Baby Puss (film)
| Baby Puss | |
|---|---|
| Tom and Jerry series | |
 Re-release poster for Baby Puss | |
| Directed by |
William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Produced by | Fred Quimby (unc. on original issue) |
| Voices by | Sara Berner (unc.) |
| Music by | Scott Bradley |
| Animation by |
Kenneth Muse Ray Patterson Irven Spence Pete Burness |
| Studio | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) |
|
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Running time | 7:51 |
| Language | English |
| Preceded by | The Yankee Doodle Mouse |
| Followed by | The Zoot Cat |
Baby Puss is a 1943 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 12th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby, Baby Puss was released to theaters on Christmas day, 1943 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
This is the first Tom and Jerry short to be animated by Ray Patterson, who arrived from Walt Disney Productions after working on The Old Army Game, a Donald Duck cartoon also released in 1943. Except some time spent at Walter Lantz Productions in the 1950s, Patterson would continue to work for Hanna and Barbera into the 1980s.
Plot
A little girl is playing house, and pretending to be the mother and has also dressed Tom, apparently the family pet, up to be her baby. She scolds Tom, who is hiding under some furniture. She drags Tom out by his tail and threatens to spank him. Tom is resentful over his treatment and feels humiliated. She carries him to the bassinet, tucks him in, and shoves a bottle of milk in his mouth. She warns him, under threat of more spanking, to stay in bed while she goes downtown to buy a new girdle. Indignant at first, Tom gets a taste of milk and quickly accepts his lot, cooing like a baby and drinking from his baby bottle.
Jerry peeks from behind a doll house and sees Tom. Incredulous at first, Jerry proceeds to mock him by playing "Rock-a-bye Baby" on the turntable and pretends to be a baby himself. Tom is furious and chases Jerry into the dollhouse. Just when it seems that Tom has Jerry cornered, the girl returns and scolds Tom again. Tucking Tom back in bed, she threatens to feed him castor oil if he gets out again.
Tom goes back to playing. Jerry emerges from the doll house and runs to the window to get the attention of Meathead (first seen in Sufferin' Cats!), Butch and Topsy, Tom's three alley cat friends who are outside. When the trio see Tom, they begin to make fun of him. When Tom confronts the other cats, they continue to tease and humiliate him, tossing him like throwing a ball, causing him to land in a fishbowl, resulting in a wet diaper. They then capture him and change his dirty diaper with a fresh diaper, a safety pin, baby oil, baby powder, and a tight frilly pair of girl's rubber pants over the new diaper.
The three cats, now joined in by Jerry, are so caught up in their abuse of Tom, singing Portuguese-Brazilian Carmen Miranda's "Mamãe eu quero". A few minutes later, the whole song stops as the girl returns and demands to know what is going on. The other cats flee as the girl prepares to scold Tom. She then takes Tom to a highchair to have castor oil. Jerry then squeezes a nutcracker on Tom's tail to make Tom yell in pain and therefore eat the spoonful of castor oil. A sickened Tom rushes to a windowsill to vomit. Jerry laughs at Tom's misfortune, but the castor oil bottle, having turned over after Tom ran off the high chair he was sitting on, spills a dose of castor oil into Jerry's mouth, this results in Jerry joining Tom to vomit at the windowsill.
External links
- Baby Puss (film) at the Big Cartoon DataBase
- Baby Puss at the Internet Movie Database