Purr-Chance to Dream

**Purr-Chance to Dream** is a 1967 *Tom and Jerry* short directed by Ben Washam.

## Title

The title is a play-on-words of "perchance to dream" a famous quotation from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Like several Chuck Jones-produced Tom and Jerry shorts, this one arguably tends to focus more on poses and personality than on storyline and plot.

## Plot

Tom wakes up after a nightmare of being turned into a nail-shape and pounded into the ground by a giant bulldog. When he sees Jerry catching a bone, he grabs him but Jerry wallops him on the head with it and runs off, stopping at a giant dog house. When Tom approaches it, he is reminded of his dream and runs off in horror.

Instead, a small bulldog (first seen in *The Cat's Me-Ouch!*) comes out. When Tom grabs Jerry, the bulldog grabs his tail and rapidly eats away at Tom's fur, spinning in a blur, and pounding his head to the ground. Jerry pats the bulldog as a reward, in which the bulldog licks Jerry in the face, causing him to laugh.

Tom has several attempts at catching Jerry, even stuffing an oversized bone with dynamite, spraying himself with dog repellent, and lastly playing fetch with the dog by throwing a stick into a safe, and hurling the safe into a deep pit.

However, every time, the minuscule pup manages to eat away at Tom, and in the final attempt, the pup manages to chew away at Tom until he is literally pieces of hair. Tom finally gives up, he takes some medicine and plays some smooth jazz on a record before going back to sleep and calmly dreaming of being pounded once again into the ground, which to Tom, has stopped seeming scary and has now become a rather pleasant thought, after all, it's better than dealing with that tiny mutt.

## Notes

* This is the last short of many things:
	+ The last short to be produced by Chuck Jones.
	+ The last short to have Mel Blanc and June Foray voicing characters.
	+ The last short in the Chuck Jones era.
	+ The last short released in the Golden Age of American Animation (1928-1969).
	+ The last Tom and Jerry production to be released by MGM during the Golden Age of American Animation. Warner Bros. produced two shorts "The Mansion Cat" and "The Karate Guard".
	+ The last appearance of the small bulldog from "The Cat's Me-Ouch!".
	+ The last appearance of Tom and Jerry, the main duo, on the big screen until "The Karate Guard", four decades and a century later, which that short would be the final short to appear in cinemas.
	+ The last short written by Irv Spector.
	+ The last short to have music composed by Carl Brandt.
	+ The last short animated by Phillip Roman, Tom Ray, Ken Harris, Dick Thompson, Don Foster, and Don Towsley.
	+ The last short directed by Ben Washam.
	+ The last short released in 1967.
	+ The last short to have both Tom and Jerry win.
* The cartoon, along with "Duel Personality", has been aired on August 8, 1981 on BBC in United Kingdom.
* In 2019, the short was adapted into a Japanese musical drama.

## Availability

* (1994) LaserDisc - *The Art of Tom & Jerry, Volume III: The Chuck Jones Cartoons*, Side 3
* (2009) DVD - *Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection*, Disc 2 (Warner Bros.; cropped to widescreen)
* (2018) Streaming - Boomerang (restored)

## References

1. ↑ https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First&Search\_Arg=RE0000705317&Search\_Code=REGS
2. ↑ https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/70d53fe25146474ca8e57d84bd147e43