Blue Cat Blues

Plot synopsis:
A depressed Tom sits on the railroad tracks, bent on suicide. Watching from a bridge above the tracks overhead, Jerry laments his old friend's state. Jerry knows that when he gets home, his own friends will ask him why he didn't even try to stop Tom. Jerry believes that "it's better this way, and for the first time since he met her, he will be happy". Jerry recalls the events leading up to Tom's depression:
Tom and Jerry are inseparable friends, until a beautiful white female cat catches Tom's eye. The white cat initially reciprocates Tom's affections, but that soon changes for the worst: the much-wealthier Mr. Butch lives next door to the white cat and he also becomes smitten by her. He rudely interrupts her relationship with Tom to make his move and ignores Tom's attempts to stop him. Attracted by Butch's wealth, the white cat proves herself to be an opportunist as Jerry always suspected her to be and leaves Tom.
Having seen the white cat for who she is and how she has made a fool of his best friend, Jerry urges Tom to give up and let Butch have her. Ignoring Jerry's warnings, Tom pushes himself and his finances to the limit and beyond, in futile attempts at winning back the white cat's affections. He brings her such presents as flowers, perfume, a diamond ring (with the diamond so small it has to be looked at with a magnifying glass), and a car (an utter jalopy, for which Tom literally sold himself into slavery – 20 years of it – so that he could cover 26 years' worth of payments at the annual interest rate of 112%). However, because Butch's presents are much bigger, to the point of outrageous extravagance (a large floral wreath, a tanker truck full of perfume, a ring with a diamond so large and shiny that it could not be looked at without eye protection, and an extremely long luxurious car), the white cat rejects the desperate Tom. After this incident (the refusal of his jalopy), Tom gives up all hopes of gaining the white cat and falls into a depression.
Broken-hearted, penniless and hopelessly in debt, Tom drowns his sorrows in milk – despite Jerry's pleas for him to stop. Tom almost lets himself go down the gutter (literally), but Jerry rescues him. As Jerry resuscitates Tom, they both see the white cat riding by in Butch's coupe, laden with luggage and a "Just Married" sign on the back.
Jerry breaks from the sad story to think about his own girlfriend, "Toots". He is happy that, unlike Tom's ex-girlfriend, she has been faithful. Suddenly, Jerry's love world is shattered when Toots rides by with another mouse (who looks like an adult Tuffy), a "Just Married" sign on the back of their car. Jerry, now dejected, joins Tom on the railroad tracks. They sit and wait for an oncoming train, which draws near to run over them. The oncoming train's whistle sounds louder as the cartoon fades out.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
The Experimental Tom & Jerry Cartoon.
Shortly after Hanna-Barbera had taken over as producers for Fred Quimpy, they were allowed to experiment more with Tom & Jerry.
One of the results is "Blue Cat Blues." In this short Jerry narrates Tom's struggles to win over the love of the cat next door.
Who also has a thing for Butch!
Even though this is the darkest and less humorous of the Tom & Jerry cartoons, I praise it for it's lovely style of direction.4(****)out of 4(****)stars.
A very atypical Tom and Jerry..
Not your everyday Tom and Jerry short for many reasons.
One, there's a voiceover narration by Jerry, which is odd, because Tom and Jerry rarely speak.
Two, the two are friends, which was also rare and seldom works as well as the more adversarial shorts do.
Third, and most importantly, the cartoon is rarely humorous (by design) and the jokes here are dry chuckles with a little cough and a bubble of blood at the end.
Think a Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by Tim Burton.
Not wholly successful, but it largely does work.
The creepiest ending for an MGM short that I can recall.
Not for everyone and proof that these shorts were never intended solely with children as the target audience.
Well worth watching.
Recommended with the caveats above..
As A Soap Opera Parody, It Was Very Good; Overall - A Bomb With Audiences.
This is very different from the normal Tom and Jerry cartoon and, for most people, a flop.
I see that's the consensus here, and I understand it.
This effort at humor just didn't cut it for most people including me BUT it got better and better as it went on and I'm not so sure it was a failure in what it tried to say.
Where it failed was the fact that the public didn't like it.
Not being liked by the audience is the worst sin possible in the entertainment business.Early on, there were a few gags that made me laugh, such as Tom (literally) "flipping his lid" and the excesses his rival, "Mr. Butch" went to, to impress the hot feline both he and Tom were after.
The narration tells us the sad tale of how Tom ruined himself over this woman.
It's told through Jerry's voice which sounds more like a soft Keifer Sutherland than some little mouse that we'd expect.
At first, it was annoying but then I got used to it, and almost laughed at the obvious attempt of the writers to make this overly melodramatic with lines like, "He willingly sold himself into slavery....for love." If you know a lot of 1950s movies, this sort of soapy story fits fit in.
In fact, the more I watched this, the better it got as I laughed over this soap opera parody..
You may feel a little blue after seeing this one....
Tom, who has fallen hopelessly in love with a lovely white female cat, seems to have the life of Riley until Butch, the black cat, sees her and wants to win her away from Tom.
It all becomes a battle of what gifts the two male cats can give to her.
Trouble is, Butch has more money to burn...This has a very surprising and dark tone for a series that has been driven by humour (not that it has none), and so may not be a favourite for many fans.
I have to admit it is not one of my favourites....
A real downer of a cartoon.
