The Mouse Comes to Dinner is a 1945 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 18th Tom and Jerry short.
Characters[]
Plot[]
Mammy Two Shoes is setting up for a fancy dinner. Jerry appears from under the table and climbs on the tablecloth, observing the room as Mammy sets out more plates. She leaves the room, hoping nothing goes wrong before the company arrives. Tom appears from underneath a houseplant and rushes to the phone. However, he is stopped by Jerry's loud constant slurping from the cheese spread and crackers. Bopping the mouse with a spoon to silence him, Tom returns to the phone to call his girlfriend Toots, who happily accepts Tom's invite on taking her out to dinner.
At the dinner table, Jerry is forced into performing menial duties for the two cats, such as carrying food over and blowing Tom's soup for him. Frustrated by this, Jerry drinks some of Tom's soup before stepping onto his spoon to spit the soup into the cat's face. Tom retaliates by placing the spoon and Jerry directly above a candle's flame, causing Jerry to burn his feet and bottom before forcing to jump and land onto a large stick of butter, which melts on contact.
As Tom offers Toots some bread, Jerry appears by placing the cat's tail between the two slices of bread; Tom even puts ketchup on the tail sandwich before chomping on it (Tom being too busy with the female cat to watch what he is putting ketchup on). After the cat leaps into the air in pain, he tries to keep a cool face towards his girlfriend, but as a result cannot see Jerry repeat the trick the second time again: When he looks back at his tail, he sees a parfait consisting of pineapple with a dab of cream topped by a cherry. Tom leaps in pain the second time after chomping on his tail. However, the cat immediately recognizes Jerry's ploy and retaliates by turning the mouse into a cork opener to open a champaign bottle.
Tom then pours out two glasses for himself and Toots. However, he immediately finishes his own drink to make a move on her by hugging and kissing her. Toots however, manages to dodge all of Tom's attempts, even forcefully feeding Tom with a spoon to prevent him from kissing her. Eventually Tom successfully grabs her, causing Toots to take out her mallet (labeled "wolf pacifier") from her purse to knock Tom down.
Jerry, seeing this, laughingly mocks Tom by mimicking his rival's attempt to kiss Toots with a nearby bok choy. Tom however, notices this. Unamused, the cat forces Jerry to chomp open his cigar before striking a match on the mouse's bottom. Jerry, now fed up with Tom, approaches a nearby creme pie to hurl it at the cat. As Tom lights his cigar, the pie hits him (with the cream filling and the cigar on his mouth giving the appearance of a duck head). Tom retaliates by hurling a pie to Jerry. However, Jerry ducks to dodge it, causing the pie to hit Toots instead.
Now angry with her boyfriend, she hurls four pies at Tom, who manages to successfully duck from the first three. However, Jerry pokes the cat in the rear with a fork, causing the cat to stand in upright pain to be hit in the face with the fourth pie. Jerry then flees through table, but unknowingly runs into Tom's open mouth, who was hiding under a serving dome. Immediately noticing Tom trying to chomp him, the mouse sticks out the cat's tongue, causing Tom to painfully bite on his own tongue. Jerry then quickly uses a spoon to hit the serving dome on Tom's head to let the cat suffer from the vibration before fleeing.
Jerry hides in a roast turkey as Tom sticks knives into it. Unknown to Tom, Jerry already escaped and is standing right behind Tom, while falsely yelling yowls of pain as the cat sticks more knives into the turkey. Tom eventually notices Jerry's facade and proceeds to poke the mouse on the bottom with his knife. Before the cat can attack him again, the mouse hugs Tom's tail such that he will not be attacked, then bites the cat's tail. Tom yells in pain and jumps in the air, then stops in midair when he sees Jerry has planted another knife pointed upward just below him, only to fall with the blade harmlessly passing under the cat's arm.
Furious, Tom chases Jerry across the table, but Jerry breaks a champagne bottle and holds out the jagged edge. When Tom manages to stop in time, Jerry pokes him in the rear with the broken bottle. Tom flees behind a punchbowl and is pegged by two cream rolls by the mouse. Enjoying the pastry, Tom eats both and urges Jerry to feed him more by pointing to his open mouth. Jerry finally stuffs a salt shaker into a third cream roll and throws it into Tom's mouth, with the salt shaker going all the way to his tail. When chased, Jerry hides inside a candelabra and sticks Tom's tail in one of the open slots of the candelabra before lighting it up with another lit candle. Eventually, Tom gives up searching Jerry and proceeds to light a nearby cigarette from the tail-candle. Realizing what's happening, his tail immediately catches on fire and burns, causing the cat to painfully scream and run to an ice bucket.
As Tom is about to sit down, Jerry quickly replaces the ice bucket with an oil lamp. While relaxing, he sees Toots shaking her head in annoyance. Smelling something burning, Tom asks her "Hey, what's cooking?", to which she replies: "You are, stupid!" Tom laughs as he mistakens it as a compliment, but soon feels his bottom getting very hot. He looks down and sees himself burning on the rump. The heat eventually becomes so painful that Tom is sent straight up through the ceiling and comes crashing down onto the table, utterly wrecking the food and utensils and causing a single plank from the table to go loose and flung in the air, before having one end land on the punchbowl and the other end land on a nearby shelf. Tom is left behind at the top of an incline with his bow tie tangled with his tail, knocked out cold.
Adding further insult to injury on the cat, Jerry dubs him "S.S DRIP" with butter spread. Then he takes out a champagne bottle and gives Toots the honor of christening Tom as a ship, which she happily accepts. Jerry and Toots cheer as they watch Tom slide down into the punchbowl, before sinking inside it.
Censorship[]
- On Cartoon Network and Boomerang USA, the opening showing Mammy singing and setting the dinner table and Jerry sneaking across the table pretending to be an Indian is cut. The cartoon now begins as Tom pops out of the potted plant.
Voice actors[]
- William Hanna as Tom, Jerry
- Sara Berner as Toots
- Anita Brown as Mammy Two Shoes
- Thea Vidale as Mammy (Redubbed version)
Notes[]
- The clip of Tom's tail being set on fire was shown in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
- Toots is a full-grown adult cat like Tom in this cartoon, unlike in her debut, Puss n' Toots, where she was a kitten. Despite this, she is still the size of a kitten.
- Toots is much more anthropomorphic in this cartoon than in her debut; she can also speak and walk on two of her feet.
- This was the last cartoon to be released before V-E Day.
- The background song that plays while Jerry and Toots christens Tom as "S.S. DRIP" is known as "Anchors Aweigh", the unofficial anthem of the United States Navy.
- This version of Toots appears as a regular in The Tom and Jerry Show (2014), and was erroneously credited as "Toodles Galore", another female cat love interest of Tom who was erroneously referred to as "Toots" in Tom and Jerry in New York.
- This version of Toots is also in the Chinese multiplayer action isometric game, Tom and Jerry Chase as a playable character with her and Toodles Galores' names corrected.
- In September 2023, the original titles of the cartoon were found on a 16mm black and white print, which was subsequently sold on eBay that same year.
Errors[]
- Toots is shown with flickering whiskers on her head, particularly in the scene where Tom tries to give her a hug.
Gallery[]
Main article: The Mouse Comes to Dinner/Gallery
