Douglas Messerli | Queer Encounters: Five Tom and Jerry Cartoons [essay]

queer encounters: five tom and jerry cartoons

by Douglas Messerli

 

Not to be confused with the later MGM studio animated cartoon of a cat and mouse duo created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Amadee Van Beuren’s production at RKO Radio Pictures began in 1931 and ran until 1933, with 30 cartoons produced overall.

    Van Beuren originally imagined his duo also as a cat and dog pair, but instead created them as a human comedy duo, one thin and tall figure, Tom, and the other short and plump, Jerry, not at all so very different from Laurel and Hardy.

    As the Wikipedia article on this cartoon series explains, “Their design reflected the ‘rubber-hose’ animation style—as opposed to the more elastic and cylindrical anatomies of figures—that was popular in New York City in the day.”

    The Van Beuren features were notable for their creative use of sound and music, combining the rhythms with the cartoon actions of the characters, animals, machines, and even landscapes.

     Although the Van Beuren characters were not nearly as popular as Mickey Mouse or Betty Boop, like them they often incorporated the sassy and sexual innuendo of the pre-Code era, as these four films attest.

     With the increasing pressure of the Code and the development of far less crudely rendered cartoons, RKO began to demonstrate disinterest in the series which were primarily directed by John Foster in collaboration with George Stallings or George Rufle. But in mid-1933 RKO installed the son, Hiram S. “Bunny” Brown, Jr., of one of their executives as business manager. Foster and Brown almost immediately clashed, and Foster was replaced by Stallings, with the last of the Tom and Jerry series, Doughnuts appearing on September 1, 1933. The series would be replaced by Otto Soglow’s cartoon figure, “The Little King,” some of whose cartoons are also discussed in these pages.

     By the end of that month, Brown severely cut the payroll of its animation department, discharging 10 animators and assistants from the staff of 96. Among those fired were two of the most noted animators, Harry D. Bailey, who had been with RKO for 12 years, and George Rufle, who was co-director of three of the films I discuss here.

     The films I’ve chosen all contain gay imagery: Trouble (directed by Foster and George Stallings from October 10, 1931); In the Bag (Foster and Rufle from March 26, 1932); Pots and Pans, (Foster and George Rufle, May 14, 1932); Magic Mummy (Foster and Stallings,  February 3, 1933); and Doughnuts (Frank Sherman and Rufle, the last of the series).

     “Bunny” Brown later went on to direct the serial unit at Republic Pictures.

     Official Films later acquired Van Beuren’s library for home-movie distribution and some years after controlled the TV syndication, changing the character’s names to Dick and Larry so they would not be confused with the Hanna-Barbera cat-and-mouse duo. Barbera had, himself, previously worked on the Van Beuren Tom and Jerry shorts as an animator and scenario writer.  

 

Los Angeles, November 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).