Mouse Cleaning

Plot synopsis:
The cartoon opens with Mammy Two Shoes mopping the kitchen floor. After she finishes, she is happy to have cleaned the entire house and hopes that it will remain clean; unfortunately, it doesn't, as the camera cuts to Tom chasing Jerry outside, rounding a corner too wide and through a mud puddle, and then continuing the chase into the house. He runs into Mammy and she hits him with the mop, chastises him for making such a huge mess and forces him to mop the floor. As Tom finishes, Mammy prepares to go shopping. She warns Tom that he had better not make any more messes in the house, or the whole neighborhood will lose one cat around here: him.
Tom nods his head in fright and Jerry, hiding behind a broom, also nods his head, about to take stock of the situation for the purpose of sabotaging Tom's efforts. After Mammy closes the door, Tom sticks his tongue out at her and makes a face, but she opens the door and points her finger directly at Tom, giving him a final warning that the place has to be clean or else. Tom then nods again and kisses her finger, smiling politely, and satisfied, Mammy leaves. For the rest of the cartoon, Jerry takes advantage of this conditional to torment the cat and to get him into trouble once and for all.
Tom finishes the remainder of the cleaning. Feeling relieved, Tom wipes the sweat off his forehead, but he immediately has to clean this up in addition. A fly buzzes through the room and leaves dirt behind on one of the windows, so Tom has to wipe the window down to boot. When he turns around, he is shocked out of his wits to see Jerry deliberately scooping ashes from an ashtray onto the floor. Tom quickly grabs a broom and dustpan and cleans up the mess, but no sooner has he finished doing so when Jerry is on the floor, holding the ashtray like a parade drum, and tripping the switch to dump more ashes onto the ground. Shocked and fed up, Tom angrily hurls a tomato at Jerry, who ducks as the tomato splatters into the wall, which creates an even bigger mess for Tom to clean up.
In apoplexy, the cat collects a bucket and starts to clean the wall, but he refuses to concentrate on the bucket and fails to spot Jerry deliberately emptying blue ink from an ink pen into the bucket. Midway through cleaning up the tomato, Tom has created an identically sized mess of blue ink on the wall caused by Jerry, and he realizes what has happened when he becomes aware that the water and towel are blue. In absolute dread, the cat covers his eyes and slowly turns to peek at his new mess, and then lifts his hand; his eyes exaggeratedly pop out and his jaw drops.
Soon, Tom sees Jerry holding the ink pen, and he starts a new chase in complete maniacal rage, which quickly stops when the pesky mouse threatens to squirt ink over the drapes. Smirking, he carries out this threat, but no ink successfully escapes; apparently, the pen is empty. The cat, delighted, steals the pen and accidentally empties it onto the drapes. In horror, he grabs the drapes and runs them through the washing machine, the wringer, and the iron. Exhausted, the cat replaces the drapes and breathes out hoarsely.
Shortly after this happens, Jerry returns to his sabotage again; this time, he deliberately juggles six eggs while walking a tightrope, forcing the cat to protect him in case he falls and, eventually, to catch the eggs when Jerry flings them across the room. In addition to juggling, Tom is forced to catch a cream pie on a fork using only his head, until he barely stands up. As the coup de grace, Jerry deliberately pulls the rug from under Tom, and although the cat recovers in time to snatch the egg carton and catch every egg in it, he completely forgets about the pie, which splatters onto his face.
Having been humiliated again, Tom searches for Jerry, who soon opens the front door for an old horse to walk into the house. Tom scares Jerry back out of the house as he quickly grabs the horse and throws it out (presumably doing away with Jerry in the process), and while his enemy is occupied with this, Jerry takes the opportunity to unknowingly re-enter the house through an electrical outlet marked Emergency Entrance, ready for another scheme. Tom goes to sleep, having apparently gotten rid of all threats.
Meanwhile, Jerry pushes an ink stamp pad onto Tom's feet and hands, and when the cat wakes up, he shuts the pad on Tom's nose before the cat can process what he sees; accordingly, Tom forgets about the stamp pad and chases the mouse. Jerry leads Tom on an off-screen chase through the entire house, and when the duo finally pulls back into view, Jerry stops the chase and points, prompting the cat to look at the disgraceful, gigantic mess of paw prints he now has to clean up. Looking at his now ink-covered paws, Tom makes the connection and picks up the mouse, hurls him down the laundry chute, and races to clean the house before Mammy returns.