What were they thinking?.
The purpose of a Tom and Jerry cartoon is to make the viewer laugh, albeit with a heavy dose of sadistic violence, but this one is downright depressing.
Tom is sat on some railway tracks, waiting for an express train to come and end his life.
As Jerry recounts, the cat has a broken heart, having lost the love of his life to rival Butch, who has outclassed Tom at every turn.
After turning to drink, the cat has finally decided that suicide is his only salvation.Jerry thinks how lucky he is to have his girlfriend Toots, when he spots her in a car with another mouse, the vehicle displaying a 'Just Married' sign.
Emotionally distraught, the mouse climbs onto the tracks to join poor Tom as a train whistles in the distance.
Not exactly a barrel of laughs and consequently not one of my favourites..
the un-Tom and Jerry oddity.
A VERY un-Tom and Jerry short.
Jerry narrates this tale that revolves around Tom the cat falling in love and losing her to his rival, Butch.
Tom is best friends with Jerry here which irked me a bit.
The cartoon is also presented in Cinemascope.
Overall I found this Tom and Jerry cartoon sad and depressing.
The should have just put "Puss gets the boot" on the DVD instead and I would've been happy.
This experimental animated short can be found on disc 2 of Warner Brother's 2-DVD Spotlight Collection set.
It's the last one on the set and I'm hoping that Warner Brothers chooses to release a second Volume soon.My Grade: C-.
Tom and Jerry, albeit a very different Tom and Jerry.
I did mention in my review of Down Beat Bear that I remembered loving this cartoon as a child, so I decided to revisit Blue Cat Blues to see whether it held up.
It is good, but not as good as I remembered, so when one reviewer for Down Beat Bear said that particular Tom and Jerry cartoon was the last great Tom and Jerry I have to say after re-watching Blue Cat Blues that I agree.
There are good things definitely about the cartoon.
I did like how beautiful how some of the animation colours looked, and in regard to the animation I'd say the jewel was the sexy character design of the female cat.
The music was understated and sensitively orchestrated.
There are a few funny moments, like a couple of little words and phrases in Jerry's narration, and I was always fascinated by the lengths Tom and Butch went through to win the female cat's heart, which was what drove me to re-watching Blue Cat Blues in the first place.
I felt myself really feeling for Tom here especially for how literally broken he looked, I did in the Gene Deitch cartoons too but that was for a different reason entirely.
With Jerry, I did get the vibe that he really cared for Tom and wasn't gloating or saying I told you so over his loss.
Paul Frees also does an outstanding job as Jerry's voice.
That said, I can definitely see why people mayn't like Blue Cat Blues very much.
When people say it is an atypical Tom and Jerry cartoon, they are right, it is very.
This one is slower in pace and only has a few funny moments, and they are mild I think, in alternative to the laugh-a-minute usual standard.
While I liked the colours, I thought the backgrounds and characters lacked finesse.
I'm sure there's a scene that's lifted out of Springtime for Thomas, which ties in with how Tom and the female cat(Toots or something or other) first met, but that beautiful scene does jar with the scenes before and after that are not so much.
I was mixed on the narration, there were some poignant and some funny phrases to not make it so morbid, but there are one too many parts where it is very melodramatic.
I loved the sexy design for the female cat, but if only her looks matched her personality.
She comes across as very shallow, which actually changed my initial view of her.
All in all, not a bad cartoon but it is a long way from Tom and Jerry's best.
7/10 Bethany Cox. awwwwww..
poor Tom (and Jerry).
"Blue Cat Blues" is a 7-minute cartoon from 1956, so this one has its 60th anniversary this year.
The fa ct that Barbera and Hanna made this tells you that it is another Tom & Jerry cartoon.
But it is fairly different compared to most of the others.
First of all, we have a narrator here who tells us during the entire thing why Tom is so depressed and the narrator is actually Jerry.
We find out Tom was in love, but his girl went for a richer guy instead and married that one.
Tom sits at a bridge considering suicide I guess.
But at least Jrry is happy with his girl, or is he really?
I must say I enjoyed the watch here.
Yes it is different and I often hear people say that the great days of T&J had been over by the mid-1950s, but this one here is certainly worth watching.
It's pretty unusual for the world's most famous cat and mouse duo and maybe that's the reason why.
And luckily, nobody jumped or got rolled over as many other cartoons with the two should follow.
Thumbs up, I recommend checking it out..
How did they get away with making this one?!.
Were the cartoonists at MGM doing drugs when they made this one?!
After all, it violates so much that we'd expect from a Tom & Jerry cartoon--so much so that you wonder how they got away with it.The film begins with Tom sitting on the railroad tracks--waiting for a train to kill him!
Then something weird happens--you HEAR Jerry's voice narrating--explaining how Tom came to this point in life.
It seems he was in love but lost the sexy cat(!!) to Butch--and now he wants to die!!
Then, Jerry learns that his girl has now taken up with another mouse and he decides to join Tom--and the cartoon ends!!
So, the film includes Tom & Jerry being friends, a very sexily drawn female cat, suicide and heavy drinking!
Why not show the cat doing a line of coke or committing some atrocities while they're at it?!
This one is so inappropriate I wouldn't show it to kids, but I would show it to your adult friends, as it's hard to believe AND entertaining.
So, for entertainment value alone (despite having mediocre animation), I'd give this one a 7.