The majority of cartoon fans seem thrilled for Tom and Jerry: The Complete CinemaScope Collection, on sale Feb. 11th from Warner Archive Collection, for the simple fact that any classic animation on physical media is worth celebrating. This single disc collects all of the widescreen Tom & Jerry cartoons (and three non-T&J scope titles) released from 1954-58 in their original aspect ratio, an idea so obvious it’s surprising Warners hadn’t already done this years ago.
But there is a small amount of grumbling that’s a little justified. For one, this disc jumps ahead in the series’ available-on-Blu-Ray chronology, as we still don’t have the long-cancelled Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Vol. 2 (way back in 2011) that would’ve collected the remaining Academy ratio 1948-54 titles from the MGM cartoon series in high-definition.
For another, to state the obvious: those earlier cartoons are so much better than these. This disc represents the waning Golden Age of theatrical animation, when the major studios were finding it harder and harder to justify a cartoon department, and that proved to be the case here: MGM decided to close its animation studio in 1957 and these are the final productions of a shorts unit that earned a lot of revenue and unprecedented accolades.
While I have no shortage of love for the 1940s Tom & Jerry cartoons, the series was never a trailblazer, and the trail is well-worn by this point in the 1950s. For the most part, it’s just the regular core of T&J animators going through the motions, and the lack of ideas is getting painfully obvious. The new composition also proves the late Gene Deitch was mostly right in his view that the widescreen aspect ratio makes character acting difficult in animation. Joe Barbera’s penchant for constantly wanting a cute lil’ co-star is in full force here to an irritating degree (lots of Tuffy, Quacker, Tyke, and a nameless ugly baby).
Most of these don’t embrace the “modern” graphic design influence of UPA as an artistic choice the way Tex Avery’s ‘50s cartoons did. Hanna and Barbera’s just look simpler to be cheap. The earliest titles here look no different (save the widescreen) than what they’d been doing for years with their Cartoon 101 layouts and paintings by Dick Bickenbach and Bob Gentle. With each year, the outlines get thicker, Tom loses colors, the backgrounds get simpler… “Appeal” is an aspect blatantly missing here, which is shocking considering this was once the lushest cartoon series of all.
Still, it’s important this disc exists simply for the fact that it presents all of the cartoons in their original 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and even in their original Stereo sound when possible. It was a godsend when the original Art of Tom and Jerry Vol. 2 laserdisc came out thirty years ago and presented letterboxed versions of most of these cartoons. Seeing them in any approximation of their original release was unheard of in those days. And it’s astonishingly uncommon even in today’s world where widescreen televisions and monitors are the norm, since these cartoons still go out cropped in some capacity to MeTV and various streamers. These aren’t the prettiest cartoons, but copies in which half of the composition (being charitable here) is missing should never be used. It’s especially inexcusable today.
These restored transfers were done back in the DVD days, originating some two decades ago. But, as with restorations done for the Looney Tunes Golden Collections, because the standard was so high and they made the very wise decision to do the work in high-definition, they still hold up in the audio/visual department. Additional clean-up and color grading work was also done on these transfers, to WAC’s great credit. WAC also fixed a few long-standing audio glitches that originated from errant sound mixes that removed Tuffy’s singing in Touché, Pussycat! and a car’s sound effects in Blue Cat Blues, so this disc very much has the discerning collector in mind. (To not be entirely sycophantic, the transfers for the three cartoons that were done way back for the very first Tom & Jerry Spotlight Collection DVD, Touché, Pussycat!, The Flying Sorceress, and Blue Cat Blues, do look noticeably weaker than the rest.)
The collection has its share of classics and funny moments, even some with drawings that are highly “meme’ed” in today’s anti-social media world. Scott Bradley remains a consummate professional as ever, always delivering Hollywood epic-worthy scores for cartoons even as insipid as Busy Buddies and Happy Go Ducky. The disc also showcases several bits of cartoon history: the first major character series to be produced exclusively in widescreen, of course; directors Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera taking over as producers after Fred Quimby’s retirement and expanding the screen credits (sometimes as many as six animators are credited) if not the budgets; and most importantly, as noted earlier, these showcase Hanna and Barbera setting up their TV empire with many characters, motifs, and designs that would become H-B TV staples. (They would do better work again, or at least more appealing and charming work, after the leap to TV.)
As per usual for my Cartoon Research reviews, here are my notes. All cartoons were, of course, directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. For history’s sake, I’m also including the cartoons’ in-house production numbers, so you can see the order they were actually started in.