On the verge of finishing his cleaning job, Tom sees a furious Mammy coming up the sidewalk; he hurriedly finishes, then stows the cleaning supplies behind the couch and sits down hopefully, waiting impatiently for Mammy's return. Meanwhile, a truck full of coal has come to the house to make a delivery, but Jerry grabs a rope and ties it to the delivery chute. Jerry pulls the delivery chute up to the living room such that the entire shipment of coal literally barges into the house (Jerry is not seen again afterwards), pushing Tom towards the front door and then knocking Mammy down the moment she opens it. As soon as she digs her head out from the coal, she begins threatening to throttle Tom, despite the utter impossibility of Tom being responsible for this new mess. Just then, Tom emerges in blackface.
Thinking that he is a black man with information on Tom, Mammy asks him if he saw Tom. Tom, knowing that he is in trouble now, responds (via Stepin Fetchit's voice) that he has not: "No, Ma'am! I ain't seen no cat around here! Uh uh! There are no cats, no place, no how! No MA'AM!". Tom, meanwhile, walks away from the coal pile, but only his head is blackened, so his ruse doesn't fool Mammy. Then Mammy begins to pelt pieces of coal angrily at him. He taunts her despite the fact that the last few pieces of coal barely missed him and tries to run away, but soon, Mammy throws another piece of coal into the distance and it ends up hitting Tom, knocking him out in an identical fashion to Tee for Two as the cartoon ends.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
Mouse Cleaning is one of the most hilarious Tom and Jerry cartoons ever!.
Just rewatched this classic Tom and Jerry cartoon on YouTube.
It's the one where Mammy Two-Shoes (voice of Lillian Randolph who I knew from my favorite movie It's a Wonderful Life as well as from the radio show "The Great Gildersleeve") threatens Tom eviction if she sees one spot in the house when she comes back.
Naturally, Jerry will do everything to Tom so he gets his just desserts!
When I first saw this in the late '70s on afternoon television, they actually showed the cat in blackface at the end and speaking in the now unacceptable dialect of the stereotypical Negro.
Despite that, this is one of the most hilarious cartoons ever!
I mean, it's so hilarious seeing Tom frantically cleaning up while Jerry the mouse sabotages him at every turn!
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera really topped themselves with this one and perhaps one-upped M-G-M colleague Tex Avery as well.
So on that note, I highly recommend Mouse Cleaning..
Recycling old material.
Tom is given an ultimatum once again, he's out for good if the house is not clean when his master comes back from shopping.OK, it's pretty much like the first Tom & Jerry short "Puss Gets the Boot", except for not breaking things it's about not dirtying things: Tom cleans and scrubs while Jerry does the exact opposite.
It's not too hard to guess how it'll end...The artwork is not bad if not anything to write home about and there are a couple funny sight gags, like Tom kissing his masters finger.
Whenever these cartoons brought a new character to the screen (s)he had a purpose, be it a rival cat or a love-stricken buzzard.
This one has a horse that could have been something but stays in the picture for 10 seconds doing nothing - either the writers lacked imagination or the animator thougth that a hay-eating-horse is the funniest thing on earth.On a positive side Tom has probably never had a more feline moment when he goes to sleep and stretches his feet and toes.
If you own a cat you'll know what I mean when you see the moment.Although Jerry has tormented Tom in every cartoon, in this cartoon his anarchistic malice, especially pouring the ink into the cleaning water reminded me a lot of Harpo's pranks in those Marx films, where Harpo could shred unsuspecting peoples clothes and paperwork with a big smile.So there.
It's worth a look and not that bad as I may make it sound, just average..
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Mammy-Two-Shoes (not dubbed by the PC-brigade in the version I saw) has just finished cleaning the whole house when Tom bursts in the door, covered in muck, chasing Jerry.
She freaks and tells him to keep the house spic and span until she gets back from the store.
This he has no problem doing, but Jerry, for no other reason than to be mean, decides to wreck the place so Tom works himself to death picking it up after him.There are some good gags but I'm surprised no one complained at the final bit where Tom, covered in coal dust (now looking like a black cat) pretends to be some other cat to Mammy-Two-Shoes and acts like a retarded, cotton-picking 19th century slave.
I don't find it offensive, he's probably just mimicking Jim from Huckleberry Finn but it's this kind of thing that cartoons got away with back in the day and something you'll never see in the airbrushed, static, PC crap of today.No one is credited for Tom's voice or Mammy-Two-Shoes'..
A Classic Tom & Jerry.
Tom Cat is warned by his master: "If I find one dirty spot here in this house, we're going to be minus one cat around here." Jerry Mouse makes a mess to clean up and finally, the mouse fills up the house with coal..
I like Tom and Jerry a lot, and while I did find Mouse Cleaning entertaining, I did find it nothing special as well.
The artwork is beautiful with some truly lovely background art and colouring, and the music is typically energetic.
