Original poster.
The Yankee Doodle Mouse is a 1943 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the eleventh Tom and Jerry short.
Plot[]
Tom and Jerry are at war with each other. The cat chase the mouse through a cellar, but the mouse was able to take shelter in his own mousehole (labeled "Cat Raid Shelter"). Tom peers into the hole, and Jerry launches a tomato from a mousetrap into his face. Jerry then climbs up the wall and grabs a handful of eggs from a carton marked "Hen-Grenades". As Tom wipes the tomato off his face, he is promptly covered in egg, with one hit leaving the effect of the yolk form a monocle to his eye. Tom goes into defense by taking cover, wearing a pot on his head. Jerry attacks by shooting off the corks from a champagne case, pushing the cat backwards until he lands into a tub of water with only a pot to keep him afloat. The mouse promptly launches a brick from a spatula, sinking a huge hole on the pot where the cat is standing. The cat sinks down in the water. A war communiqué is displayed, reading "Sighted cat – sank same. Signed, Lt. Jerry Mouse."
Tom approaches Jerry's mouse hole with a mallet in his hand, while Jerry uses a pipe as a makeshift periscope to observe; spotting this trap, he instead opens the ironing board cupboard, sending the board crashing onto Tom's head. The mouse charges down the board on a jeep made from a cheese grater attached to a roller skate, tearing Tom's fur as he speeds past, after which the jeep crashes into a wall, sending a sack of flour tumbling down. Adapting quickly to the situation, Jerry grabs the sack and spreads a makeshift flour smokescreen, which blocks Tom's vision but not Jerry's. He repeatedly smacks the nearly blind Tom in the rear with a board, but eventually, Tom falls to the ground facing the mouse; he slaps Tom a fourth time before the cat can do anything, leading to the lost segment of the short.
After this lost segment, Tom, now wearing a bowl as a helmet, throws a stick of dynamite towards Jerry, who immediately throws it back to Tom; this continues until Jerry takes it from Tom, provoking the cat to steal it back and this new cycle to continue until Jerry leaves Tom to triumphantly hold the exploding stick. Jerry jumps into a tea kettle to escape the cat's wrath, but Tom sees him and throws another firecracker into the kettle; Jerry panics, but the oxygen has run out and the mouse escapes through the spout with no explosion. The puzzled cat opens the kettle's lid and sticks his entire head in just as the firecracker goes off causing Tom's blackface to look like a flower.
Continuing his attempts to blow up the mouse, Tom launches a paper airplane with a firecracker hidden on top, but Jerry blows it back beneath Tom, who barely spots the firecracker before it goes off and is again black in the face. Jerry then plants an enormous stick of dynamite behind Tom; the cat sees it and screams in terror until the cracker splits into successively smaller sticks reminiscent of matryoshka dolls, ending with a minuscule replica of the original firecracker. Tom believes this harmless, but the dynamite explodes powerfully.
Jerry then jumps into a makeshift plane fashioned from an egg carton and drops a succession of light bulbs and a banana bomb, which hit his head and face. Tom grabs a firecracker launcher and skillfully shoots down Jerry's now weaponless plane. Jerry uses a brassiere to parachute from the plane, but is again shot down by Tom. Jerry races into his mouse hole to escape, but Tom uses the firecracker launcher and fires off five shots.
The firecrackers pursue Jerry through the cellar, even turning through Tom's commands (exploding softly in the process), and eventually, he leads them into a hose, which he shoots like a machine gun back into the barrel where Tom is hiding. The barrel explodes, leaving Tom riding the barrel parts like a bicycle, which then crashes into the wall. Recovering, Tom fires a dart gun at Jerry, which hits him on the tail as he again attempts to dive into his mouse hole.
Tom grabs the mouse and ties him to an ignited rocket; Jerry pretends to help himself be tied up, but unknown to Tom he is actually strapping the cat's hands to the rocket. Jerry emerges from the ropes, and the puzzled Tom does not realize what has happened until Jerry waves at him goodbye. He futilely attempts to blow out the fuse, but the rocket shoots high into the sky and explodes, forming the US Stars and Stripes. Jerry proudly salutes the flag, signifying he had won his battle. A final communiqué is displayed, saying "SEND MORE CATS! Signed, Lt. Jerry Mouse."
