Tot Watchers
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| Tot Watchers | |
|---|---|
 The title card of Tot Watchers | |
| Directed by | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Produced by | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Animation by | Lewis Marshall James Escalante Kenneth Muse |
| Color process | Technicolor, CinemaScope, Perspecta Stereo |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Running time | 6 min 28 secs |
Tot Watchers is an animated short subject, created in 1957 and first released to theatres in 1958 and is part of the Tom and Jerry series, produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. The short was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on August 1, 1958, over a year after it was produced. It is the last Tom and Jerry theatrical "Cinemascope" cartoon produced or directed by Hanna and Barbera during the Golden Age of Hollywood animation. They created the characters and had by 1957 assumed the role of producer in the wake of MGM executive Fred Quimby's retirement.
Tot Watchers was animated by Lewis Marshall, James Escalante and Kenneth Muse. The music was scored by Scott Bradley and the story was written by Homer Brightman. This cartoon marks the second and final appearance of the supporting characters from the 1956 short Busy Buddies: Jeannie the babysitter, a baby, and the baby's parents.
While this cartoon was still in production, Hanna and Barbera were told that MGM were shutting down the MGM cartoon studio, after the studio bosses realized that re-releases of older cartoons brought in as much money as the new shorts did. Hanna and Barbera found themselves out of a job, but quickly picked themselves back up by setting up Hanna-Barbera Productions and creating cartoons made for television as opposed to the cinema. This began Hanna Barbera's work in limited animation in order to mass produce these cartoons for television on a significantly lower budget.
MGM later decided that Tom and Jerry were a viable property after all, and in 1960, decided to continue production of new Tom and Jerry cartoons with independent animator Gene Deitch.
This cartoon also marks the final appearance of Spike during the Golden Age of Hollywood animation.
Plot
First of all, Jeannie, the babysitter, is being instructed to look after the baby while the baby's parents go out. However, Jeannie pays more attention to the telephone than her actual babysitting. In the midst of Tom and Jerry's usual fighting, they see the baby crawling out of its pram and into the garden. Any attempt to return the baby to where it came from simply results in the baby escaping from the pram again. The baby crawls into Spike's dog house, and Tom, thinking that he has got the baby, is revealed to be carrying Spike in his hands, and is promptly attacked. The next time, after Tom brings the baby back to the pram, Jeannie hits Tom over his head with a broom for "bothering" the baby. Realizing that the baby is no longer worth the trouble, Tom does nothing the next time that it crawls from its pram. However, he and Jerry are forced to react after the baby not only crawls off the property, but into the street and onto a construction site.
The baby amazingly crawls from one steel beam to another while the cat and mouse can only look on. Jerry manages to catch up, and saves the baby from crawling off a wooden plank and falling to his death, by grabbing on to the baby's diaper at the last second. Unfortunately, the diaper opens up and the baby plummets, but he is then caught by Tom. Tom attempts to put the baby's diaper back on, but in the impending confusion, ends up putting the diaper on himself while the baby crawls off, nonchalantly.
Tom and Jerry catch up with the baby, only to lose it again, and fearing that it has crawled into a cement mixer, the cat and mouse dive straight in, only to find that the baby never did enter the mixer.
Later on, Jeannie was in a huge panic, crying, telling the police officer that she was babysitting, took her eye off the baby for "one teensy minute", and the baby was gone. The police officer then sees a weary Tom and Jerry returning home with the baby, and arrests the cat and mouse duo (Catched, you babynappers!). In the back of a police car, the police officer asks Tom and Jerry: A baby crawling down the street? Now who would be after believin' that? Moments later, the baby crawls down the road, past the police car and off into the distance as Tom, Jerry and the police officer look on, incredulously.