Jerry-Go-Round is a 1966 cartoon.
Characters
Main Characters
- Jerry Mouse
- Circus Elephant
- Tom Cat (main antagonist)
Minor Characters
- Devil
- Clowns
Plot
Tom chases Jerry through the sidewalk as the title cards and credits are shown. Jerry gives Tom the slip and Tom turns around the other way in anger. Jerry stops short when he sees a fierce lion's mouth, but it is only an ad for a local circus. Seeing Tom approach in fury, Jerry sees no alternative but to jump into the lion's mouth. He disappears as Tom pulls up in bewilderment. He pulls some of the advert off and reveals that Jerry was lucky enough to hit a hole in the fence and is disappearing in the distance.
Tom follows Jerry into the circus and Jerry hides behind a post as Tom dashes by him. Jerry laughs and walks away when he is splashed with a tear from the Elephant that cries in pain because, she had stepped on a tack. Jerry removes the tack and the Elephant hangs back, afraid of Jerry (as he is a mouse), when Tom approaches him and the Elephant picks him up with her trunk and beats him like a drum on the stool. Jerry shows her the tack and she looks at its foot, and finding nothing there, hugs Jerry in gratitude. Tom pulls up a ladder and swipes the mouse, but met the Elephant's anger, that uses her trunk as a hammerhead. She then returns to hug the mouse. Tom emerges from the ground, dazed, and then falls unconscious.
Annoyed, Tom is sitting behind a stool, as the Elephant and Jerry participate in the circus. Jerry and the Elephant dance in the spotlight and pass a beach ball back and forth. Tom aims a big slingshot at the beach ball and burst it. The Elephant looks for her friend in concern and Tom ascends a high-rise ladder to reach the mouse, who is hanging onto the 300-foot (91 m) high wire by his feet. Tom slicks across the wire and stomps on it repeatedly to bounce Jerry into his hands. He then walks over the wire back to the ramp, only to run into an irate Elephant. She uses her weight to pull both of them all the way down to the ground, then she takes Jerry away from Tom's hand vacuuming him up with her trunk, then releases the cat, launching him out of the circus tent.
Later, Tom chases Jerry into an trampoline that leads to a diving board. Jerry sees the bowl of water 200 feet (61 m) down and holds back until Tom approaches and he can see no alternative. Tom barely misses the mouse and ends up diving himself. Jerry makes a successful dive, and the Elephant happens to come by and vacuum up all the water, taking Jerry away with her. Tom, still in midair, sees the empty bowl and points down in dismay before impact. Tom crashes through the ground with such force he falls all the way into the center of the Earth until to the hell. Kyle the Devil takes him back up to the surface and throws him out, as if to say "GET OUT!".
The Elephant is now back in her stable playing with Jerry, throwing him up into the air and then vacuuming him up back to her trunk. Tom sticks out a stick with a pepper shaker on one end and puts the pepper inside her trunk nostrils. She elicits a gigantic sneeze which throws Jerry miles and miles from the tent. Tom runs backwards with a baseball glove to catch the mouse, but somehow the Elephant has come near Tom. He runs up the Elephant's leg and perches himself to catch the mouse. However, the Elephant has other plans for Tom and she rolls up her trunk and throws the cat off her. She then catches the glove and also catches Jerry, and proceeds to cuddle the mouse again.
Jerry and the Elephant are now leading the circus parade, with Jerry playing the bugle and the Elephant playing a very loud drum which causes the cymbals to rise and then crash together. Tom hides in a manhole to create violence at the parade by putting dynamite on the road so it will explode when the Elephant stomps on the switch. However, the crashing pushes the dynamite stick back with Tom as he closes the manhole, without knowing it. The Elephant steps on the switch and Tom gets exploding despair and waves a "The End" flag in white.
Censorship
- When this short aired on WKBD in the 1980s, the first three minutes was cut for time constraints, resulting in the cartoon beginning with the ball popping and the elephant looking worried.[1]
Availability
Notes
- The title Jerry-Go-Round is a play on the name of a classic amusement park ride: a merry-go-round.
- This short reel was infamous for the LGBT allegations owing to the coding relationship between Jerry and the Elephant.[2]
- Media studies scholar, Jo Johnson, argued that the short had a coded same-sex relationship between Jerry, who was gendered by Jones as female, and a female elephant who wears a pink tutu. He also argued that the episode's ending could be read as a "prophetic depiction of Gay Pride."
- This is the second cartoon where an animal befriends Jerry & protects him from Tom after the former pulls a nail out of their foot, first being "Fit To Be Tied" with Spike.
Gallery
