Friday 7 November 2014

More Than a Piece of Cake

Tom attempts to hide endless copies of incriminating photos from being seen by his suburban owners in “Tom’s Photo Finish” (released Nov. 1, 1957). One snapshot gets in between layers of a cake George’s wife is baking. Here’s how Tom destroys the evidence in ten consecutive drawings.



Six animators are credited: Ken Muse, Lew Marshall, Bill Schipek, Jack Carr, Herman Cohen and Ken Southworth.

The Hollywood Reporter of November 22, 1955 gave names to the humans: Mr. and Mrs. Q. Perhaps it’s because the husband looks like Robert Q. Lewis. The wife is Julie Bennett. Variety reported on January 31, 1955 and again August 27, 1956 that she had been hired to voice cartoons for MGM. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera signed her again in 1959 to play Sagebrush Sal on Quick Draw McGraw, but she’s probably best known as the voice of Cindy Bear (“Cutest b’ar in these h’yar parts - Julie Bennett inked to play a running role as Yogi Bear’s girl friend,” Variety, Dec. 30, 1960). Sadly, her whereabouts are unknown today.

1 comment:

  1. Any sudden, fast motion in the final season of the MGM CinemaScope cartoons -- as here with Tom's cake eating -- almost seems to be a happy accident. The MGM efforts between 1954 and 1957 went from being far lusher than their Warner Bros. counterparts to at times looking only a step up from the made-for-TV cartoons Hanna-Barbera would be working on a year later.

    ReplyDelete