Mucho Mouse Backgrounds

Bob Gentle’s backgrounds evoke old Spain in the Tom and Jerry cartoon Mucho Mouse. We even see his artwork in the opening titles.



The camera pans left to right across a long background and stops at the entrance to an estate. Whether it is based on Madrid, I don't know.



There’s a dissolve to an interior. The camera again pans left to right, passing an orange cat with a guitar (animated by Ken Muse) and stops at a mouse hole.



The Hollywood Reporter informed readers on November 3, 1955:

Manuel Paris and Pilar Arcos, Spanish-speaking stars, have been signed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, MGM cartoon co-producers, to narrate the dialogue for “Mucho Mouse,” being made at the request of Loew’s International as the first film to be made here originally for the Spanish-speaking market, with domestic distribution to follow.

It doesn’t mention Daws Butler plays Tom.

On the 16th, the Reporter said:

MGM cartoon co-producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera have signed Alvara F. Moliner, chancellor of the Spanish consulate in Los Angeles, to act as technical adviser for the cartoon “Mucho Mouse,” first Hollywood picture, short or feature, to be made for special release in Spanish-speaking countries.

The next we hear about the cartoon in the Reporter is in the Thursday, August 16, 1956 edition:

Production resumes Monday on eight CinemaScope and Technicolor cartoons when the MGM cartoon department, headed by producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and business manager Hal Elias, return from their annual mass vacation. Cartoons are the Tom and Jerry subjects, “Mucho Mouse,” “Tom’s Photo Finish,” “Scat Cats,” “Royal Catnap” and “The Vanishing Duck”; Spike and Type [sic] in “Give and Tyke” and Droopy in “One Droopy Knight” and “Grin and Share It.”

The cartoon was released, along with a re-issue of Tex Avery’s Out-Foxed, on September 7, 1957. By that time, the MGM cartoon studio had closed for business.