The Mouse Comes to Dinner

**Mouse in Manhattan** is a 1945 *Tom and Jerry* short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.

## Plot

Mammy Two Shoes is setting up for a fancy dinner. Jerry appears from under the table and climbs on the tablecloth, observing the room as Mammy sets out more plates. She leaves the room, hoping nothing goes wrong before the company arrives. Tom appears from underneath a houseplant and rushes to the phone to invite his girlfriend, but must first keep Jerry out of the cheese-and-crackers spread. Tom bops him with a spoon and knocks him out, returns to the phone and calls up his girlfriend Toots, who answers and happily exclaims that she'd love to come to dinner.

At the meal, Jerry is forced into performing menial duties for the two cats, such as carrying food over and blowing Tom's soup for him. Frustrated at being made Tom's slave, Jerry drinks some of Tom's soup, steps onto his spoon, and proceeds to spit the soup into Tom's face. Tom retaliates by placing the spoon and Jerry directly above a candle's flame, causing Jerry to burn his feet and bottom before shooting off the spoon and landing onto some butter, which melts on contact.

Toots offers Tom some bread, but the angry Jerry sandwiches Tom's tail in between the two slices of bread; Tom even puts ketchup on the tail sandwich before chomping on it (Tom being too busy with the female cat to watch what he is putting ketchup on). After the cat leaps into the air in pain, he tries to keep a cool face towards his girlfriend, but as a result cannot see Jerry repeat the trick the second time again: When he looks back at his tail, he sees only cream, a slice of pineapple, and a maraschino cherry, which he unsuspectingly chomps again. Jerry is immediately captured and made into a champagne cork opener.

After Tom opens the bottle, he throws Jerry into a glass of water, then pours out two glasses of champagne and drinks his before Toots can notice. He tries to hug her, but she dodges him. Tom kisses his sweetheart's arm from bottom to top, and she (obviously not willing to take this step yet) sticks a spoon out for Tom to keep him away. Toots continually dodges more hugs, and when she starts jumping to avoid him, Tom hangs back and grabs her at the right moment. With no other recourse, she takes out a mallet (labeled "wolf pacifier") and whacks Tom.

Jerry laughs at this incident, mocking Tom's kissing the arm of his girl, when Tom opens a cigar with Jerry's mouth and strikes a match on Jerry's behind. Tom gets pied in retaliation (with the pie filling and the cigar giving his head the appearance of a duck's head), and attempts to return the favor, but instead hits Toots when Jerry ducks the attack.

Now angry with her boyfriend, she hurls three pies at the scared cat which all three miss when Tom ducks; Jerry pokes the cat in the rear with a fork, who stands up and is splattered by the fourth pie. Jerry runs off along the table and runs into Tom's open mouth, which was previously concealed under a serving dome; he soon realizes his surroundings are strange and runs out of the cat's mouth. When Tom completes his chomp, he only bites his own tongue thanks to Jerry that stuck it out at the last moment. Jerry then hits the serving dome with a spoon, causing the cat's head to vibrate like a cymbal, before running away.

Jerry hides in a roast turkey and, as Tom sticks knives into it, escapes and maintains the façade by mimicking yowls of pain as Tom sticks more knives into the turkey. Tom hears the guttural screaming continue even when he's not puncturing the bird, and turns around and spots Jerry's scheme. He pokes Jerry with the tip of the knife he's holding, who sharply says "Ouch". Before the cat can attack him again, the mouse hugs Tom's tail such that he will not be attacked, then bites the cat's tail. Tom yells and jumps in the air, then stops in midair when he sees Jerry has planted another knife just below him, and turns and barely avoids the blade, which went under his arm.

Tom chases Jerry across the table, but Jerry breaks a champagne bottle and holds out the jagged edge. When Tom manages to stop in time, Jerry pokes him in the rear with the broken bottle. Tom flees behind a punch bowl and is pegged by two bread rolls; enjoying the bread more than he dislikes being hit, Tom eats both and points to his open mouth as if to say "More, please." Jerry stuffs a salt shaker into a third bread roll and throws it into Tom's mouth, with the salt shaker going all the way to his tail. When chased, Jerry hides inside a candelabra and uses another candle in the candlestick to light up Tom's tail. Tom lights a cigarette from the tail-candle before he realizes what's happening, by which time his entire tail has been burnt and remains blackened throughout the entire show.

Tom rushes off to sit on an ice bucket to cool himself down, but before he can sit down, Jerry replaces the ice bucket with an oil lamp. While relaxing, he sees Toots shaking her head in annoyance; he suddenly smells burning and asks her "Hey, what's cooking?", to which she replies: "You are, stupid!". Tom laughs at her, but soon feels his back getting very hot, looks down and sees himself burning on the rump. The heat eventually becomes so painful that Tom is sent straight up through the ceiling and comes crashing down onto the table, utterly wrecking it and all the food and utensils on it except for the punchbowl. Tom is left behind at the top of an incline to it created by a plank from the table with his bow tie tangled with his tail, knocked out cold. Jerry writes S.S DRIP on his right side and sends Tom cat off by "christening" Tom as the S.S. DRIP, then he gives Toots a bottle of champagne, which she directly smashes onto Tom. Jerry and Toots watch as Tom slides down into the punchbowl and sinks inside it.

## Censorship

* On Cartoon Network and Boomerang USA, the opening showing Mammy singing and setting the dinner table and Jerry sneaking across the table pretending to be an Indian is cut. The cartoon now begins as Tom pops out of the potted plant.

## Errors/Goofs

* Toots is seen with flickering whiskers on her head, notably the scene where Tom tries to give her hug.

## Notes

* The clip of Tom's tail being set on fire was also seen in the 1982 film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
* Toots looks much older in this cartoon than in Puss n' Toots, but still in her kitten size, even though she's supposed to be a full-grown adult cat like Tom and also she speaks in this cartoon.
* This was the last cartoon to be made before V-E Day.
* This version of Toots appears as a regular in The Tom and Jerry Show (2014) and her name changed to Toodles Galore.