Sleepy-Time Tom is a 1951 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 58th Tom and Jerry short.
Plot[]
Tom and his cat friends—Butch, Lightning, and Meathead—are singing loudly at the crack of dawn. The cats drop Tom off at home; he is very tired from the night out. He climbs up onto the window ledge. Mammy Two Shoes chastises Tom for leaving her to take over his job of keeping Jerry out of the refrigerator while he was out partying all night. Tom goes to the kitchen and nearly falls asleep until Mammy warns him that he will be kicked out of the house if she catches him sleeping. Jerry appears in the cookie jar while he is eating a cookie and hears Mammy's warnings and Jerry decides to make things difficult for Tom, encouraging the cat to fall asleep in order to get him thrown out.
First, when Mammy leaves the kitchen and spa the door, Jerry offers Tom a bed made out of a table, a tablecloth as a blanket, and a loaf of bread as a pillow. Tom accepts this gift, but when he starts to sleep in it, he hears Mammy calling him and begins to chase Jerry. However, he trips over a carpet and his hand lands on a cushion, and as the carpet unrolls to cover him, he falls asleep again. He wakes up upon hearing Mammy's voice again, and nearly catches Jerry, who turns on the radio, which plays a soothing song (the final half of which is the opening to Brahm's Lullaby) and causes Tom to fall back asleep. He almost falls asleep on Mammy's shoe, but wakes up and resumes looking for Jerry.
Tom finds Jerry in his mouse hole and waits for him to come out, taking a bat that he prepares to hit Jerry with. He yawns and starts to lie down, and Jerry brings him a pillow, which Tom's head falls on. Jerry manually closes his eyes, but Tom is awakened again when he loses grip of the bat, which hits him and startles him awake. Tom kicks the pillow and go get himself a cup and coffee jug and ends up drinking loads of coffee to keep himself alert. Even after drinking from the whole pot, Tom still falls asleep until Mammy goes to Tom and asks him, “Were you sleeping?,” Tom shakes his head, Tom continues to try everything to stay awake.
Tom tries different way to get himself awake by Tom sticks toothpicks under his eyes to try to keep them open, but both toothpicks snap under the weight of his eyelids. He then tries sticking tape onto the top of his head to keep his eyes open, only for his head to cover his eyes. He cunningly paints yellow circles on his eyelids to give the illusion that he is awake though his eyes are closed and he is sleeping. Mammy is led to believe that Tom is awake, but Jerry sees through Tom's ploy. Jerry starts to paint some signs and rips off part of Tom's fur. The cat is immediately woken and chases after Jerry, but Tom stops to read the signs the mouse has made: Are you sleepy? Want a bed? Solid comfort - straight ahead.
Jerry's signs lead Tom to Mammy's bedroom, where Tom falls asleep on her bed. After switching off the lamplight, Jerry watches as an unsuspecting Mammy sees Tom on her bed, and violently beat Tom up and throws him out of the house. Tom crashes into a fence but soon falls asleep once again with a brick as a pillow since he is too tired to care and he didn’t mind sleeping outside anyway. Around the corner come Tom's friends, then upon spotting Tom having dozed off they pick him up and tug him along with them through the alleyway, singing in the moonlight once again whilst they are leaving.
Characters[]
Starring[]
Featuring[]
Notes[]
- This is the first and only Tom & Jerry short where Meathead wins in the end.
- This is the first cartoon where Meathead and Lightning are shown together, hence proving that these two cats are separate characters. In such instances, both cats are colored differently to tell them apart from each other. Both Meathead and Lightning would reappear side-by-side again in the Spike and Tyke cartoon Scat Cats.
- The title card is similar to the 1957 reissue title card of The Midnight Snack, albeit with a silhouette of Tom instead of Jerry in the title card.
- The two singing brown cats with Butch may be mistaken as Meathead and Lightning, for they are addressed as "Light Brown Cat" & "Dark Brown Cat" in credits.
Errors[]
- When dropping Tom at his house in the beginning, Lightning and Meathead appear to have had their colors switched, with Lightning being colored brown and Meathead being colored orange. This mistake is shown to be fixed when the three cats reappear in the end.
- When Tom was drinking coffee to stay awake, there were no stains on the floor, despite coffee visibly spilling out.
- After Mammy reminded Tom when she pulls out the coffee jug, her hand is skipped frame-by-frame and points to Tom.
Gallery[]
Main article: Sleepy-Time Tom/Gallery