That's a Lot of Missing Cartoon

I was watching an old VHS tape full of Tom and Jerry cartoons I taped off of TV in the 90's and something stuck out to me. During the 1951 cartoon, His Mouse Friday, Tom encounters some stereotypical island cannibals, and in one scene they have a close of  the cannibals face and you can hear muted music but when his mouth opens, there is no sound. I have recently purchased the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection DVD set which has all of the original theatrical cartoons (minus two; Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat), so I grabbed my DVD and popped in disc 3 which has the His Mouse Friday cartoon on it. When I watched the same scene, I could hear the original voice that came out of the cannibals mouth. He says "Mmmmm... [licks his lips] barbecued cat" in a voice that sounds like a million other cartoon voices of the time. The same thing happens just a few seconds later then a tiny cannibal does this same thing to Jerry. On the cartoon taped off of TV, there is no sound when he talks, but on the DVD you hear him say "Mmmm [licks lips] barbecue mouse". I found it kinda odd that they removed the voice which I guess was considered stereotypical 'black' voice, and yet left in Jerry smudging soot onto his face to create 'black face'.

I was happy that on my DVDs, they had the original sound. But then I noticed that the DVD seems to be a pan and scan of the cartoon, where they cut the ends of the picture off to make it square like an old TV screen and sometimes they just cut the two ends off, or sometimes they pan and scan which means they move to where the action is and cut out the rest - sometimes (such as in this case) losing crucial animation. Shown here you can see the original wide screen version I taped off of TV back in the 90's and then the letterboxed version from the DVD. Odd that the one shown on my old TV is the wide version and the one on DVD is the reduced version.

The quality of this one is not great as I took a photo of the VHS image off of the TV using my phone.

This is a screen grab of the DVD

I had been excited that I could finally throw away all of my old VHS copies of Tom & Jerry that I can collected over the years now that I had this complete collection on DVD, but now that I see there is actually cartoon missing from the DVDs, now I think I will keep my tapes along with the DVD collection. 

Little Golden Book Monday #157

Today's Little Golden Book is MGM's Tom and Jerry Meet Little Quack, with story and pictures by MGM Cartoons, pictures adapted by Dom MacLaughlin and Harvey Eisenberg. Originally from 1953, my copy is a Third printing from 1971.

I love the illustrations in the book, but one in particular reminded me of someone else. I made three tweaks to the page, I changed the text, and I added a moustache and cigar. The eyebrows and stance were already there!

Tell-A-Tale Books Day 2

Continuing from yesterdays post, here are four more of the Tell-A-Tale books I picked up recently. Today we have; Wally Gator Guess What's Hiding at the Zoo from 1963, Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery (or the Mystery of the Terrible Mess in My Friend's Front Yard) from 1972, Pinocchio not sure of the date for this one as the first page with the publication info is missing, and Tom and Jerry and the Toy Circus from 1963.

Little Golden Book Monday #4

Today's Little Golden Book is "Tom and Jerry's Photo Finish" from 1974. Although most of my collection of Little Golden Books has been acquired as over the past few years as a collector, this one comes from my childhood. I remember how excited I was to own this book, as I could see Tom & Jerry any time I wanted, even when they were not on TV. Back then there were no cartoon networks, no cartoon DVD collections etc, so if you were a fan of a particular cartoon, you actualy had to get up early Saturday mornign to see them, or you had to have something like this great book. I must have read this story and looked at the photos a millions times over. Great cover and great drawings throughout.