Tom and Jerry:1941

The slow pace of the Tom and Jerry films continued with "The Midnight Snack". Jerry breaks into the refridgerator in the middle of the night, but Tom is wise to him.


As Jerry makes off with a piece of cheese, Tom constructs an obstacle course before the mouse, complete with a bread staircase and a rolling pin.


Whe Tom's fun with Jerry results in crashing dishes, Mammy runs downstairs to investigate. Tom frames Jerry for the mess and Mammy begs Tom to catch the mouse.


Jerry gets the upper hand by trapping Tom on an ironing board and sending the cat crashing into the fridge. Mammy finds Tom inside, and as Jerry eats his cheese reward, Tom gets an off-screen beating by his owner.


These early films are charming in thier own way, but the best was yet to come, as Tom and Jerry shift things into a higher gear.

Tom and Jerry:1940

As with most characters, Tom and Jerry are not fully formed in thier first appearance. In "Puss Gets the Boot", Jerry is not as rounded and cute as he would become, but more striking is Tom's scruffy, furry appearance, as well as the fact that his name is not Tom yet, but rather Jasper.


So, Tom...I mean, Jasper...is toying with Jerry until a vase is broken. Jasper's owner, Mammy Two-Shoes (who is only ever shown from the waist down, keeping the action from the perspective of the cat and mouse) quickly lets Jasper know that if he breaks one more thing in the house, he will be "O-W-T, Out!"


Jerry realizes that the best way to get rid of Jasper completely is to break something and blame it on the cat. Whenever Jasper gets too close to him, Jerry threatens to drop a glass to the floor. Some well-placed pillows by Jasper quickly ends the threat, until Jerry begins flinging plates down upon the cat, forcing Jasper to catch them and keep them from breaking.



Soon, Jasper has a stack of plates, bottles and glasses piled ceiling-high in his arms. Some final taunting from Jerry, plus a swift kick in the rear, send the entire pile crashing to the floor. Mammy arrives swiftly and drags Jasper out of the house, much to the delight of Jerry.


It is interesting to see how the pace of the Tom and Jerry films starts off rather slowly. Over the years, they would become much more energetic and wild. I think it's safe to say that the arrival of Tex Avery to MGM had something to do with it.

MGM's Tom and Jerry

1940 was quite the year for the birth of many of the greatest cartoon characters. Tom and Jerry's films could be seen as just cat and mouse shenanigans, however, they are so much more.

The animation in most of thier films is fluid, fast-paced and energetic. Wild "takes" fly like crazy and new meaning to the word "pain" is expressed. I hate to use the word violence when talking about cartoons, but if it is ever appropriate to do so, now is the time. I can literally feel Tom's pain in some scenes, and to me, that is the result of the believable work done by Hanna/Barbera's staff. These films are breathtaking to watch, and they are good for lots of laughs as well.

A simple cat and mouse chase? Or rather one of the best cartoon series of all time? I vote for the latter, but I'll let you decide for yourself as we journey through the years with Tom and Jerry.

Tom and Jerry:1933

In "The Magic Mummy", Tom and Jerry are police officers sent on the trail of a mummy that was stolen from a museum. They track down a mysterious figure who goes underground at a graveyard.


The mystery sorcerer brings the mummy back to life and forces it to sing for him. Our heros try to apprehend the villian but get thier skin literally ripped off thier bodies momentarily by the sorcerer's magic and are locked away in the wall.


Tom and Jerry escape and try once more to stop the sorcerer, who is now making the mummy preform in front of a ghoulish skeleton audience.


In the confusion, Jerry grabs the coffin, believing it contains the mummy, but when he returns to the police station, it is revealed that Tom is actually inside.

Tom and Jerry:1932

Piano doctors, Tom and Jerry, are in charge of getting the star's instrument in perfect order for a big performance.


While Jerry deals with interfering mice, Tom literally extracts a sour note from the piano. Jerry whacks the note with a mallet, then kills it by smacking it on the wall before flushing the note down the toilet.


The hefty star of the show crams herself into her outfit, only to collapse during her performance. Tom and Jerry to the rescue.


The duo give the piano a check-up, complete with stethescope and some pulse-taking by Jerry. Tom pulls a key from the piano like a bum tooth.


The star recovers and interrupts Tom and Jerry's party with a performance that literally raises the roof. All in all, a must-see cartoon.

Tom and Jerry:1931

Tom and Jerry climb aboard a train in the Swiss Alps,, but when the train gets tired out from climbing a vertical slope, it's up to a rescue dog to save the day. The dog is surprisingly not a St. Bernard, but it does have the barrel of booze required to get the train up and running again.


The train deserts our heros, who then have a run-in with a goat and a bear. While playing around with the echos in the mountains, Tom's head is knocked off momentarily by his own rebounding voice.


The duo is lured by a piece of swiss cheese into a tavern, where thier musical hijinks please the crowd.


Tom and Jerry swipe a piece of swiss cheese and share it with each other. All seems well, until holes began to form all over thier bodies.


Since the two now look like pieces of cheese themselves, they are chased off by a horde of mice from the tavern. Surrealism, without a doubt.

Van Beuren's Tom and Jerry

Long before a certain cat and mouse blazed across the screen, two humanoid characters named Tom and Jerry were introduced at the Van Beuren studio.

Cartoons in the 1930s tended to be very surreal, and the films of Tom and Jerry were no exception. The short-lived series only lasted 3 years, so the cartoons have slipped out of public consciousness, especially since the character's names are now completely associated with MGM's cat and mouse.

