Thursday 11 April 2013

Casanova Cat and Mouse

Gender overrides species in cartoons. Watch some Terrytoons and you’ll see a lustful cat try to make out with a girl mouse.

And it happens in reverse, such as in “Casanova Cat.” I think I’ve figured out the reason. The girl cat kind of looks like a large girl mouse. Compare her head to Jerry’s.



And she gives a coy look at the end because the mouse is going to have his way with her in the back seat of a cab. Unlike the Terry girl mice, the girl cat in this cartoon isn’t too particular about who kisses her.



Ken Muse, Ed Barge, Ray Patterson and Irv Spence are the animators of this cartoon WHV doesn’t want to release on its Golden Collection DVD.

2 comments:

  1. It may not have been done by their unit, but Hugh Harman's "The Alley Cat" may have been one of the most important cartoons for Hanna-Barbera, because it seems like the designs for about 75 percent of the Tom & Jerry series' main supporting characters (the female cat, Spike and Butch) came out of this cartoon (and I'd say a higher percentage number, but I can't find a scene from Hugh's cartoon with a duck in it..._

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  2. It gets better, J Lee—in the model sheets for THE ALLEY CAT, Butch is called Tom. (Meanwhile, elsewhere on the lot, our Tom was still Jasper...)

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