Another Library of Congress synopsis reveals that the first Oscar-winning Tom & Jerry, Yankee Doodle Mouse, had a scene deleted in the reissue prints. Go to page five for details.
And yes, the guys typing these up eventually did cite the characters by name in their synopses… I’ll have a few more of these up in the coming weeks. Thanks again to David Gerstein.
Why was the scene cut for re-issue? It doesn’t seem any more dated to me than any other wartime comments made in the same cartoon (ie. “Sighted sub; sank same”, for example).
The cut in the reissue copy is just totally abrupt. This is a truly awesome find Thad and Dhave. You ROCK.
So thus far, we know that two MGM cartoons have lost gags forever that none of us could have ever dreamed of, and one MGM cartoons that supposedly had a missing gag but nothing conclusive has shown up except for that one guys foggy memories.
So that explains that very odd scene change. Very interesting.
Kevin, the “MGM cartoon that supposedly had a missing gag” is DROOPY’S GOOD DEED, right?
Something conclusive *has* shown up: the original copyright synopsis, and it corresponds precisely to what we usually see. At MGM, the copyright synopses always match the first release version, so there was never a “rescuing a big fat Black lady” scene in the cartoon; at least not in any released version of it.
I’ll blog about this later.
From the synopsis, and I quote:
“Balls of fire shoot thru bung-hole.”
Yup.
Dhave,
Yes, I was talking about Droopy’s Good Deed, and when I said “no conclusive evidence” I meant that the scene didn’t show up in the synopsis you and Thad uncovered a couple of years ago.
That’s a really interesting find, Dave. It seems like such a tiny, unimportant little scene. We’ll have to physically see a copy before we can figure out why it was removed. Now I want to see the cartoon again more than ever (with the missing scene intact, of course).
Oh, this is amazing. From what I gather, from the cut-and-paste sent to me with the text from the fifth page that outlines the missing scene, Tom rushes at Jerry through a hole in a fence or wall or some such obstruction, and Jerry pins Tom’s head in place, trapping him and causing, perhaps, his tongue to loll out, much like the scene, perhaps, that showed up later in “KITTY FOILED”, only this time, as the tongue lolls out, Jerry quickly wets the back of a few stamps and pastes them in a book…and the scene dissolves to the “last licks” notification? Man, I only wish I could just hear the original scoring to this lost scene, but apparently, all scores for the 1940’s are now gone? Geez, it is one thing to lose footage involving a sign on the wall or some such thing, but to lose an entire bit or two, even something this tame, really hurts…and, while we’re at it, I detect a jump cut of some kind in “ONE HAM’S FAMILY”, as the wolf, disguised as Santa Claus, sneaks back out with the sack, believing he has Junior. I’ll have to listen again, but the cut occurs, I think, just after Junior slyly says “Goodnight, Mr. Wolf…”
Always interesting to watch old classic cartoons. As an artist it is amazing of the work effort involved way back when. In my circle of friends we have theater night and some of them with private collections of film. I was shocked when for the first time I saw an extra scene in the droopy’s good deed short. Did not know it was in there before until last weekend. Just before the cabin burns up, the other dog runs out with an African American lady who was dressed somewhat like a street walker. Seems it was not to the liking of the large dog and he throws her to the left of the screen. Very very strange..
Fuck off, troll.
Could repost the images of “Enemy Gets a Fee Good Licks”, please? The current images aren’t working.