Hit the Love Jackpot

Tom and Jerry and the female cat don't speak in Springtime for Thomas (1946), so words are not necessary to describe this fun sequence.



Ed Barge, Ken Muse and Mike Lah received screen credit for animation in this short (I think that's Muse doing the Cupid scene). Frank Graham supplies the voice of the evil aparition of Jerry.

Don't Don't Don't, You Cartoon Makers

It’s bemusing that old animated cartoons are either not seen, are edired or contain warnings. These very same cartoons already went past the censor’s eye before they were even approved to be shown to audiences.

This was in a time when the film industry was far more prudish than it is today. Sex and religion? Out! Stereotypes? Painful violence? Innocent fun. Mind you, animated cartoons left the theatres and became TV fare (mostly aimed at kids) in the ‘60s and ‘70s and became subjected to different standards.

I don’t propose to get into a huge debate about the subject here. What I’ll do is post a couple of feature stories from the United Press from when these cartoons were created. Our first stop is in Culver City, the home of Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera and Tex Avery. This appeared in newspapers around April 12, 1949.

Cartoon Characters Have Their Troubles With The Censor Too
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, April 12 (U.P.).—A buxom movie queen lolling in bed isn't the only item that gets axed out of the movies. The long arm of the censors reached out to the love life and hip wiggles in the cartoons, too. The two guys who create Tom and Jerry, the Oscar-winning cat and mouse, sigh they have to worry about slipping gags past the censors just like the big directors do.
"We have to be careful about Jerry kicking Tom in the back-side. Those gags don't get by so much any more," says Joe Barbera, who writes and directs the cat and mouse series at MGM with William Hanna.
Tom and Jerry usually don't wear a stitch of clothes in their movies, unlike Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. But in "Springtime for Thomas" Tom had to crawl into trousers while he yowled his love to a lady cat.
"She had on clothes and it wouldn't look right for Tom not to wear any," Barbera says. "If he's in a scene with a kitten he can go clothesless, though."
Tom wears goatskin pants and Jerry a Robinson Crusoe outfit in their next movie. But Barbera and Hanna undressed them in a hurry so the 125 animators wouldn't have to draw clothes in all the 15,000 "frames" that make one cartoon.
"We had 'em do a subtle strip tease," grins Barbera. "Hope it gets by."
Once the Johnston office turned thumbs down on a scene in a cartoon, not of Tom and Jerry, which showed a dog sniffing at a man disguised as a tree. And in "Red Hot Riding Hood" the censors frowned when Red Riding Hood, a nightclub bump-and-grind queen, got too life-like with the hip wiggles. The part where the wolf drooled over her had to be toned down, too.
The censors didn't blink, though, when Jerry used a brassiere as a parachute in "Yankee Doodle Mouse."
Besides being censored, Tom and Jerry are like live movie stars in other ways, too. They have wardrobe "tests" before the cartoon is drawn, just like Lana Turner. They get stacks of fan letters ("Why does the cat always get beat up?").
Their sound effects department, with records labeled "scratches" and "plops," is as big as those for live movies. And music is furnished by the same big orchestra that saws away for multi-million productions. One future cartoon, "Texas Tom," is scheduled for a big premiere in Dallas. Jerry even danced with Gene Kelly in "Anchors Aweigh." And the cat and mouse have won more Oscars—five—than any other actors, alive or otherwise, plus the grand cartoon prize at a world film festival in Belgium.
"All that, and the cartoon whizzes by the screen in seven minutes," sighs Director Barbera.

Walter Lantz was interviewed on more than one occasion about being told “You Can’t” by the blue pencil brigade. This one showed up in the press on October 18, 1951. At least one paper showed publicity drawings of Lantz’s version of Tex Avery’s Red; Miss X was animated by Lantz’s version of MGM’s Preston Blair, the great Pat Matthews.

