How To Slam a Newspaper By Jerry Mouse of Prague

No, this post won’t bash the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoons made in Czechoslovakia. They do have some redeeming factors. One is they never included an annoying duck that became Yakky Doodle. Another is they never featured a way-too-cute little French mouse.

Instead, we’ll simply post the frames from a scene in Mouse Into Space (released March 1962). Todd Dockstader’s story has Jerry reading a newspaper ad encouraging mice to enlist in the space programme, promising “There are no cats in outer space!” Here's an in-between as Jerry turns to look at Tom.



Fed up with Tom trying to kill him, first with a pistol, and then a bomb, Jerry has had enough, and storms off out of the scene after slamming down a newspaper. The action takes place pretty quickly, though it still seems a little jerky on screen. These are the drawings, one for each frame (exceptions noted below).



The drawing below is held for four frames.



The next two drawings are held for two frames.



33 frames in all, less than a second and a half. Lots of jagged impact animation, isn't there?

Vaclav Bedrich is given an "animation director" credit, though Deitch is credited as the director. Who did what is your guess. Gene isn't around any more to ask.

Gambling on Women

T.V. of Tomorrow was no kiddie cartoon. Gags were aimed at sex-starved 1950s suburban men. There’s a television set with a Faye Emerson-esque “plunging neckline.” An annoyed man has his set shoot down a small plane for distorting the picture while he’s watching a bathing beauty. There’s another set “which allows you to see all of the picture,” which happens to be another young lady in a swim suit.

There’s yet another gag featuring another bathing suit model, this one in repose. The TV set is the “Las Vegas Special, for you two-bit gamblers, lets you gamble on your channel.” It’s a one-armed bandit set. The viewer put in two bits and, well, the pictures tell the story.



If you’re wondering, the “tired businessman” gag featuring the TV with a full-sized film of Joi Lansing posing is in the earlier House of Tomorrow cartoon (released 1949).

The voiceover for this gag is provided by John Brown. Paul Frees did the rest of the cartoon. I have no idea why Avery switches voices.

At least one gag appears to have been edited out of this cartoon. At the 0:53 mark, there’s a sudden cut in the soundtrack. But if you listen to the soundtrack of the cartoon on the Scott Bradley music CD that came out some time ago, you’ll hear the music that was under the gag (the soundtrack is 30 seconds longer than the cartoon in circulation).

Heck Allen assisted Avery with the “story” in the 1953 release, with Ray Patterson added to Avery’s usual unit of Mike Lah, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley.

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.