A user on YouTube is posting various really, really random versions of Tom & Jerry cartoons. Up first is something I hadn’t seen before – the (literally) recolored version of Nit-Witty Kitty that Chuck Jones’s studio handled for television. This is point-for-point identical to the original, except for Mammy being colored white. I’m sure that this is a work-copy, that would later have June Foray’s Irish maid voice dubbed over the original Lillian Randolph soundtrack, but it’s still trippy to watch.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfLnGpQU7EE&hl=en&fs=1&]
Of weirder interest is the TV edit of Mouse Cleaning, where they did new footage of Tom getting out of the coal – this time not imitating Stepin Fetchit. Most likely Tom Ray’s animation there. Old habits never die I see. Take a look at the cel color error of Tom’s chest in the new footage. Always a sure sign of a Jones animator.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrTx8rgwAo&hl=en&fs=1&]
(Incidentally, the Stepin Fetchit gag is one of the few times I actually laugh at a blackface gag in a cartoon. Hell, what can I say, it works there, and it’s really, really funny.)
If Warner Home Video actually uses the original full 30-minute episodes of Tom & Jerry for their Saturday Morning Cartoons DVD (as opposed to inserting new copies of the cartoons into the print and just using the original openings and transitions), it’s possible one of the reanimated Mammys could show up there.
Man, that print of Mouse Cleaning is completely butchered up.
I remember seeing an edited version of Mouse Cleaning which just cut from “Mammy” emerging from the heap of coal to the shot of Tom reacting as she yells “Thomas!” It was quite a clean cut actually, it wasn’t obvious that something was missing.
The user also posted the re-colored version of Triplet Trouble, IIRC (or it could’ve been just Mammy that was re-colored).
The whole idea of making Mammy white disgusts me. I don’t mind dubbing her voice as much as changing her race… Freakin racist WHV.
Actually, looking at the Triplet video again, there’s new animation in that one too! Sucked to be a T&J fan in the 70’s (or whenever these were commonly shown).
I remember seeing the Irish-brogued White Mammy T & J shorts on CBS before the original cartoons were syndicated to local stations in the late 1970s (along with Woody Woodpecker shorts) – weird seeing the White Mammy w/o the June Foray voiceover.
That version of MOUSE CLEANING is very trippy – the reanimating of the end gag to make it palatable for Saturday morning is quite obvious – also sounds time-compressed.
I never saw Mouse Cleaning, Old Rockin’ Chair Tom, Triplet Trouble, Part Time Pal, The Lonesome Mouse, A Mouse in the House or Sleepy-Time Tom on TV growing up in the early 1980s. For the most part Mammy cartoons never seemed to show up in my area and I didn’t see most of them until I got cable in the early ’90s.
However, I do have a copy of Nit-Witty Kitty from the early ’80s where EVERY SINGLE SHOT of Mammy was removed completely, so that the entire cartoon made no sense at all.
I recall seeing in syndication a VERY long time ago a 60’s print of Saturday Evening Puss. It featured the white woman with Mammy’s voice. The new animation barely made sense of some of the sound effects heard when um, White Mammy was preparing for an evening out.
It must’ve been confusing for those growing up during the 60’s to later know the truth behind these cartoons.
That version of “Saturday Evening Puss” was on a VHS tape that I rented in 1986 or 1987.
These are very weird clips, Thad. Somebody who didn’t know any better might think that this is what the original creators intended. This new ending to “Mouse Cleaning” is especially messed up. Great finds!