Mouse in Manhattan is a 1945 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 19th Tom and Jerry short.
Plot[]
Jerry has enough of the country life and decides to leave for the city. Before departing, he writes a farewell letter to Tom that reads:
"Dear Tom,
The country life is getting me down...
I'm off for Broadway and the bright lights.
Goodbye forever,
- Jerry"
then gives a final raspberry to the sleeping cat, assuring that the mouse will not miss him. In a series of antics in Manhattan, he gets stuck in gum on the floor of Grand Central, ends up as a makeshift shoe-polisher, admires the towering skyscrapers, and even attempts to literally climb the Empire State Building, but to no avail, and gets scared when he sees the statue and runs into a woman's green heeled shoes. He looks straight up at her dress and walks under her shoes. As Jerry makes it there, he sees a woman's large toe and polished toenail at the bottom of her shoe and he uses it as a mirror to make him look nice. After he's done grooming: he walks away and accidentally falls into a stream beside the sidewalk and floats away on a bottle cap. He admires beautiful girls wearing pretty shoes and also Times Square before falling down the sewer, has a close shave with oncoming traffic, gets nauseated in an elevator, moves under the carpet to the Starlite Room and moves again where he bumps into a doorway, crawls into a room and comes out blushing. He looks up at the sign which says Powder Room and runs to the Check Room near the Powder Room that he passed.
As he tries to fix the top hat he was on, it pops up fast squishing him down and down again before he bounced out of the room. After he fixes his hat, he sees the woman from the powder room and he jumps on the back of the train dress behind her legs and takes a ride. He almost falls down the drain and gets knocked off by the plant handle in the way, gets back up and follows the direction where she went so he can have fun with her shoes and go home with her but instead heads toward the table and dangles precariously over the city on an ever-breaking candle. Later, he dances with several place cards.
While dancing, Jerry loses his balance and gets stuck in a champagne bottle which pops him out of the building and he falls all the way to the ground with the help of a sock on a clothesline which becomes his parachute. He lands in a dark alley in a puddle, sneezes and is heard and scared off by an alley full of vicious cats. He then hurtles across the city on trash cans, one of which hits a fire hydrant and sends him flying through a jewelry shop window, after which he is shot at by the police. As Jerry escapes the city: he quickly races over the George Washington Bridge, empty highway, and railroad tracks back to the countryside, deciding that city life is not for him.
Upon returning home, it would seem that Tom had been asleep the entire time that Jerry was gone. Jerry tears up the note and rapidly kisses Tom, waking him up in the process. The short ends with Jerry nailing a sign reading "Home Sweet Home" above his mousehole, bumping into it and entering afterwards, choosing to remain in the countryside.
Characters[]
- Jerry Mouse
- Tom Cat (cameo)
- Black Cat (cameo)
Errors[]
- During the scene featuring Jerry dancing with the dolls, after the dance with the black-haired and blond-haired ones, he looks at an orange-haired doll and begins to dance with it. A few seconds later, when Jerry and the doll dance on the plate, the orange-haired doll's hair becomes blond by for rest of the scene.
Censorship[]
- On Cartoon Network and Boomerang in America, the scene of Jerry's head being used to polish a black shoe abruptly cuts off before the viewers can see Jerry in blackface. The scene is left uncut on international versions of Cartoon Network and Boomerang and was uncut on TNT back when that channel aired MGM and WB cartoons (the late 1980s into the 1990s).
Production[]
This is the second Tom and Jerry cartoon to have animation by Ed Barge, although this is the first time he was credited. The first Tom and Jerry cartoon with animation by Ed Barge was Quiet Please!, which was released some months later.
Notes[]
- Tom plays a rather insignificant role in this cartoon. He shows little to no action throughout the entire short, only being shown sleeping in the beginning and at the end of the cartoon. This is thus the first cartoon to focus only one of the two characters.
- This was the first cartoon to be released after V-E Day.
- The music used throughout the cartoon is called "Manhattan Serenade", which was originally composed by Louis Alter, but arranged by Scott Bradley in this cartoon.
- This cartoon is possibly a nod to Aesop's fable, "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse", where two mice visit the countryside and the city, only to end up with inactivity in the former and dangers in the latter. In the end, the country mouse prefers safety in the countryside, while the town mouse prefers the lively atmosphere in the city.
- Jerry seems to fulfill the roles of both mice throughout the cartoon. In the beginning, he behaves like the town mouse, preferring to see the Broadway and bright lights of the city. But by the near end, his role switches to the country mouse, choosing to return home after experiencing several life-threatening mishaps from the city.
- The realistic cat screeches made by one of the vicious alley cats that scared off Jerry in the streets of Manhattan (the one resembling Butch Cat) were provided by Harry E. Lang, who previously provided the vocal effects of Tom and other MGM cats in general in the early-1940s.
- While floating in a teacup through the gutter in Times Square, Jerry passes by a movie theater. The marquee on the theater reads, "Now Playing! A Tom & Jerry Cartoon!"
- The RFD lettering stamped on the mailbox outside Tom and Jerry's home stands for Rural Free Delivery, emphasizing the isolation of their country abode.
Gallery[]
