CARTOON DOODLE WAR SERIES
The Yankee Doodle Mouse was the first in the series to receive an Academy Award for Best Animated Short, with six subsequent victories to follow.
Jerry running from smaller, precarious objects would be reprised in entries such as 1950’s Cue Ball Cat, with pool balls taking similar chase in that film. (This bit was reprised in Tee For Two, released two years later.) Muse also animates the last few portions of the film, when Tom fires off the Roman candle into Jerry’s mouse hole, up to Tom being rocketed up into the sky. He lets out a derisive chuckle before the gag literally blows up in his face. Tom’s potent shift in emotions during the scene he is horrified, backing up against a crate as the fuse runs out, but is perplexed, and flinching, as the firecracker decreases to a tiny black pellet. Reissue posterMuse animates the sequence of Tom receiving an explosive, which unravels like Russian nesting dolls. Zander’s scenes also include the amusing gag of Jerry using a brassiere as a parachute. (The staggered exposure on Tom’s reactions makes the gag more unpleasant.) Zander animates a crucial point in the battle, as Jerry flies a makeshift bomber aircraft, dropping light bulbs and a banana onto Tom, before he fires a Roman candle at Jerry. The original payoff of that sequence, as it reads in the synopsis below, of Tom appearing like a daisy with a goofy grin, reads much better than the gag in the finished film.īurness handles Jerry’s spying on Tom with a periscope, and his use of a cheese grater, fashioned as an Army Jeep, to drive underneath Tom, with painful results. Spence dominates the opening scenes of combat, including the “hen grenades,” Jerry popping the projectile champagne corks, and Tom sinking into the washtub with his “ship.” Gordon animates the two throwing each other a lit firecracker before leaving an unaware Tom holding it, and Jerry being in the teakettle with another explosive. Hanna and Barbera’s unit of animators– consisting of Irv Spence, Ken Muse, Pete Burness, George Gordon and Jack Zander-are assigned large sections throughout the film.
Layout drawing from a now-missing sequence of “The Yankee Doodle Mouse” The details of the missing scene can be seen here ( below), and in the scene descriptions below that (scenes 31-33) it also explains there were intended to be three war communiqués from Jerry, instead of two in the re-issue version, released in 1951. The missing sequence is indicative from an abrupt fade-out during the sequence where Jerry continuously smacks Tom with a board, amidst a flour-encompassing smokescreen.
The only reference that would date the film was a gag involving ration stamps, which is absent from the currently circulating re-issue version. The use of firecrackers as a weapon became a bigger staple in animation with the advent of the war it remained a go-to solution to eliminate adversaries, especially in Warners cartoons. It depicts an allegorical battle without alluding to the Axis leaders, as did many other cartoons of the period. Get out the firecrackers and Roman candles, it’s an Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry this week! (Yes, I’m aware it is after the Fourth of July, but it still fits the occasion.)īy 1943, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s Tom and Jerry cartoons had reached their peak, especially in their speed, by their eleventh cartoon The Yankee Doodle Mouse, under its working title “Jerry’s Home Defense.” This cartoon stands apart from the other animated films of World War II.
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