The Egg and Jerry

The Egg and Jerry
Directed By	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Produced by	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Story By	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Music By	Scott Bradley
Animation By	Kenneth Muse Ed Barge Irven Spence Ray Patterson
Distributed By	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date	March 23, 1956
Color Process	Technicolor CinemaScope Perspecta
Preceded By	The Flying Sorceress
Followed By	Busy Buddies

Not to be confused with The Egg and Tom and Jerry.

The Egg and Jerry is a 1956 Tom and Jerry cartoon. The short is a Cinema-Scope remake of the 1949 short, Hatch Up Your Troubles with backgrounds by Don Driscoll and layouts by Dick Bickenbach.

Plot

Jerry falls onto the floor after the woodpecker pecks away the stool that he was about to sit on.

It begins with a mother woodpecker leaving her nest for a brief lunch. The egg that she was nesting jumps up in her absence and falls to the ground, rolling into Jerry's mousehole and into his bed. Jerry wakes up to find himself sitting on the egg, which begins to hatch (and causes him to cover his legs in embarrassment and shock). Out comes a baby woodpecker who instantly takes to Jerry as his mother. The adorable, but naturally peckish woodpecker cannot resist pecking away at Jerry's furniture.

Jerry returns the woodpecker to his nest, but the little bird follows Jerry back to his hole. Eventually, Jerry gives up on the woodpecker and orders him out. With nowhere to go, the despondent baby woodpecker wanders around the garden, where he comes across an unsuspecting Tom, who is sitting in a deckchair, drinking and reading a magazine. The woodpecker carelessly pecks slightly at the deckchair's leg. An irritated Tom pours his drink onto the woodpecker, who then proceeds to peck through the entire leg of the deckchair, causing it to fold up with Tom still sitting on it.

Mayhem ensues. Tom begins to chase the bird, who screeches "Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama!" Jerry emerges from his mousehole and decides to intervene, stopping Tom with a rake. However, Tom manages to grab hold of the rake, trapping Jerry in the process, who cannot run away. The woodpecker pecks off the end of the rake, allowing Jerry to run off, and sending Tom hurtling backwards into a mailbox. Tom hurls the long remainder of the rake handle at Jerry and the bird, but the bird quickly pecks it down to a stub. In the ensuing chase, Tom swallows the bird. The bird pecks deep inside Tom's stomach, which vibrates violently. Tom drinks from a bucket of water, only for the water to seep out through tiny holes in his body. Jerry knocked Tom's tail and the woodpecker eventually pecks his way out through Tom's teeth, and as Jerry runs off, he runs straight into an axe and is knocked out cold. As Tom attempts to disembowel Jerry, the woodpecker continually pecks at the cat's head. Tom grabs the woodpecker in his hand and corks his beak, rendering the woodpecker useless at attacking him. Tom then ties the woodpecker to a telegraph pole. However, the woodpecker manages to free himself, and noticing that Jerry has very little time to escape, quickly performs a complicated calculation in order to stop Tom and rescue Jerry. He pecks the post and Tom almost gets Jerry, but the falling telegraph pole lands on Tom's head, bouncing repeatedly and hammering him into the ground.

The baby woodpecker finally locates his mother.

Jerry is thankful for the woodpecker's help. However, the mother woodpecker flies into the scene. The baby woodpecker seems to figure out who his actual mother is after all, and gets whisked away by her. Jerry realizes that he will miss his avian companion more than he thought he would. Just then, the baby woodpecker flies back to Jerry, gives him a loving kiss and flies away again, as Jerry waves him off happily.

Production inconsistencies

• Due to the original episode's conversion to widescreen, in the scene where Jerry forces the baby woodpecker out on his own, Jerry's legs are now visible despite the fact he goes back inside his house and slams the door.

Trivia

• On the WB Kids YouTube channel, the cartoon is presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio instead of its CinemaScope format in the Classic Cartoon Compilation videos.
• This was the first Tom and Jerry cartoon that has "In CinemaScope" on the title card.
• This episode uses the same audio from the past short, just like Tops with Pops for Love That Pup and Feedin' the Kiddie for The Little Orphan. And this episode is the only CinemaScope remake recorded as same as the past short. Both of them recorded by Western Electric Sound System.