequence in which Marc Anthony thinks his darling pet is dead. His emotions are both hilarious and heartbreaking. Never before has the anxiety of having lost a dearly beloved been so convincingly put to the animated screen. At this point I often can’t keep my tears from running.
Indeed, this sequence is so popular among animators that it was almost exactly copied in ‘Monsters, Inc.‘ (2001) as a homage to the original. I’d say, if cartoons were shown at funerals (and why not?), ‘Feed the Kitty’ would be a perfect candidate.
Watch ‘Feed the Kitty’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Wilfred Jackson Release Date: August 8, 1952 Rating: ★★★½ Review:
Half a year after ‘Lambert the Sheepish Lion‘, voice actor Sterling Holloway returns as a narrator for a Disney cartoon.
Here he tells the story of a little house on a hill in the country side who is soon surrounded by the city and forgotten. The house’s first neighbors are arrogant and aristocratic wooden houses, which soon burn down. The second neighbors are sloppy brick houses, which are pulled down in the end. Her third neighbors are enormous skyscrapers. When the little house thinks she’s finished, she’s moved to start anew on the countryside.
This sweet little story is based on a children’s book from 1942 by Virginia Lee Burton and uses a slightly different design to remain faithful to her original illustrations. Like ‘Lambert the Sheepish Lion’, the story is very sweet, not funny. Its main attraction are the humanized houses, excavators and such.
However, the story is well-told, thanks to story man Bill Peet. It contains heart and has a strong sense of nostalgia. In fact, conservative nostalgia has rarely been put more convincingly to the screen. The film is strongly anti-urban and anti-progress, and full of longing to the peace and quiet of a bygone era. Its message is expressed at the end of the cartoon, when Holloway tells us that “the best place to find peace and happiness is in a little house on a little hill way up in the country”.
Watch ‘The Little House’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Little House’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities’
Director: Jack Hannah Release Date: February 8, 1952 Rating: ★★½ Review:
Disney’s favorite voice, Sterling Holloway, returns for the first time since ‘Peter and the Wolf’ (‘Make Mine Music’, 1946), to lend his voice to a child-delivering stork like he did in ‘Dombo’ (1942).
Holloway tells the story of Lambert, a lion cub who’s accidentally delivered to a mother sheep. Because he’s different, he’s bullied by the other lambs, and he grows into a cowardly lion, until he rescues his mother from the clutches of an evil wolf.
Like the similar ‘Morris, the Midget Moose‘ from two years earlier, the story of ‘Lambert, the Sheepish Lion’ is slow, sickeningly sweet and terribly unfunny. What Lambert eats during his stay among the sheep remains a puzzling mystery. The cartoon’s only delight are the facial expressions on the adult Lambert.
Watch ‘Lambert, the Sheepish Lion’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Lambert, the Sheepish Lion’ is available on the DVDs ‘Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities’ and ‘Melody Time’
Director: Jack Hannah Release Date: November 24, 1950 Stars: Bootle Beetle Rating: ★★ Review:
‘Morris, the Midget Moose’ starts with an eldery bootle beetle who tells two young bootle beetles the short’s story.
The beetle tells us about Morris, a very small moose with normal antlers who befriends Balsam, a moose with small antlers. They’re both outcasts, but together they defeat the reigning moose, the invincible Thunderclap.
This moralistic story is very sweet, but also slow and boring. It reuses a gag from ‘Moose Hunters’ (1937) of moose throwing each other on the ground, affecting the complete landscape, but the gag is executed less elaborately, and with less funny results.
‘Morris, the Midget Moose’ was the only cartoon featuring Bootle Beetle outside Jack Hannah’s Donald Duck series. It was also the little insect’s last appearance on the movie screen.
Watch ‘Morris, the Midget Moose’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Morris, the Midget Moose’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities’
Director: Jack Kinney Release Date: March 3, 1950 Rating: ★★ Review:
After the Walt Disney studios quit its package features, it started to release ‘specials’ again, one-shot cartoons featuring no recurring character.
These specials were essentially the successors of the Silly Symphonies, and a few were made during World War II. However, most of them were made in the fifties, if not necessarily to advance animation, then certainly to keep animators busy between feature films. Unfortunately, almost none of these shorts match the inventiveness of the Silly Symphonies or were really successful (the Academy Award winning ‘Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom’ (1953) is the prime exception).
For example, ‘The Brave engineer’, the first special from the fifties, looks like it has been a left-over from the compilation feature ‘Melody Time‘ (1948). Like this feature’s sequences ‘The Legend of Johnny Appleseed‘ and ‘Pecos Bill‘, it’s a half sung and half narrated tall-tale based on a poem about a legendary American hero from the 19th century.
This time comedian Jerry Colonna sings and tells the story of Casey Jones, a train engineer, a character who really existed. In the cartoon Casey desperately tries to deliver the western mail on time. On the way he encounters all the cliches featured in westerns involving trains: a damsel on the rails, train robbers and a villain who blows up a bridge. The ride ends in a clash with another train. Unlike the real Casey Jones, who died in the crash, the cartoon Casey survives and delivers the mail on time, almost…
Despite the relatively fast pace and many corny gags, the story never really takes off. The viewer somehow never gets involved in the story and remains uninterested to the end.
