Tom and Jerry Toon by Toon: Bowling Alley Cat

Tom and Jerry cartoons seem to have improving with each individual film (the kind of exception being The Night Before Christmas as that was an early masterpiece) at this point and this cartoon only helps set that trend.

This cartoon marks the first Tom and Jerry cartoon not take place inside house. This instead takes place at a bowling alley as hinted at by the title. The story however remains basically the same as tom spends the film trying to catch Jerry and failing at it.

This film not only showed an improvement over previous Tom and Jerry films, but the series reaching it's full height. This film shows the chase cartoon at it's best. Not only does this show the improvements in pacing that Dog Trouble and Puss n' Toots, but this cartoon features much more gags than both those put together. Every gag here works great. Jerry using a pin as a baseball bat, Tom turning into a pin, a mountain of cigarette ashes turning into a volcano, and Tom being used to make a strike is the series at it's best. This is the first Tom and Jerry cartoon without dialogue and it's never missed because the pantomime is so good. An early scene with Jerry skating on the bowling alley floor is extremely well animated and makes one think of later more elaborate scenes in Mice Follies and Mouse in Manhattan. Scott Bradley's music is also very important to why this cartoon works so well. Using train music as bowling balls are chasing Jerry is fantastic.

The animators on this film include Pete Burness, Bill Littlejohn, George Gordon, Irven Spence, Jack Zander. All of them have been animators on previous Tom and Jerry cartoons. Unfortunately again only Bill, Joe and Fred Quimby received credit.

A fantastic cartoon and a must watch for every cartoon fan.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used Of Mice and Magic: The History of the American Animated Cartoon by Leonard Maltin http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034547/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1