Most of the gags do work, particularly with Tom desperately tries cleaning up the house with Jerry making it increasingly difficult and Tom and Jerry are both fun to watch.
What didn't quite work for me was the standard story, one or two moments where the pacing wasn't as secure as it could have been, the beginning particularly could have had less time to get started, and two questionable gags, one being the horse gag, which was rather lame, and the one with Tom covering himself in coal dust and the way he acts after, which is some proof of why I can be sometimes marvel at what cartoons can get away with.
All in all, nothing special but it was entertaining.
All in all, nothing special but it was entertaining.
7/10 Bethany Cox. A fairly good Tom & Jerry short.
Tom & Jerry are one of my favorite characters from Hanna/Barbera along with Penelope Pitstop and Scooby Doo.This short is a fairly good, and it has a couple of good gags like Jerry scattering ash from the ash tray in a way like a marching band drum, and in the end where Tom in blackface does a Stepin Fetchit routine.
Of course, cartoons from the 1930s to the 1950s contain gags that included stuff that appear to have racial or ethnic prejudice, which were a common place in American society at that time, so keep that in mind.
So like I had said, this is a fairly good short.
But one last thing is that I didn't get the old horse gag, I mean what's it going' do?
stink up the whole house?
or crap everywhere?
*NOTE* 7/10 Stars for a mediocre gags and one that didn't make sense (to me).
Jerry does the dirty on Tom..
Mouse Cleaning might just feature a new take on an old ideaTom must prevent Jerry from causing a mess, or he's out on his earbut, thanks to some very funny gags and one delightfully un-PC moment (thankfully left intact in the version I saw), it actually proves to be a pretty enjoyable cartoon.There is plenty of fun to be had from watching the mischievous Jerry mouse trashing Mammy Two Shoes' house, and Tom's desperate attempts to return the place to its original spick-and-span condition are a delight to behold.
Hilarious highlights include the mouse squirting ink into a bucket of water being used by Tom to clean up a mess, Tom juggling eggs and balancing a pie in an effort to prevent further chaos, Jerry leading an old horse into the house (a brief moment, but very funny), and the mouse inking up an exhausted Tom's paws and then getting the poor cat to chase him all over the house.And that un-PC moment?
Well, Jerry redirects a coal delivery so that it pours through an open window.
When Mammy sees the ensuing turmoil, a black-faced Tom adopts a negro accent and slowly slips away..
Not PC but very funny.
After Thomas chases Jerry into the house and gets the kitchen floor muddy after Mammy Two Shoes has just cleaned it he is told he must clean it up while she is out...
and if there is any mess in the house when she returns he won't be living there any more.
Needless to say Jerry takes this as his cue to make as much mess as possible; he empties the ash tray onto the carpet; juggles eggs and squirts ink into the water Tom is using to clean the walls.
Eventually it looks as if Tom has got the house spotless again...
that is until Jerry redirects the coal delivery just as Mammy Two Shoes returns...
leading to a politically incorrect black-face gag that is cut from versions aired today.This short may take place in the standard setting but it is a little different as for the most part Tom isn't racing around trying to catch Jerry.
Here Jerry is very much the antagonist as he tries to make a mess.
The gags vary from the obviously funny, such as the egg juggling, to downright malicious; such as ink gag.
The final gag, which is cut from some versions, is a little shocking in this day and age as Tom, with his face blackened by coal talks like a black man...
although at least his voice was provided by a black man not somebody pretending to be black..
Fascinating, if somewhat derivative, Tom and Jerry short.
This is a Tom and Jerry short from the late 1940s.
There will be mild spoilers ahead: This short, which features Mammy Two-Shoes, a recurring human character, is a very good though typical Tom and Jerry short.
Mammy has just spent much of the day cleaning house when Tom chases Jerry into the house, tracking mud on the floor in doing so.Mammy sets Tom to clean up his mess and tells him he's out if she sees any mess when she gets back from shopping.
He's faced similar "or else" situations before, so now the drill is in place-Jerry hears the threat and gleefully sets about making certain there's plenty of chances for there to be a mess which forces Tom to spend much of the short frantically cleaning the messes Jerry so fiendishly engineers(most with Tom's unwitting participation.Jerry's most devilish trick just happens to coincide with Mammy's return and the ship hits the sand for poor Tom, who hasn't a prayer of getting clear of things.
Mammy has a great throwing arm and a fine sense for trajectories and cartoon physics!
Poor Tom.There are a few details which some might find offensive, so, sadly, this cartoon will probably never find a release on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is a shame, because it's an entertaining short and deserves to be seen.
It's got a superb vocal performance by Lillian Randolph as Mammy.
Well worth watching.
Recommended.