TOM & JERRY’S FORGOTTEN CARTOON

 Even a devoted animation fan may be forgiven for not having heard of Blue Cat Blues. Even younger fans of Tom and Jerry may likely not have seen the 1956 short and for good reason. Television and home video have been, until recently, hesitant to re-run it. The reasons are self-evident in the narrative, but there were other factors weighing in. Even among the fan base of the famous cat and mouse the short has proven divisive. Defenders venerate the courage to break out of the formula into darker and bleaker elements, in doing so adding emotional layers to the battling duo. Its this very departure from the lighter tone and comical violence that has made it something of a pariah in the series. 

As it often does, timing explains a lot. By the mid-50s the golden age of animation was drawing to a close. By the early 60s, Disney would stop producing animated shorts, Warner Bros would close its cartoon studio after mulling over the decision for nearly a decade and M.G.M would lose two of its best animators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, to television. Somber as the times may have been, this proved a time with little to lose by experimenting. Mostly this came in terms of technique as new cinematic innovations such as 3D and Cinemascope (which the Tom & Jerry series took on early) provided animators with some much-needed artistic inspiration. One can argue that a lot of the cartoons released in the late 50s are a triumph of style over substance, but they were a hopeful remedy to revitalize an artform. The scarce cartoon shorts that made it to the following decade did s by sacrificing style rather than expanding and limited animation became the norm.

Conceptually, however, very little changed across the different studios which makes the tonal risk taken in Blue Cat Blues all the more curious. It is more jarring almost 70 years later after decades of Tom and Jerry (and other classic characters) marketed to children, erasing the memory that theatrical cartoons were made as much for adults as the younger sets. Indeed, the first three decades of the American animated shorts abound with adult humor, situations and references that would be foreign to a child in any decade. 

If there is one thing certain about Blue Cat Blues is that it’s a reminder of the original intent of classic cartoons. At its lightest, it’s the tale of a toxic relationship. In an Annie Hall-esque move, it begins after the relationship has ended in disaster and proceeds to tell the story of its downfall through flashback. 

There are some hints that it’s not only the nature of the short that has turned away some fans but also how it breaks established traits of its two cartoon stars. To be sure, the initial idea is a common one in the series. Tom falls for a feline coquette only to be upstaged by his romantic rival Butch the black cat. But almost at its opening, in a desolate railroad track where a dejected Tom sits awaiting his demise, Blue Cat Blues reveals itself to be an atypical vehicle. An omnipresent voice (that of legendary cartoon voice actor Paul Frees) is heard narrating Tom’s sad story. As the camera pans upward, the voice is revealed to be coming from Jerry or, more specifically, Jerry’s mind. Apart from the humans who shared Tom and Jerry’s world and the threats from Spike the bulldog, spoken word was used minimally in the series and then often as a one-word gag. Fans who were repulsed to hear the duo break their silence in the 1992 revival feature Tom & Jerry: The Movie, likely forgot this short; some perhaps willingly so.

As the flashback begins, we are next shocked to see an uncharacteristic friendship between cat and mouse that contradicts almost two decades of brutal antagonism though, it must be said, there was a degree of respect between the two beginning with their third short, 1941’s The Night Before Christmas. 

Be that as it may, this idyllic life is disrupted when a sly lady cat walks in on the scene and Tom loses both heart and mind despite Jerry’s attempts to warn him that she is fatal. For a while the romance flourishes, but then Butch spots the object of Tom’s affection and woos her with his wealth. This too is a subtle change. It was always inconsistent but in his early appearances Butch was always depicted as an alley cat lacking the domestic comforts of Tom. Here the roles are reversed and Butch is a penthouse cat that can afford to win the heart of the feline female with diamonds and fancy cars. Tom begins to fall apart and throws away his life savings to win back his love but to no avail, the cold-hearted cat drives off into matrimony with his rival, bringing us to the point the cartoon opened. 

Stark as the premise is, there is humor in the cartoon. For instance, when Tom begins his downward spiral after losing his love to Butch we are told he “started drinking”, only to be shown the cat washing away his sorrows with bottles of milk. Despite the careless animation frequent in this era of the series the short abounds with visual puns and the very voice over-narration feels like a spoof of the tense psychological dramas in vogue at the time. 

Admittedly, however, there is little build up to the tragic finale as Jerry, who has found out his own mouse girlfriend has jilted him, joins Tom at the tracks as a train is heard approaching in the distance. This is a shocking ending, but golden age cartoonists had a fondness for playing with death since it never really stuck with toons. Tom himself was sent up to Heaven a number of times only to be back again. At M.G.M, Tom & Jerry’s home studio, animator Tex Avery “killed off” many of his creations…but not really. In his last classic cartoon appearance Screwy Squirrel is a victim to the crushing affection of a lonesome dog named Lenny parodying his counterpart in Of Mice and Men, only for the crumpled squirrel to hold up a sign acknowledging it is a sad ending. George and Junior, two bears presenting a more obvious spoof of Steinbeck’s novel, blow their brains out in Half-Pint Pygmy (a cartoon rarely seen today) and in The Cuckoo Clock, Avery’s best cartoon, Blackie the black cat is tricked into swallowing an explosive toy bird as the real canary plays taps followed by an apparently fatal explosion off screen. 

Avery may have always hinted that none of these deaths were final but Hanna and Barbera always made it clear that their cat and mouse were indestructible. A Tom and Jerry death would have no permanence beyond the end title. Tom and Jerry were too valuable an asset, single-handedly breaking Disney’s practically unbeatable streak in Oscar wins for Best Animated Short Subject. 

Nonetheless, apart from a few home video appearances Blue Cat Blues was largely forgotten by the fandom when classic animation moved to television. Many of those who remembered it had little enthusiasm for its revival. Warner, which acquired the rights to Tom and Jerry in the 80s, also felt it thematically unsound for TV repackaging. Suicide gags, once common in cartoons (especially at M.G.M and Warner Bros, though even Disney toyed with the concept on occasion), would begin falling out of fashion with increased suicide rates among youth. Still, older cartoons with this punchline were grandfathered. Blue Cat Blues, however, works differently because the pending doom is not a punchline but a framework with little humor leading up to it. 

Like many people my age I was introduced to Tom and Jerry through television in the 80s and though I had heard of this cartoon thanks to a video guide I owned I had never seen it. I discovered it as an adult fan over twenty years ago and have since held it with reserved esteem in the classic canon and not without fascination. It offers almost none of what we come to Tom & Jerry for, but it took guts and ingenuity to tear down an established formula, replace it with a gloomy premise and somehow made it work for the Tom and Jerry characters. Still, there is comfort in knowing that after Blue Cat Blues, Hanna and Barbera brought Tom and Jerry back to form with the zany Barbecue Brawl and Tops with Pops. Not long after the two legendary animators would finish their tenure at M.G.M and both Hanna and Barbera and their cat and mouse creations would move on elsewhere. Indeed, nothing in Blue Cat Blues was the end.