Joseph Barbera and William Hanna | Baby Puss / 1943

milquetoast tommy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Webb Smith (story), Joseph Barbera and William Hanna (directors) Baby Puss / 1943

 

Dressed up by the owner’s daughter and grand-daughter as a baby, Tom is shoved into a crib and threatened if he dares to leave it with a good dose of castor oil. Obviously, the girl is playing out the imaginary role of a rather unkind mother, who solves everything by stuffing a bottle of milk into her “baby’s” mouth. Not that Tom doesn’t enjoy the milk and the total relaxation that living the life of a grown-up baby permits.

     But Jerry, the mouse, watching his sissified sparring partner, can only mock the now infantilized cat. He challenges his retired frenemy by darting into a doll’s house, a challenge Jerry cannot resist, finally joining a doll in bed to hide out from his challenger’s eager hand. He exits the doll house as Mae West, intriguing Tom for a moment before he resumes the chase, suddenly ended by the return of his “mommy,” who forces him back into bed.

     Irritated by the passivity of his new “babydoll” roommate, Jerry calls in the toughs from the street, mean street toms who, immediately perceiving the situation, bully and take over Tom’s entire body, stripping him in order to talcum his behind, stick him into a new diaper and stick him with the diaper pin, afterwards stuffing him into a pair of rubber panties, as in the next instant Jerry and the now cool cats perform an entire number, using Tom’s whiskers as a string section to accompany the routine of another gay icon, Carmen Miranda.

    In short, they turn him into a tortured queer. Only the return of his miniature “mother” sends them scurrying off. Disturbed by the mess they have left behind, and blaming everything on her “baby” Tom, she proceeds to feed him castor oil, which sends him to the window to vomit it up. Jerry laughs in derision until some of the leftover oil drips down into his open mouth, forcing him to join up with Tom at the window.

     Since gay references were not permitted in most feature films of the 1940s, the animators often filled the void, bringing in a number of LGBTQ stereotypes and situations that they’d begun in several of more mean-spirited 1930s works. In this film, the gay associations and gestures simply provide a good dose of humor, although the street cats’ treatment of Tom certainly suggests homophobic bullying.

     Just in case you’ve forgotten, the word “puss” refers not only to a cat, a woman, and a female vagina, but to a “weak, timid, or unmanly” male.

 

Los Angeles, January 1, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2023).