George Rufle and Frank Sherman | Doughnuts / 1933 [animated cartoon]

liquor’s quicker

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Rufle and Frank Sherman (directors) Doughnuts / 1933 [animated cartoon]

 

In this last Tom and Jerry short animation, the duo have gone into doughnut-making and are attending the Baker’s convention. Once again, as in many of this series we encounter a full parade with bands and floats representing each baker, the Cupid Wedding Baker, the Orthodox Jewish matzos maker (a fairly antisemitic representation), the Pretzel Champion, and the Pansy Brand Cream Puffs, headed by two sissy boys and led by high-trotting horses (another early 1930s bow to the “panze craze”).

 

     With the parade over, the bakers man their various booths as the crowds rush into the convention grounds. The masses, however, skip right by Tom and Jerry’s doughnut concession, storming past the pansy puffs, and utterly ignoring the matzos booth, the Jewish men manning the stand quickly posting signs declaring “clearance,” “fire,” and “bankruptcy” sales. They head straight for the pretzel maker only because with those champion crunchies his stand offers up beer!

 

   Tom and Jerry and all the other except for the champion seem doomed, even though the doughnut makers have the most modern of methods for stamping out their product. But is still the Judges’ Prize to be awarded.

    The Jewish matzos duo offer up a rounded version of their product on a phonograph, producing a Yiddish song.

   They stroll past “Ye Pie Shoppe,” where a baker shoots raisins into the gingerbread men with a machine gun, and finally reach Tom and Jerry’s doughnut stand. Jerry offers up a demonstration of how they flatten out their dough for the doughnuts by running a miniature steam roller over the rounds of dough sent off on a conveyer belt. Soon after he jumps upon a large metal pogo stick to create the holes, as the conveyor belts drops them into the hot oil where they cook.

     The judges stand watching, but you can guess that they are not impressed.

   The employee in charge of watching the dough drop upon the belt, however, is a heavy tippler, drinking directly from the jug, and as he gets drunk and stumbles around the vast mixer, he accidently spills the jug’s contents into the dough, he and the jug joining it soon after. Finally, extricating himself, covered with the dough he dances down the conveyor belt.

    Almost immediately the judges taste a sample, absolutely delighted with the results. The female judge gathers up a whole pile of doughnuts and drops them into her mouth, and leaps into the air in drunken delight, displaying her under garments.

 

      The crowds gathered round the pretzel maker suddenly come pouring over to the doughnut stand, while the judges, now thoroughly soused, begin to dance a kind of ring-around-the-rosy until the two prissy males split off a in proper fox-trot, leaving the female judge to settle for the inebriated doughboy.

      Soon everyone is dancing in celebration of Tom and Jerry’s winning the gold cup. In the foreground Tom and Jerry do a gig, while nearby one of the Jewish men and the pansy cream puff boy together perform a swivel of their hips.   

 

Los Angeles, November 2, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).