Tee For Two Background

The Tom and Jerry cartoon Tee For Two (1945) opens with a slow right pan over a long background of a golf course, showing increasing carnage as the camera moves along, stopping at a frustrating Tom trying to get a ball out of a sand trap.

The colours don’t quite match as I amateurishly snipped the frames together, but below you can see how the pan worked.



Tom swinging away is on a cycle of 12 drawings, shot one per frame. You can see Bill Hanna’s careful timing at work through the spacing of the in-betweens as the upper swing is slow, then the abrupt during the follow-through.



Crazy eyes on Tom? This must be Irv Spence animation.

As for the background, I presume it’s another one of Bob Gentle’s water colours. It looks like his credited work much later in the series, but I don’t know if Gentle was out of the military when this cartoon was made.

This short, by the way, is the one with the scene of Tom getting stung in the mouth by a ridiculously large swarm of bees, animated by Ken Muse.

Ray Patterson and Pete Burnett also get animation credits.

Here’s the cycle at about the speed you see it in the cartoon, minus Fred MacAlpin’s sound effects.

What You Do When You Hear the Door Buzzer

The Hanna-Barbera unit, at least in 1942, wasn’t into wild takes like MGM stable-mate Tex Avery. So when Tom reacts to a door buzzer in Puss N’ Toots, his expression isn’t all that outrageous.

Still, there are some good drawings, from Irv Spence, I suspect. These are nine consecutive frames.

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Bill Hanna holds Tom for three frames, then turns his head. Tom is held for 23 frames while Jerry continues to run in the fish bowl.



Hanna and Joe Barbera are the only people to get a screen credit on this short, besides producer Fred Quimby.

Firey Sandwich

A smouldering cigarette creates a cute little flame that starts cheerily destroying everything in the forest in Red Hot Rangers.

He makes a sandwich out of a leaf and a pinecone in between “No Smoking” and “Help Prevent Fires” signs.



Soon, George and Junior will be on the scene and Junior will screw up everything, though the little flame dies in the end.

Ray Abrams, Preston Blair, Ed Love and Walt Clinton are Tex Avery’s animators in this cartoon. Irv Spence drew the character models for this short in February 1945 but it wasn’t released until May 3, 1947.

Chase in Slo-Mo

The sign says “SLOW,” so that’s what a bird and cat do during a chase in Tex Avery’s The Early Bird Dood It (1942). Then when the next sign says “RESUME SPEED,” that’s what they do.

I like the cat’s expressions.



Scott Bradley plays a slow, wowwing version of “The William Tell Overture” while this is going on.

The animation in this cartoon is by Irv Spence, Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love.

Its start and finish are typical Avery. The cartoon opens with a left to right pan of the outdoors, with an overlay in front for added depth, and ends with a sign reading “Sad Ending Ain’t It” as the cat has eaten the bird after the bird ate the “Costello” worm.

Tom Thumb vs the Worm

Tom Thumb (from the Ub Iwerks cartoon of the same name) decides to go fishing with his dad but needs a worm for bait. The worm has other ideas.



Whoever animated this scene uses little motion lines as the battle carries on.



The Iwerks director tried to get the most he could out of the Cinecolor red/blue pallet. I like the swirls here as the worm laughs.



The worm twirls Tom Thumb in perspective and tosses him into the water.



No animators are credited here; just musical director Carl Stalling, though reader Devon Baxter says Irv Spence is the artist here.