Baby Puss

This article is about the film. For the pet sabre-toothed tiger from The Flintstones, see The Flintstones § Characters.
Baby Puss
Tom and Jerry series

Re-release poster for Baby Puss
Directed by William Hanna
Joseph Barbera
Produced by Fred Quimby (unc. on original issue)
Voices by Sara Berner (unc.)
Jack Mather (unc.)
Harry E. Lang (unc.)
The King's Men
Music by Scott Bradley
Animation by Kenneth Muse
Ray Patterson
Irven Spence
Pete Burness
Studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by Loew's Inc.
Release date(s)
  • December 25, 1943 (1943-12-25)
Color process Technicolor
Running time 7:51
Language English
Preceded by The Yankee Doodle Mouse
Followed by The Zoot Cat

Baby Puss is a 1943 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 12th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. It was released to theaters on Christmas Day, 1943 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.

This is the first Tom and Jerry short to be animated by Ray Patterson, who arrived from Walt Disney Productions after working on The Old Army Game, a Donald Duck cartoon also released in 1943. Except some time spent at Walter Lantz Productions in the 1950s, Patterson would continue to work for Hanna and Barbera into the 1980s.

Plot

A little girl named Nancy is playing dollhouse, and pretending to be the mother and has also dressed Tom, apparently the family pet, up to be her baby. She scolds Tom, who is hiding under some furniture. She drags Tom out by his tail and threatens to spank him. Tom is resentful over his treatment and feels humiliated. She carries him to the bassinet, tucks him in, and shoves a bottle of milk in his mouth. She warns him, under threat of more spanking, to stay in bed while she goes downtown to buy a new girdle. Indignant at first, Tom gets a taste of milk and quickly accepts his lot, cooing like a baby and drinking from his baby bottle.

Jerry peeks from behind a dollhouse and sees Tom. Incredulous at first, Jerry proceeds to mock him by playing "Rock-a-bye Baby" on the phonograph and pretends to be a baby himself. Tom is furious and chases Jerry into the dollhouse and puts a sign that reads "Measles". Tom looks in the window to see that Jerry is in the bathtub, pretending he is bathing and brushing himself and humming the melody of "How About You?". Seeing Tom, he screams, hits him with the brush, runs downstairs to the bedroom and hides in a bed, causing a doll to turn up and shout "Mama!" Jerry uses the doll's clothes to disguise himself as a girl holding an umbrella, but his shirt falls off of him leaving his shoes on his feet and white pants that goes under it. Tom opens the dollhouse roof until Nancy returns and scolds him again. Tucking Tom back in bed, she threatens to feed him castor oil should he go out again.

Tom goes back to playing. Jerry emerges from the dollhouse and runs to the window to get the attention of Butch, Topsy, and Meathead (first seen in Sufferin' Cats!), Tom's three alley cat friends who are outside. When the trio see Tom, they begin to make fun of him. When Tom confronts the other cats, they continue to tease and humiliate him, tossing him like throwing a ball, causing him to land in a fishbowl, resulting in a wet diaper. They then capture him and change his dirty diaper with a fresh diaper, a safety pin, baby oil, baby powder, and a tight frilly pair of girl's rubber pants over the new diaper and Topsy throws the fish from the fishbowl into his pants and they sing Carmen Miranda's "Mamãe Eu Quero" with Jerry joining in. Jerry laughs as the song goes on. But the whole song stops when Nancy returns and demands to know what is going on. The other cats flee as Nancy prepares to scold Tom. She then takes Tom to a high chair, forcing him to drink castor oil. He resists at first. Jerry then squeezes a nutcracker on Tom's tail to make Tom yell in pain and therefore drink the spoonful of castor oil. Tom feels sick to his stomach and rushes to a windowsill to vomit. Jerry laughs at his misfortune, but the castor oil bottle, having turned over after Tom ran off the high chair he was sitting on, spills some of the castor oil out and Jerry ends up taking a dose of it himself, feels sick to his stomach as well and quickly joins Tom vomiting at the windowsill.

Production

Availability

DVD

External links

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