TOM & JERRY Censorship

[drsd2kill]

I put this together for you guys to check it out. Pretty interesting stuff.

Some of the dubbed versions sound like they were recently done (i.e. 80s or 90s) as the dubbed voice really stands out from the vintage music and effects.

LONESOME MOUSE/POLKA-DOT PUSS/NIT-WITTY KITTY - Original/Dubbed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWa1vmjSOb8

SATURDAY EVENING PUSS - Original/Dubbed/Redrawn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqDdBTlEcuA

[Daffysleftfoot]

Yeah, why not? On the subject of the censorship of Tom & Jerry, I'll post a link to my comic (http://dmgermain.blogspot.com/2007/04/tom-jerry-meet-censor-monkeys.html) again. :cool:

Those are some great youtube files, drsd. The dubbing is quite obvious.

[PudgieDParrot]

(WARNING: Getting a little technical here)

That's because, this is coming from an audio-restoration technician, the frequency response of recording systems of the 1940s are drastically narrower than the systems of today. If you were to simulate the frequency response of a 40's recording system, you'd have to use a graphic equalizer, with limited or no bass (below about 100 Hz) and trebel (above about 10000 Hz), and overdriven midtones (above the "center-balance line"). The technicians doing the redubs had made this oversight, which is why the redubs seem to stand out.

[Matthew Hunter]

As I've said on the topic before, it sucks that Turner did this to the Tom and Jerry shorts. But if correcting Mammy's grammar (the most obvious alteration in these) got them back on TV, I can't say it's all bad. The actress they got to redub Lillian Randolph's original voice isn't bad either.

At least they're ALL uncut on DVD...

oh...wait...:mad:

[CueBallCat79]

As I've said on the topic before, it sucks that Turner did this to the Tom and Jerry shorts. But if correcting Mammy's grammar (the most obvious alteration in these) got them back on TV, I can't say it's all bad. The actress they got to redub Lillian Randolph's original voice isn't bad either.

At least they're ALL uncut on DVD...

oh...wait...:mad:

But they are. ;)

[Mike]

As I've said on the topic before, it sucks that Turner did this to the Tom and Jerry shorts. But if correcting Mammy's grammar (the most obvious alteration in these) got them back on TV, I can't say it's all bad. The actress they got to redub Lillian Randolph's original voice isn't bad either.

Yeah, I agree with you, Matthew. I remember when the Mammy shorts got pulled from the air, and they hadn't completed these redubs yet. Many of the best T&Js were simply gone from the rotation. If this is what had to be done to get these cartoons back on the air, then that's OK with me.

One thing I don't understand: in the original version of Nit-Witty Kitty, you hear Mammy reading aloud from the book. In the dubbed one, though, you don't. I don't get that. I didn't hear any huge grammar mistakes in the original (and those could've been cleaned up anyway), and without hearing Mammy reading aloud, you don't know why she'd hit Tom with the bat. Did they delete it because it would encourage kids to hit amnesiacs with baseball bats? That change just struck me a little strange.

Mike

[thornhill]

Dumb dumb dumb. What good does it do, other than changing a few "ain't"'s to "isn't"'s or "is"'s to "are"'s. Razors still drop from her skirt. It's not like her face is shown grotesquely or anything.

Regardless of a few edits, getting almost every Tom & Jerry cartoon ever made for under $50 at Target is pretty damn good. Better than the TV recordings or the flimsy lasers or the 16mm film prints that are missing color that I had for years.

[Studio Toledo]

Dumb dumb dumb. What good does it do, other than changing a few "ain't"'s to "isn't"'s or "is"'s to "are"'s. Razors still drop from her skirt. It's not like her face is shown grotesquely or anything.

Regardless of a few edits, getting almost every Tom & Jerry cartoon ever made for under $50 at Target is pretty damn good. Better than the TV recordings or the flimsy lasers or the 16mm film prints that are missing color that I had for years.
Being reminded of one of the earliest T&J videos that came out in the 80's which resembled TV station quailty for something MGM released themselves.

[Brandon Panther]

I still wonder who voiced Mammy in the dubbed tracks. I read somewhere it was Julie "Marge Simpson" Kavner. That can't be her. It actually sounds like Debra Wilson.... almost.

[Studio Toledo]

I put this together for you guys to check it out. Pretty interesting stuff.

SATURDAY EVENING PUSS - Original/Dubbed/Redrawn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqDdBTlEcuA
Would've been neat to also see this in the TNT distort-o-vision, where the 60's redrawn was synched to the original audio, making it bizarre and utterly rediculous (especially to hear a teenage girl talk like that)!