The Tom and Jerry cartoons are a decent representation of the Van Beuren studio and over the next three days, they will be highlighted here.

PD Warehouse:1926

Today's installment of PD Warehouse features none other than Felix the Cat. In "Two Lip Time", Felix chases a mouse aboard a ship. He loses the mouse but gains a nice case of seasickness, resulting in some vomiting out of a porthole.


The ship docks and a dutch girl catches the eye of frisky Felix. He commences wooing her, which seems to be working (oddly enough, seeing as how he is a cat), until it is discovered that the girl has a jealous boyfriend.


Felix dismisses the rival quickly by using a tire pump to inflate the pants of the boy, sending him sailing off with the wind. Felix's singing draws the attention of a man, who flings his clog at the cat, sending our hero out to sea. Of course, Felix conveniantly plucks the exclamation point from above his head to use as an oar for rowing the clog back to shore.


Hunger sets in and Felix tires to get some milk from one of the locals, who will only part with the milk if Felix waters his flowers for him.


Felix accidentally dumps gin into the watering can, resulting in drunken flowers and trees. The dutchman gives chase to Felix, but he is also dismissed by the cat, who uses his tail as a crank on a windmill, blowing his adversary away.

Woody:Conclusion/What's Next

As with all cartoon characters form the golden age, Woody's later films do not have the power to diminish the greatness of the earlier films. The evolution of the woodpecker is a fun one to watch and his character is never easy to pin down within any certain category.

This is not the end for our hero either. Woody was resurrected in a recent television series, is still sometimes used as a sort-of mascot for Universal, and his films have now been released on dvd for new viewers to discover. This last fact is probably the most important to me: Those of us who grew up with and enjoyed these cartoons need to pass them down to the next generation, or else they will slip away into obscurity, where they already dangle precariously.

Enough of my ramblings though....what's next? Well, it's going to be a "Tom and Jerry-a-thon" here at the Factory!
Sure, we all know the cat and mouse team from MGM, but there is also a pair with the same names, from the Van Beuren studio, that pre-date the famous duo. So stay tooned for a look at VB's Tom and Jerry followed by MGM's Tom and Jerry.
But before we get into all of that, it's time to dig around in the PD Warehouse for tomorrow's installment.

Woody:1972

We reach the end of Woody's journey in 1972. In "Chili Con Corny", Woody is travelling through a barren wasteland in his car and comes upon Ms. Meanie's Cafe.


The only item on the menu is the chili, which scalds Woody's mouth, sending him fleeing outside in search of water.


Ms. Meanie accuses Woody of trying to leave without paying the bill and forces him at gunpoint to wash dishes for her to work off his debt.


Woody doesn't come out on top here, for as often as he nearly escapes, the end result is the woodpecker washing dishes with Meanie's gun at his back.


Not much more to say here. Obviously the quality of Woody's films had greatly decreased by this point (argueably before this point), and it was time for our hero to join the group of great cartoon characters from the golden age of animation in retirement.

Woody:1970

Woody is a stowaway aboard a ship. As he tries to score a meal, he blows his cover.


After a chase around the ship, Woody is caught and forced to walk the plank. He swims to a nearby island and finds a castaway, who is tired of eating nothing but coconuts. A woodpecker meal begins to sound appealing.


The castaway gets more coconuts, however this time they are dropped on his head, courtesy of Woody.


Woody is lured into a trap by a false entrance to a burlesque show. As the castaway reaches into the sack to pluck Woody's feathers, our hero hands off the innards of a pillow instead.


Woody talks his way out of being killed by offering the castaway a chicken dinner, which of course is nothing more than a coconut made to look like a chicken.

Woody:1967

Woody could appear anywhere, such as in this Chilly Willy cartoon, "Chilly Chums".
A game hunter who is after the penguin has just ingested laughing gas and begins to incontrollably laugh. The problem is that his laugh is just a bit to familiar to Woody, who appears and punishes him by pecking away the ice beneath him, sending him into the water.

Woody:1964

In a Halloween episode of the Woody Woodpecker Show, Walter Lantz tries to get Woody to blow up balloons for the party, but our hero has nothing but trouble. Lantz sends Woody off in a ghost costume and we transition into the new cartoon "Spook-a-Nanny".


Woody gets more tricks than treats at the party, at the hands (erm...paws...and flippers) of the entire Lantz cast, Chilly Willy, Smedley, Andy Panda, Buzz Buzzard, etc.


Woody meets up with some real ghosts (who just so happen to enjoy playing the woodpecker's theme song) and the spooks crash the party.


When the time comes for the cartoon's title song to be played, Woody takes to the piano for a tune that will stick in your head (even if you don't want it to).


The Woody Woodpecker Show combined the classic cartoons with live segments with Walter Lantz, in which he would give drawing advice or tell the history behind his films and characters.

Woody:1962

Chilly Willy's canine adversary, Smedley, appeared in a few cartoons with Woody, but I think it's safe to say that the combination was never as effective as when the dog and the penguin were paired together.


Woody takes up residence in a telephone pole and it's up to troubleshooter Smedley to evict him.


Woody dupes Smedley into delivering room service to him. Throughout the film, Smedley breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience in his southern drawl. It's one of the traits of the dog that makes him funny, but it really doesn't do much this time.


Eventually Smedley is trapped in the telephone lines and Woody uses the electricity flowing through the dog to light his home within the pole.


As I said when I began, I am missing cartoons of Woody's for the remainder of the 60's but I am sure I can do some padding from here on in. Stay tooned!