Characters[]
- Jerry Mouse
- Tom Cat (the main antagonist)
Poster of a screencap from the cartoon.
Voice actors[]
- William Hanna as Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse
Censorship[]
- When originally shown on the Cartoon Network, the segment where the kettle explodes with Tom's face in it was shortened to remove the part where Tom appears in blackface. As of recent airings since 2002, this part has been reinstated.
- In the original release, there was a scene in which Jerry forced Tom to lick defense stamps and paste them in a savings book, but that part was taken out of the negative for reissue. An original layout drawing of a background for that scene was posted on the Cartoon Network Department of Cartoons website years ago.[1]
Availability[]
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Streaming[]
Trivia[]
- This is the first Tom and Jerry short to win an award.
- This is the last short to have Tom in his "Disney-like" realistic appearance; shorts from Baby Puss onward have Tom looking more cartoonish and overall, anthropomorphic. Partially thanks to the arrival of Tex Avery in the studio and the influence of his "zany, wacky" characters to the other directors.
- This short, studio-wise, is one of the many WWII-themed MGM cartoons, with the others being Blitz Wolf (by Tex Avery), Barney Bear's Victory Garden (by Rudolf Ising), War Dogs (also directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera), The Stork's Holiday (by George Gordon) and Wild Honey (or, How to Get Along Without a Ration Book) (also by Rudolf Ising)
- Scott Bradley composes instrumentals of "Over There", "Anchors Aweigh", "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Yankee Doodle" throughout the cartoon as background music.
- "Anchors Aweigh" would again be replayed in The Mouse Comes to Dinner.
- This is the first of two 4th of July Tom and Jerry shorts. Safety Second is the other.
- This is the first cartoon in the series to feature explosives.
- This was the last cartoon to use the 1941-1943 Tom and Jerry title (since The Midnight Snack). It is also the last to use the generic MGM Cartoon ending titles.
- In the poster, Tom is shown holding his arms around the launching rocket. However, in the actual cartoon, his hands are tied and are only holding onto the stick that is attached to the rocket.
- The original title for this short was "Jerry's Defense".
- The cartoon was loosely adapted into the video game Tom and Jerry: Yankee Doodle's CAT-astrophe.
- Jerry launching a tomato into Tom's face would be replicated in the Tom and Jerry Kids theme song.
- Additionally, Jerry has a different look in the poster, as his arms are more elongated and he appears to be taller.
- This is the first cartoon in which Tom dies, the others being Mouse Trouble, Safety Second, The Duck Doctor, The Two Mouseketeers, Heavenly Puss, (although it was just a dream) and Blue Cat Blues.
- This cartoon makes numerous references to World War II, in particular technologies such as jeeps and dive bombers, represented by the uses of common household items. Jerry's war communiqué reading "Sighted cat – sank same." is a reference to "Sighted sub, sank same" by Donald F. Mason. Jerry's final war communiqué reading "SEND MORE CATS!" is a reference to "Send us more Japs!" in the Battle of Wake Island by Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham.
- Jerry's running animation while chased by fireworks is reused in two episodes of The Tom and Jerry Show (1975): No Way, Stowaways and No Bones About It.
- This short is the first appearance of blackface in the series, a running gag where characters get their faces burnt to black as the result of TNT explosions or fire burning, or characters painting their faces black, which is often edited out of current TV broadcasts in the United States due to racial stereotyping towards African-Americans.
In other languages[]
- German: Die Hauskrieg (The House War)
- Irish: Cogadh Tí (House War)
- Polish: Mysz Yankee (Yankee Mouse)
- Icelandic: Patriot mús (Patriot Mouse)
- Hungarian: Ezt szeretem az Éjszakában (That's What I like about the Night)
- Scottish: Cornail (Cornered)
- French: Le guerre des chats (The Cat War)
- Spanish: The Yankee Doodle Mouse
Gallery[]