Movie Censors Use Scissors Even On Cartoon Love Scenes
Heroine's Wiggle Is Under Ban
By ALINE MOSBY Hollywood, Oct. 17. (U.P.)— A cartoonist complained today that curves and sex get censored even out of the Woody Woodpecker cartoons these days.
In fact, sighed Walter Lantz, Jane Russell, and Lana Turner can expose more of their famous flesh than the animated cuties do.
The artists who dream up Woody's antics at the Lantz studio have to draw the passionate kisses, cows, and curves with the censors peeking over their shoulders.
Betty Grable Shows More
"Every picture we do is looked over very carefully by the Johnston office," Lantz explained. "They watch us closer than they do the feature pictures.
"In one cartoon, ‘Aboo Ben Boogie,’ we had a sexy girl, looking like a Betty Grable. She had on transparent pantaloons so you could see her legs.
"Well, the censors sent the picture back and we had to put a skirt on her. Betty Grable shows more than our girl did."
In another Woody epic, he said, the blue-pencil boys decided the heroine wiggled her hips too much when she danced. Instead of redrawing the scene, Lantz' crew just re-photographed it—from her waist up.
In the old days of "Felix The Cat" flickers, animators had too much fun with their characters, Lantz said. "So nowadays the censors clamp down if the animator's paintbrush wiggles in the wrong direction.
Censors May Have Point
"We used to always draw old Chic Sales in the back yard, but they're out now," said Lantz. "We can't ever draw all of a cow, either.
"We can't show too much cleavage on a female character. And no horizontal love scenes. Most cartoon characters wear clothes. Woody doesn't, but his feathers are arranged so they look like clothes."
The censors have also cut bank robberies, holdups, and ghosts from cartoons to keep the children happy.
"We have to watch that in the Woody cartoon we're making now, ‘Stage Hoax,’ " said the cartoonist.
"But the censors have a point there. I think there still is too much blood and thunder in some cartoons.
"If you give some animators an inch they might take 10 feet. It's just as well we have restrictions on cartoons because lots of children see them."

Should there be a line? And where to draw it?

There wasn’t an agreement on the answers to those questions in the days of Red and Woody. I don’t suspect there ever will be.

The Duck Takes It Off

Who'd shoot a soon-to-be-mother duck? Well, either the dog version of George or Junior in Tex Avery's Lucky Ducky (at least someone told me they're a revamped George and Junior, though they don't act like it).

The mother's egg is shot down from the sky, but breaks its fall by partially hatching on the way down.



The duckling hatches at the edge of our heroes' boat, then dispenses with the unneeded shell à la mode Gypsy Rose Lee to a familiar MGM song (If anyone has the title, please post it).



Getting screen credit for animation in this cartoon are Walt Clinton, Preston Blair, Louie Schmitt and Grant Simmons.

This is the cartoon with the terrific “Technicolor Ends Here” gag. Unfortunately, the original end title animation has been replaced. However, E.O. Costello has advised us that it (well, a re-creation) has been posted on-line. See it below.

Solving the Fridge Mystery

“To clear up the mystery of whether the light stays on or goes off when you close the door of your refrigerator,” says the narrator in The House of Tomorrow (1949), “we have this model equipped with a window, so you can see just what happens to the light when you close the door.



Cut the next scene which reveals the answer. A tinkling bell accompanies the gnome as he comes in and goes out.



Jack Gosgriff and Rich Hogan worked with director Tex Avery on the spot gags, while Walt Clinton, Mike Lah and Grant Simmons provided the animation.

Lightning Only Strikes Once

The Hanna-Barbara unit was still at the top in 1947 when it came to expressions, as you can see in Old Rockin’ Chair Tom.

It’s one of a pair of cartoons when the maid replaces Tom with a better mouse-catching cat (the idea was re-used with Mr. Jinks on TV). Chair has some fine lightning effects (visual and sound), Jerry faking being surprised, Scott Bradley finding a place for “The Trolley Song” on the soundtrack (as well as “Old Black Joe”), and the maid not being Lana Turner (in another fine screaming performance by Lillian Randolph).

This is another swallow-something-metallic-and-pulled-by-a-hidden-magnet cartoon. My favourite of this type is probably the Warners’ short Bugsy and Mugsy (1957), though it goes back at least as far as Cracked Ice (Warners, 1938). In this case, the object is an iron.



Here’s a lovely sploosh against a wall.



The MGM ink paint department’s dry brush artists do a nice job in a four-drawing cycle (on ones) of Lightning turning in mid-air.



As in the later Jiggers… It’s Jinks! (H-B, 1958), the meeces mouse and cat team up against the intruder to restore order by the end of the cartoon. Tom doesn’t come through altogether unscathed. As Lightning kicked him out of the house, he returns the favour, but forgets the iron is still planted in Lightning’s butt.



The cartoon ends with the two of them sharing a lemon meringue or banana crème pie served by the maid to the sound of another MGM-owned song, “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.”



Ray Patterson, Ed Barge, Ken Muse and Irv Spence are the animators.

The cartoon's official release date was Sept. 18, 1948, but title was mentioned by Fred Quimby in stories in both Boxoffice and The Motion Picture Herald dated July 19, 1947. Scott Bradley's score was copyrighted on Nov. 24, 1947. It was playing Aug. 29, 30 and 31, 1948 at the Riviera Theatre in St. Paul, Nebraska, and got a "good" rating out of Boxoffice and The Exhibitor. The short was re-released on Dec. 30, 1955 and again in the 1964-65 season.