PET PEEVE (Prod. #296)
Unusually, Tom is in competition with Spike to catch Jerry in order to justify their spoiled existence. The owners (voiced by Daws Butler and June Foray) add a unique “battle of the sexes” vibe that was popular in media at the time. The first widescreen release, although it, like the following three cartoons, was designed and released in both Academy and CinemaScope ratio.
TOUCHÉ, PUSSYCAT! (Prod. #294)
Follow-up to Two Mouseketeers, with Tuffy earning his stripes under Jerry’s tutelage. Oscar nominee.
SOUTHBOUND DUCKLING (Prod. #298)
Jerry reluctantly helps Quacker go south for the winter and evade duck-hungry Tom. Memorable enough for ending with the impending doom of Jerry and Quacker in Miami.
PUP ON A PICNIC (Prod. #285)
The eternal chase interrupts Spike and Tyke’s picnic outing. The best gag is a classist Ray Patterson scene with a disgusted Spike preventing Tyke from eating a sandwich Tom briefly touched. “Don’t eat that one, son! It’s doity!”
TOM AND CHERIÉ (Prod. #299)
Mouseketeer Tuffy must deliver Jerry’s love letters to his latest squeeze, and be subjected to Tom’s swashbuckling ambushes. The first exclusively CinemaScope release, and all MGM cartoons henceforth production-wise would be so. And the last cartoon bearing Fred Quimby’s name as sole producer.
THAT’S MY MOMMY (Prod. #300)
Quacker hatches underneath Tom and thinks he’s his mommy, regardless of the cat’s attempts to eat him. The cloying sentimentality is at such an all-time high that it actually breaks Tom’s brain so he does think he’s a mama duck. The first cartoon to credit Hanna and Barbera as sole producers.
THE FLYING SORCERESS (Prod. #301)
Tom finds out he probably shouldn’t have answered that ad seeking a “traveling companion for elderly lady,” and June Foray officially corners the market on cartoon witch voices for the biggest studios in town.
THE EGG AND JERRY (Prod. #314)
For some reason, Bill and Joe had the bright idea that money could be saved by doing remakes that consisted of reshooting an entire old cartoon’s animation in widescreen composition with new backgrounds and reusing the old soundtrack. The results were hideous, with the old ‘40s animation in cropped form only emphasizing how chintzy the new background paintings and layouts look. (Two done of Tex Avery’s cartoons Wags to Riches and Ventriloquist Cat, without him, are particularly offensive.) This one, a shot-for-shot remake of Hatch Up Your Troubles, has the laughably bad error of Jerry’s body remaining onscreen when he’s supposed to be slamming a door offscreen thanks to the new aspect ratio.
BUSY BUDDIES (Prod. #303)
Tom and Jerry must rescue a wandering baby while the babysitter gabs on the phone. This is the first time in the series where any characters could have been inserted into the starring roles and it would’ve been just the same mediocrity. A sign of things to come for later reprisals of Tom and Jerry.
MUSCLE BEACH TOM (Prod. #304)
Tom and Butch compete for a lady cat’s affections at the beach. We saw this detached sort of story done much more soulfully by Bob McKimson in Muscle Tussle with Daffy, but this cartoon has a lively Bradley score, and maybe the best “scope” gag of all: Tom digging a hole for Butch to fall into, and ultimately getting frustrated and bodily shoving Butch in himself. It utilizes the entire length of the screen to underline Tom’s impatience.
DOWN BEAT BEAR (Prod. #305)
Tom attempts to capture an escaped circus bear that can’t stop dancing when he hears music, and Jerry does all he can to thwart him for spite. The bear’s hat and the tie-like rope around his neck make it hard to miss that this character was referenced by the crew two years later for Yogi.
BLUE CAT BLUES (Prod. #306)
One of the few CinemaScope Tom & Jerrys with thoughtful art direction that’s intentionally ugly to highlight the abject misery of a failed romance. Famously ends with both Tom and Jerry awaiting their demise on train tracks.
BARBECUE BRAWL (Prod. #307)
Tom and Jerry practically guest star in their own cartoon, with Spike and Tyke’s barbecue facing interruptions from both the cat and mouse and an army of ants.
TOPS WITH POPS (Prod. #318)
Shot-for-shot remake of Love That Pup.
TIMID TABBY (Prod. #308)
Tom’s identical and mouse-phobic cousin George (voiced by Bill Thompson) visits. The two cats conspire to send Jerry to the Home for Mice with Nervous Breakdowns.
FEEDIN’ THE KIDDIE (Prod. #321)
Shot-for-shot remake of The Little Orphan. This is the original version of the 1957 release, which cut out the animation of the black owner placing a turkey on the table, yet left the actually racist extended bit of Tom getting burnt into a pickaninny intact.