Watch ‘The Brave Engineer’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Brave Engineer’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities’
Director: Chuck Jones Release Date: March 10, 1951 Stars: Bugs Bunny, The Crusher Rating: ★★ Review:
Three years after ‘Rabbit Punch‘ (1948) Bugs Bunny faces the Crusher again.
This time Bugs is the mascot of ‘Ravishing Ronald’, a gay looking ballet dancer type of character with a hair net. This guy challenges the Crusher in a wrestling match, but is clobbered immediately.
In order not to lose his job Bugs Bunny challenges the Crusher, too, as the ‘masked terror’. Of course, he wins the game, by strategy in a rather boring and uninspired cartoon, especially when compared to the delightful ‘Rabbit Punch’. The best gags are in the beginning: the Crusher showing his enormous excess of muscles and the extravagant entry of Ravishing Ronald.
Watch ‘Bunny Hugged’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Sylvester is down in the dumps and hungry, foraging a harbor, when he discovers Tweety on a ship.
He climbs aboard, and what follows are several gags involving glasses and sea sickness. The best gag is when Sylvester paints Tweety on Granny’s glasses. Most of the other gags, however, are mediocre, and feel routinized. For example, Tweety reuses a sea sickness gag from Tex Avery’s ‘The Screwball Squirrel’ (1944), but much less well executed.
Watch ‘Tweety’s S.O.S.’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Robert McKimson Release Date:May 5, 1951
Rating: ★★★½ Review:
‘Early to Bet’ introduces the ‘gambling bug’, a bug that makes people want to gamble.
The little insect infects a cat who then starts to play gin rummy for penalties with an over-confident bulldog. The bulldog wins several times, and the cat has to pay the elaborate and rather zany, yet painful penalties. In the end, however, he plays against the bug, and wins, making the bug pay a penalty.
Apart from the original and pretty funny penalties, this is a mediocre cartoon, which lacks stars or even appealing characters.
Watch ‘Early to Bet’ yourself and tell me what you think:
It’s winter and Tweety is troubled by two cats (Sylvester and a red cat with a bad eye), who fight over him. Most of the comedy derives from the feud between the two, and only in the end Tweety himself comes into action, making the two cats fall into an icy pond.
With ‘Putty Tat Trouble’ Freleng returns to Tweety’s first solo films, Bob Clampett’s ‘A Tale of Two Kitties’ (1942) and ‘A Gruesome Twosome‘ (1945), in which also two cats fought for the little bird. Freleng’s humor is different from Bob Clampett’s, but once again, the feud works very well. Apart from Tweety’s talking, all the comedy is silent and brilliantly executed, too. This makes ‘Putty Tat Trouble’ one of the better Tweety and Sylvester cartoons.
In one scene we can see a Friz Freleng portrait in the background.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Putty Tat Trouble’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Putty Tat Trouble’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
In this cartoon Sylvester is the cat of a couple, who go on a holiday to California for two weeks, leaving Sylvester behind and locked indoors.
Sylvester runs into agony when he discovers this, until he finds a kitchen-cupboard full of tins of fish. Unfortunately, a mouse has the can opener. This leads to perfectly timed blackout gags, in which Sylvester makes several attempts to get the can opener. When he finally succeeds, he discovers that the particular cupboard is locked, while the mouse has the key.
Due to its cat-and-mouse-routine ‘Canned Feud’ has similarities to the Tom & Jerry cartoons, although it has a distinct Friz Freleng style. Unlike Jerry, the mouse is completely blank, and its motives remain unclear, but Freleng’s comedy works nonetheless. In fact, this film is better than most contemporary Tweety and Sylvester cartoons.
Watch ‘Canned Feud’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Robert McKimson Release Date: December 12, 1951 Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★ Review:
Five years after his first Bugs Bunny cartoon, ‘Acrobatty Bunny‘ (1946), McKimson returns to the circus setting.
This time Bugs is the new acrobat partner of an egotistical star acrobat bear called Bruno. This “Slobokian bear” is not a good sport and tries to get rid of Bugs, but of course, the reverse happens.
‘Big Top Bunny’ is better than ‘Acrobatty Bunny’, but it still suffers: it’s worn down by the high amount of rather unfunny dialogue and its slow pace. Nevertheless, the cartoon builds up nicely, and its best gags come in last: first there’s a great cycling gag, then there’s a superb gag in which Bugs and Bruno compete in the most daring high diving act. This is quickly followed by the frantic finale in which Bugs disposes of the bear once and for all.
Watch ‘Big Top Bunny’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Friz Freleng Release Date: October 6, 1951 Stars: Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam
Rating: ★★★★½ Review:
Sam is running for mayor. One of his election promises is “to rip the country of every last rabbit”. This prompts Bugs to fight Sam with his own weapons, running for mayor, too.
