Before the Tom and Jerry we now know and love of today (and who also star in weird direct-to-video movies where they visit Willy Wonka's chocolate factory) there were Tom and Jerry. Not the cat and the mouse but two guys named Tom and Jerry. They are now known as Van Beuren's Tom and Jerry to avoid confusion. I've decided to watch the very first short that seems pretty good as Halloween comes very close. Truth be told it's actually not very good but is a great example of that early-30s cartoon creepiness. Released in 1930, the first Van Beuren Tom and Jerry short, Wot A Night, is, with it's crude animation, primitive sound effects, and choppy quality of the prints I've watched on YouTube, almost a stereotypical idea of a creepy and weird 1930s cartoon. But unlike the Fleischer masterwork Swing You Sinners it's not even very joyful in addition to being creepy and weird, it's just... creepy and weird. The pace is slow, there's really no buildup, the gags just come and go. Of course this was the year 1930 (can't wait to be there for Swing You Sinners 100th anniversary) and the animators were young and it seems just drawing random funny stuff, but Steamboat Willie from 1928 had better pacing and gags. I'm not trashing the cartoon, I did enjoy watching it, but yeah it's interesting to watch, but not a classic.
It's raining a bunch outside.
As is typical with cartoons of the early 1930s, inanimate objects suddenly come to life. Little did these young animators experimenting with a brand-new artform know that close to a hundred years and their deaths later artists would take a conscious inspiration from this style, such as the video game Cuphead and the artist Shawn Dickinson.
The two identical-looking guys Tom and Jerry are driving being visited by an eerie-looking frog whilst almost flooded. A great example of the random to the point of creepiness gags sometimes found in early 30s cartoons.
A pretty good-looking bat creature.
The bat is pretty well animated compared to a lot of the cartoon.
A skeleton playing a piano causes a bunch of skeletons to get up and start dancing.
A rather uncomfortable racial stereotype. For those wondering, there will be no attempts at censorship of old cartoons and comics on this blog. It's hard to learn from the past if you pretend that certain, less admirable parts of it didn't exist. Like our own time it is important to acknowledge the darker aspects of the past and the mistakes of it and not just pretend that these fascinating cartoons weren't made by people who were above the bigotry of their time. While also acknowledging the good stuff that it had, such as for example, the wacky and inspirational cartoons of the time. But we must also learn from the darker aspects as well, such as uncomfortable racial stereotypes in these works.
Tom and Jerry are now... skeletal? It's hard to tell what the joke is even supposed to be.
And that was Wot A Night. Not even very good, but still an interesting October watch. Happy Halloween!
As is typical with cartoons of the early 1930s, inanimate objects suddenly come to life. Little did these young animators experimenting with a brand-new artform know that close to a hundred years and their deaths later artists would take a conscious inspiration from this style, such as the video game Cuphead and the artist Shawn Dickinson.
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