How Many Times Has Tom Caught Jerry?

Sources/References

Hanna Barbera

CinemaScope

Gene Deitch

Chuck Jones

  • Chuck Jones: Conversations by Maureen Furniss (2005)

    • Page 36: “The distinction for me was that they would use a kind of personal damage. For example, Jerry might drive a golf ball right through ‘Tom's teeth and all of Tom's teeth would break and fall out. To me, that's pretty painful. Now, the Coyote falling eight thousand feet and landing and getting up Immediately, that seems to me to be a broad humor. Abraham Lincoln once told a story about an old dog who was sleeping in a stump while they were dynamiting stumps to dear a field. They didn't know the dog was in there, so they blew up the stump. Lincoln said, “Poor Rover, his usefulness as a dog was about over.” Translated into other terms, you could describe the bloody bits. My point is, I don't describe the bloody bits. I don't allow people to be hurt personally. But all this sounds like an apology. I don't apologize for it. I apologize when I'm not funny.”

    • Page 50: “Well, I didn't understand them the way Bill and Joe did. I tried to make them like Bill and Joe, tried to think the way they thought, but it didn't work out well, so I just kind of changed the characters to fit my ‘own way of thinking. They used a kind of violence I seldom used, and if I did use it, it was a mistake and I regretted it. One example would be in their golfing film where the ball hits Tom in the teeth and leaves a hole there, and then the teeth fail out.’ They would have an axe come down and take all the fur off the back, including his tail. That kind of thing, to me, is much more hurtful than somebody falling off a ciiff. Or if the Coyote lights a bomb and the whole thing explodes, he's left there all black, and then you cut immediately and he's whole again—death and resurrection. So mine were, I'd say, much gentler than theirs, but probably not as funny. I was never able to get quite as much character in Jerry. I thought they did a smashing job on Jerry; I thought his personality was always delightful. I probably got a more human personality out of Tom than they did, but not the same character. Tom was pretty vicious in their stuff, and was a clear-cut villain.”

    • Page 113: “I wasn't really at home with the Tom and Jerry characters. Hanna-Barbara handled those characters beautifully, much better than I did. Jerry was a much more charming character in their best cartoons than I could ever make him, simply because I could never understand him. And I couldn't really draw Tom very well; I had to tum him into a different cat really. So I purposely said, “The hell with him.” And I tried to keep Jerry attractive personally, more like the Road Runner, in that he never really hurt Tom in my version. Bill and Joe's Jerry would sometimes cut Tom into slices, It became sort of half-assed with my Tom becoming a combination of the Coyote and the original Tom. It’s difficult to work with someone else's characters.”

  • "Abe" Lincoln's anecdotes and stories by RD Wordsworth (1908)

    • "Finally, all other means having failed to subdue the creature, a man loaded a lump of meat with a Charge of powder, to which was attached a slow fuse; this was dropped where the dreaded dog would find it, and the animal gulped down the tempting bait.

      "There was a dull rumbling, a muffled explosion, and fragments of the dog were seen flying in every direction. The grieved owner, picking up the shattered remains of his cruel favorite, said: 'He was a good dog, but as a dog, his days of usefulness are over. '

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