Their election campaigns are far from fair and lead to a string of blackout gags. At one point we watch Bugs imitating Theodore Roosevelt, and there’s a great ant gag, which is accompanied by ridiculously sounding sped-up classical music. But the short’s highlight may be the piano gag, in which Bugs has to play a tune to ignite a bomb. However, Bugs repeatedly plays the wrong note, so Sam plays it for him… In the end of the cartoon the two rivals discover that the citizens have elected a “mare”. This prompts them into playing Russian roulette…
‘Ballot Box Bunny’ is an inspired and funny cartoon, even if it does not belong to either Bugs’s or Freleng’s greatest.
Watch ‘Ballot Box Bunny’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Directors:William Hanna & Joseph Barbera Release Date: May 26,1951 Stars: Tom & Jerry, Mammy Two-Shoes, Meathead Rating: ★★★★★ ♕ Review:
Tom has been hanging out all night with three other cats.
He comes home early in the morning, only to meet a very angry Mammy. The same night Jerry has plundered the kitchen, so Mammy orders Tom to stay awake to chase the mouse away. Not an easy task for the exhausted Tom. Especially when Jerry repeatedly makes him fall asleep. In the end Tom is thrown out, only to be picked up again by his friends for another long night out…
‘Sleepy Time Tom’ is a hilarious cartoon with great gags and wonderful animation involving Tom’s feeble attempts to stay awake. Together with ‘Daffy Duck Slept Here‘ from 1948, its’arguably the funniest cartoon about sleep ever, outdoing other great cartoons like the Woody Woodpecker cartoon ‘Coo-Coo Bird‘ (1947), the Donald Duck shorts ‘Early to Bed‘ (1941), ‘Fall out-Fall in’ (1944), ‘Sleepy Time Donald’ (1947), and ‘Drip Dippy Donald’ (1948), or the similar Pluto short ‘Cat Nap Pluto‘ (1948).
One may indeed consider ‘Sleepy Time Tom’ to be the last of the classic Tom & Jerry cartoons. Although other funny Tom & Jerry shorts would be made in the years to come, the average quality of the designs, animation and stories would only diminish during the rest of the fifties.
Watch ‘Sleepy Time Tom’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 58
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Jerry’s Cousin
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: His Mouse Friday
Directors:William Hanna & Joseph Barbera Release Date: April 7, 1951 Stars: Tom & Jerry Rating: ★★★★★ ♕ Review:
In the great opening shot of ‘Jerry’s Cousin’ we see multiple cats being clobbered by what turns out to be a very muscular mouse.
This mouse happens to be Jerry’s cousin. He receives a letter in which Jerry asks ‘cousin muscles’ for help, having ‘serious trouble with Tom’. Muscles takes care of Tom alright, but only after he defeats the three ‘Dirty Job’ cats Tom called in, Tom surrenders. In the future, Jerry will be safe. His surprised smile at the end of the cartoon is priceless.
‘Jerry’s Cousin’ is one of the Tom & Jerry classics. It’s a great gag cartoon, its storytelling and timing are both perfect, and it makes clever use of the invincibility theme.
Watch ‘Jerry’s Cousin’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Directors:William Hanna & Joseph Barbera Release Date: March 3, 1951 Stars: Tom & Jerry Rating: ★★★★★ Review:
Tom’s listening to the radio where a french cook is telling about a fish recipe. Tom immediately tries to cook the goldfish in various ways, but Jerry, who’s the goldfish’s friend, rescues him again and again.
Unlike most Jerry-and-a-friend cartoons, ‘Jerry and the Goldfish’ is not cute, but fast and funny, with great gags coming in plenty, many of which involving deformations of Tom’s body. This makes ‘Jerry and the Goldfish’ easily one of the best Tom & Jerry cartoons using this theme. In 1966 Abe Levitow used the same story theme in the late Tom & Jerry cartoon ‘Fillet Meow‘, unfortunately with appalling results.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Jerry and the Goldfish’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 56
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Casanova Cat
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: Jerry’s Cousin
Directors:William Hanna & Joseph Barbera Release Date: January 6, 1951 Stars: Tom & Jerry, Meathead, Toodles Rating: ★★★★★ Review:
In ‘Casanova Cat’ Tom is visitingToodles, who has inherited a million dollars and who now lives in a classy apartment downtown.
Tom brings Jerry along as a present, who is forced to dance with a blackface on a hot plate, a scene which is probably censored on many copies. The annoyed Jerry invites alley cat Meathead, too, and a feud starts between the two rivaling cats. However, in the end it’s Jerry who’s the lucky one, driving off with Toodles into the distance and kissing her.
‘Casanova Cat’ doesn’t cover any new grounds, but it combines the themes of earlier romance cartoons ‘Puss ‘n’ Toots’ (1942) and ‘Springtime for Thomas’ (1946) with great and remarkably fresh results.
Watch ‘Casanova Cat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
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When Mammy hits Tom on his head with a broom, he looses his mind and thinks he’s a mouse. This to great annoyance of Jerry, because Tom eats all his cheese and wrecks his bed.
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 