Wednesday 22 October 2014

Cage Away!

New characters were added to Tom and Jerry cartoons by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera to keep the series fresh. One of them was a canary in “Kitty Foiled” (1947).

The bird unhooks the bottom of its cage so it’ll fall on Tom, allowing Jerry to escape. You can see the weight in the first drawing below as the bird pulls on the latch. In the second drawing, you can see the sense of balance as the bird is thrown backward a bit by the force of the latch loosening.



Then the impact as the cage bottom flattens Tom’s head. Who else in the H-B unit but Irv Spence would draw like this? (See the answer in the comment section).



Ken Muse, Ed Barge and (for a change) Irv Levine receive the other animation credits.

3 comments:

  1. This is a Ken Muse scene..he's drawn on-model, and note the three bumps on top of his belly colouring..Muse was the only animator who drew Tom with three bumps up until 1950, whereas the others drew him with two.

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  2. Irv Levine, to my knowledge, was Ken Muse's assistant. I'm not certain on what scenes he did, but it wouldn't surprise me if he animated scenes that greatly resemble Muse's style; but a screen credit doesn't always imply that they animated footage.

    Mike Lah was credited for 'SPRINGTIME FOR THOMAS', but didn't animate any footage in the short.

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    Replies
    1. I tried my best to figure out which scene was done by Levine, but the only one I can see is probably the scene with the bear rug.

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