Saturday Evening Puss

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Saturday Evening Puss
series = Tom and Jerry


caption =
director = William Hanna
Joseph Barbera
story_artist = William Hanna
Joseph Barbera
animator = Ed Barge
Kenneth Muse
Irven Spence
Ray Patterson
voice_actor = Lillian Randolph
musician = Scott Bradley
producer = Fred Quimby
distributor = Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
release_date = flagicon|US January 14 1950
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 6' 18"
preceded_by = "Little Quacker"
followed_by = "Texas Tom"
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0042926

"Saturday Evening Puss" is a 1950 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 48th "Tom and Jerry" short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera who created the cat and mouse duo ten years earlier. The cartoon was produced by Fred Quimby, scored by Scott Bradley and animated by Ed Barge, Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence and Ray Patterson.

Plot

It is a beautiful Saturday night when Tom spies on what Mammy Two Shoes is doing. Mammy dresses up in a dark blue dress, golden rings, bracelets and a necklace, and even puts her underwear up. She then puts on her pink coat, yellow gloves and grabs a green purse as she prepares to leave for the Lucky Seven Saturday Night Brigde Club. Tom sees her and runs to his basket, pretending to be asleep as Mammy passes him. Tom opens his eyes and sees Mammy leaving. As soon as she leaves, Tom invites his feline pals Butch, Shorty and Meathead, who emerge from garbage cans outside of the house and rush in when Tom gives them the all-clear by showing them a sign reading "O.K. for the party". The feline quartet have a ball in the house during Mammy's absence, playing loud jazz music. Tom serves sandwiches to Shorty and Meathead and a big pie to Butch. However, not everybody is happy. Jerry is in his mouse hole, trying to get his beauty sleep, and the music is certainly not helping. Jerry is shown becoming various instruments in his head. Unsurprisingly, his complaints to Tom fall upon unsympathetic ears and meet with no success. Jerry is being outmaneuvered by the four cats, so he attempts to disrupt the proceedings personally by removing the phonograph recorder, stuffing Shorty in a drawer, and closing the piano on Butch's fingers, causing him to scream. Jerry flees into his hole and "zips" it up, causing the four cats pursuing him to hit their heads on the wall. Tom then turns the recorder back on, drawing Jerry out of his hole again. Jerry pulls the plug on the phonograph and Shorty begins the chase again, trying to flatten Jerry with a trash can lid but instead getting four taunting caricatures of the little mouse imprinted on it. Jerry sees the other cats approaching and flees through an open Dutch door, closing the top section so that all three cats run into it.Jerry runs into Shorty coming from the other direction as he rounds a corner, so he hides behind the curtain and steals Shorty's lid. Shorty runs back the other way, but runs into his own lid. All the cats chase Jerry through the living room and he finds a hiding place in the windowsill. The choice of hiding place proves to be unfortunate, as Tom pulls the string, causing Jerry to be squished. He slowly lays flat on the window and pops back up. Jerry tries to escape, but his effort to flee fails when Tom ties him up with the windowsill string. Tom and the others start replay the very loud music. Jerry swings down to the nearest table and uses the telephone to report Tom's activities to someone.

Cut to Mammy Two Shoes herself, who is playing cards with her friend. Mammy answers the phone and is very surprised when Jerry tells her about Tom's party, becomes very angry and departs hastily to crash it. Mammy's friend tries to stop her, but it's too late: Mammy has left the Lucky Seven Saturday Night Bridge Club and is racing down the street. Mammy returns home (actually crashing through the door in her anger) and evicts the feline partiers by throwing them into a street wall, forming a totem pole. Mammy is sad, as Tom has ruined her entire Saturday evening. However, Mammy then decides to relax by playing the same jazz recording that the cats were playing, leaving poor Jerry no better off than before.

Censorship

*This cartoon exists in several different forms:
** The original cartoon with black Mammy, with original voice characterization by Lillian Randolph.
** A dubbed version of the same cartoon, with June Foray's voice in place of Lillian Randolph's.
** Another dubbed version, this time by an unknown and less-offensive African-American voice actress.
** A re-animated version of this cartoon where Mammy has been completely removed and replaced with a thin white lady that has been rotoscoped. Her voice was also dubbed over by June Foray. This re-animation was done by Chuck Jones' team in the 1960s. This version has two replacement scenes (see below). Instead of Black Mammy putting her bracelets and her traffic light necklace on and putting her underwear up, the white Mammy answers a phone call and tells the person she is on his way (however, all of the original sound effects are still in place, making this scene very obvious that it's a replacement). She then hears the doorbell and says "Is Lover-Boy here yet? Good!" and puts her white shoes on and does a swing walk out of the house. And instead of her being at her bridge club, she is depicted dancing with a man at a dancing class. Note that her entire body is silhouetted when she is running home, and when Tom answers the door to see her, Butch, Shorty and Meathead vanish (due to the camera being zoomed in slightly).
** In some versions that have the white lady instead of Mammy Two-Shoes, the original Lillian Randolph voice is kept in, so the white lady speaks in a black Southern accent; she is also depicted dancing with a young man, making her dialogue about being at her "bridge club" surreal at best.
* In the re-animated version using the slim white lady, Jerry's line "Heeeyyy! Stop! I just know I wanna get my beauty sleep and all you guys do is bah bah bah bah!" has been muted. The short makes it look like Jerry is yelling silently and Tom cannot hear what he is saying and decides to torment him.

Notes

*Mammy's face can be briefly seen when she's running home to crash Tom's party.
*The title refers to The Saturday Evening Post, an American magazine that was popular and widely read in the first half of the 20th century.
*In 1949's Hatch Up Your Troubles, the magazine Tom reads is called Saturday Evening Puss.