Purr-Chance to Dream is a 1967 Tom and Jerry cartoon short directed by Ben Washam, a longtime animator under Chuck Jones dating back to the 1940s, and produced by Jones. It is the thirty-fourth and last short by Jones and the last one made during the Golden Age of Animation.
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 having a nightmare about an evil bulldog.
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 shown 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 to turn into sausages except the head, 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.
Jerry then wheels a cart of food to the dog, and once he drops a steak on the ground, the dog starts sawing the meat, even trying to break the bone. Tom then walks in the room with a hammer, but as Tom starts swinging, the dog chews Tom's flesh, leaving nothing but hair. Jerry then sweeps the hair underneath the rug. Tom then sprays dog repellent over his body after spraying a dog, which panics like. Tom, with an "armor" of dog repellent, is immune to the dog attacks, and when the dog smells the repellent, he turns green and runs away. However, the dog comes back with a nose plier and buzz-saws through Tom's repellent armor just as he was about to eat his sandwich with Jerry inside. Tom, who has received minor scrapes from that attack, snatches his foot and puts it back on. Tom then stuffs a grenade into a bone and tosses it to the dog. The dog devours it in one bite and the grenade explodes in the dog's stomach. The dog eats at Tom's flesh, but Tom's eyes remain intact, which fall to a lump of hair, which jumps away.
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 sausages again except for his head and pounds him to the ground thus saving Jerry again.
Tom finally throws in the towel, plays some smooth jazz on a record and then takes some sleeping pills which immediately sends him to a deep slumber, where he calmly dreams of being pounded once again into the ground, which to Tom, does not appear to be so scared anymore and has now become a rather pleasant thought. After all, it's better than dealing with that tiny mutt.
Characters[]
Notes[]
- The title is a play-on-words of "perchance to dream", a famous quotation from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.
- Tom's scream when he wakes up from his nightmare is reused from the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, as is the dog's scream when Tom tests him with repellent.
- 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, and the second-to-last animated short by MGM at the time (The Bear That Wasn't, released at the end of 1967, would be the final one).
- 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 Mansion Cat and The Karate Guard, four decades and a century later, with the latter short becoming the most recent 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 161st and final short.
- This is the only short where Ben Washam is not part of the animation making.
Availability[]
Errors[]
- Tom's ear was clear briefly in one shot where he sees the giant doghouse.
Gallery[]
