Jerry is supposed to be scaring her, but his expressions are more goofy than frightening.
Cut to the “pull up multiple skirt” gag. I don’t have these cartoons memorised so I can’t tell you which other cartoon re-used this. I’m pretty sure one of them did.
The other unusual thing in this short is there is dialogue between Tom and Jerry to drive the plot. It doesn’t seem right to have the characters talking. I thought Cal Howard was doing Tom’s dopey voice—it’s speculated he played the dog in the Screwy Squirrel cartoons and was writing for the Hanna-Barbera unit—but Keith Scott says it’s Harry Lang. Lillian Randolph is the maid, and even gets to sing a few bars of “How About You?”, written by Burton Lane and Vancouver-born Ralph Freed (his father owned a furniture shop) for the 1941 feature Babes on Broadway.
It was bizarre watching this for the first time on the DVD Spotlight Collections back in the day since this never popped up in regular rotations on TV. I can always see why. Not only does the maid have more screen time but the boys dialogue is pretty integral to the plot and more than just a one gag thing that it would have been too bizarre for viewers used to the pantomiming.
ReplyDeleteBut I always had a soft spot for this one. Three years after they debuted, Bill and Joe decide to play around with the formula a bit. The ending was reused again in Old Rockin' Chair Tom(1948) (another one rarely seen on TV), but the outcome is much more satisfying.
Where in the world did that start? This whole "lady jumping onto a chair and holding up her skirts while screaming" bit? Definitely a routine that would not be repeated today!
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