Here’s an example (by Ken Muse) from Mouse For Sale, released in 1953. The studio has ditched the stereotype black maid for the stereotype thin-and-trim ‘50s housewife (played by June Foray). Tom hides some money under the carpet. Tom rests. The housewife then tells him she’s going shopping with money she found under the rug.
Anticipation and reaction drawings.
Here’s a later take, when Tom’s face flies off his head.
The face changes angles slightly in other drawings to let the audience pick up the take.
Muse, Irv Spence, Ed Barge and Ray Patterson are the animators.
This is a cartoon where Tom wins in the end.
I remember that the famously humorless Fred Quimby once said the cartoons were getting so fast that he couldn't follow them. I've wondered if he meant the Tom and Jerry "Kitty Foiled," but at least they kept some of the take ideas that Tex gave them.
ReplyDeleteActually, the "stereotypical black [sic] maid" is shown in a maid's uniform exactly once: the Thanksgiving cartoon. The rest of the time she's either in her bathrobe, a house dress, or dressed to go out for the day. She was never seen answering to any white employer, and in one cartoon she heads for her bedroom at the head of the stairs, which is not where the maid's room would be. Anyone watching those cartoons now would assume it's her house.
ReplyDelete"Anyone watching those cartoons now would assume it's her house."
DeleteAs a kid watching those cartoons in the 1970s and '80s, that's exactly what I thought. I also wasn't bothered by her dialect, which I just considered another funny cartoon voice. I never realized there was anything controversial about the character until much later.