MUCHO MOUSE (Prod. #310)
Olympic, U.S. and World Champion Mouse Catcher Tom travels to Madrid to take on Jerry, El Magnifico. Designer legend Ed Benedict’s only Tom & Jerry credit.
TOM’S PHOTO FINISH (Prod. #311)
Tom frames Spike for his chicken thievery, which is unfortunately caught on film by Jerry. Has the last real laugh of the series with the owner thinking Tom is just making stupid faces at an empty window. “Do you want the neighbors to think you’re crazy!?”
HAPPY GO DUCKY (Prod. #309)
Quacker is a surprise hatchling at Tom and Jerry’s house Easter morning. Tied with the two wandering baby cartoons for most cripplingly generic entries in the original series.
ROYAL CAT NAP (Prod. #317)
The gang in their Mouseketeer roles for the final time, in a stupefyingly all-thumbs variation of Avery’s “be quiet or else” story he loved so much and did masterfully at least three times before. This is the first of Joe Barbera’s old Terrytoon cohort Carlo Vinci’s screen credits on the T&J cartoons (he has six other MGM credits). Vinci was a top animator (along with Connie Rasinski and Jim Tyer) at Terrytoons, and spent an unhappy decade ostracized by his peers for crossing the picket line in the 1947 Terry strike. He went to Hollywood around the time Paul Terry sold his studio to CBS, and worked briefly and miserably at the Disney Studio before joining MGM. He, naturally, became one of the standout talents in the early years of Hanna-Barbera’s studio (doing slick, fast work came naturally to Vinci having survived Terry’s “two weeks in each department” schedule for two decades), and animated some of the most visually exceptional episodes of Yogi Bear and The Flintstones single handedly.
THE VANISHING DUCK (Prod. #325)
Quacker and Jerry become invisible with vanishing cream and proceed to torture Tom. The cat gets wise and the film ends with him becoming invisible and brutally beating the pair.
ROBIN HOODWINKED (Prod. #329)
Jerry and Tuffy as merry mice who rescue the captured Robin Hood from guardsman Tom. Smells like the endless “X characters in generic retelling of old literature” that would be an H-B trademark. There’s a sequence of Tuffy in Tom’s stomach that’s particularly choppy, almost like a proof-of-concept for how few drawings they could get away with.
TOT WATCHERS (Prod. #330)
The final Tom & Jerry cartoon (the second with the wandering baby) ends with our heroes in the back of a police van. Enough said. With a resounding fatally bland dud like this, maybe it was time for these guys to hang it up at this operation and give into the villain that forced the CinemaScope process, television.
Bonus Cartoons:
GOOD WILL TO MEN (Prod. #302)
An updated remake of Hugh Harman’s Peace on Earth for the atomic age that earned an Oscar nominee. Gene Hazelton is an uncredited designer.
GIVE AND TYKE (Prod. #313)
The first of two Spike and Tyke cartoons without Tom and Jerry. An alley dog (complete with Yogi’s hat and Art Carney voice by Daws Butler), Spike, and Tyke play tag with their licenses to evade a relentless dogcatcher. It’s a shame they only made two Spike and Tyke cartoons, as both come close enough to recapturing the old marathon run energy without the burden of having to think how to shoehorn a cat-and-mouse conflict into the story. Having Daws Butler voice everyone helps, too (something Bill and Joe clearly noticed).
SCAT CATS (Prod. #319)
Spike and Tyke prevent the cats from having a party while the owners are gone. Inexplicably, Butch is the housecat, with Tom’s usual alley cat gang (Meathead and Topsy) now having a generic orange cat in what should’ve been Butch’s lead role. Clearly the result of some ingenious executive order that Tom couldn’t appear without Jerry. Carlo Vinci animates at least half the picture, and you can see glimpses of why the other guys teased him that his drawing still couldn’t quite shake the look of cats and dogs that might be at home in one of the million Mighty Mouse cartoons he worked on.
While I doubt these are anyone’s favorite MGM cartoons, Tom and Jerry: The Complete CinemaScope Collection is a highly convenient package that tells the closing chapter of one of the most popular cartoon studios ever with exceptional restorations and presentations of all the films. My only complaint about the release is that it wasn’t two discs so it could include every CinemaScope MGM cartoon. Thus, Mike Lah’s oddball but endearing clump of CinemaScope Droopy cartoons still have no high-definition home (and I guess those two appalling Avery remakes, Millionaire Droopy and Cat’s Meow, as well, for completeness’ sake). Warner Archive Collection has continued its high standard releases of Warner, MGM, Famous Studios, and Hanna-Barbera classics. I hope we see more cartoon shorts of Hanna and Barbera’s from before and after this period make their Blu-Ray debuts soon enough, too.