[Ray Pointer]

I still wonder who voiced Mammy in the dubbed tracks. I read somewhere it was Julie "Marge Simpson" Kavner. That can't be her. It actually sounds like Debra Wilson.... almost.

Julie Kavner?????? That's absolutely IMPOSSIBLE! You either need to re-read what you thought you read, or question the reading material. As CHARLOTTE said in CHARLOTTE'S WEB, 'Humans are very gullible creatures. They believe anything in print."

[ThePeterNetwork]

I still don't like the maid character in T&J. Back then, I was too young to understand, but now I can see that she hated Tom from the get-go, and wanted him out of the picture for good.

I know this will never happen, but I still would like to even have the idea of a T&J short where Tom, getting thrown out for the umpteen billionth time, organizes an army of cats to invade and take over his home, confront his master, and when she's just about ready to shotgun Tom into smitherinies (sp), she dies from a heart attack, and Tom couldn't do anything about it because he's just a cat, but he does feel guilty, and his guilt manifests itself into her ghost.

Yeah, I don't think it's such a good idea either. :shame:

[sumnernor]

There is a poster (?from England?) who has posted on GAC and the hometheaterforum (sarah99). Does anyone here actually "know" her?. I have unanswered PMs. She has written a very good post about "
"The Tom and Jerry Censorship Comparison Guide (http://home.worldwidedvdforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=15276&p=58315#p58315)".


Posted in this forum and sometime back was a link but as I found a few weeks ago, that link is no longer valid. The link is:

http://home.worldwidedvdforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=15276&p=58315

It even has Mammy's face. There are many pictures and illustrations.

[zavkram]

I still wonder who voiced Mammy in the dubbed tracks. I read somewhere it was Julie "Marge Simpson" Kavner. That can't be her. It actually sounds like Debra Wilson.... almost.

To the best of my knowledge, all of the re-dubs in these cartoons were recorded by voice-actress June Foray (better known as the second of the two voices of "Granny" in the Tweety and Sylvester cartoons and as "Rocky, the Flying Squirrel").

As I understand it, during the mid-to-late 1960's a number of the Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoons which featured the "Mammy Two-Shoes" character (that was not her official name in the series) underwent changes in order that they may be shown in theatres and on television. This presumably was designed to appease the NAACP; which had in the early 1950's complained about the character's appearance in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, prompting her early "retirement" by MGM.

At this time, Chuck Jones's independent production company, SIB Tower-12 Productions, had been contracted by MGM to produce a new series of Tom and Jerry theatrical shorts. Jones and his associates were also assigned the task of inserting re-animated scenes of Mammy into some of the original theatrical shorts that were directed by Hanna-Barbera. I'm assuming that these altered shorts ran in movie theatres because I've seen some of them on TV in recent years with the original MGM logo and main-title cards.

These cartoons were also featured on The Tom and Jerry Show on CBS. In some cartoons, the Mammy character was replaced by a white, Irish maid who spoke with a pronounced brogue; in others she was represented by a young, white woman in her late teens or early 20's.

Ever since these particular cartoon titles were altered, there has arisen a great deal of confusion as to the altered versions' origins. Complicating matters further is the fact that many times when new prints of the Tom and Jerry cartoons were made, the different versions of these cartoons got mixed up. In some instances the cartoons would depict the Mammy Two-Shoes character, albeit with the altered voice which had better grammar. Then there were the ones which featured the re-drawn character with the re-dubbed voice.

So far, no problems... But then there were the times when the re-drawn version of "Mammy" would be accompanied by the original voice of the character (done by radio and film actress, Lillian Randolph). In those instances the voice and music tracks (which were stored on separate reels in the film vaults) would be matched to the wrong picture elements; a result of sloppy editing.

Some of the altered Tom and Jerry cartoons with Mammy which featured the June Foray re-dubs (the ones where she uses better grammar) ended up on The Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection, Volume 2; which made it necessary for Warner Home Video to issue replacement DVD's for Disc 1 (that is, I believe it was Disc 1... if memory serves me).

[CueBallCat79]

Ummm...that's not June Foray in those re-dubbed Mammy cartoons, at least not the most recent ones. That's a different actress entirely.

[sarah]

There is a poster (?from England?) who has posted on GAC and the hometheaterforum (sarah99). Does anyone here actually "know" her?. I have unanswered PMs. She has written a very good post about "
"The Tom and Jerry Censorship Comparison Guide (http://home.worldwidedvdforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=15276&p=58315#p58315)".


Posted in this forum and sometime back was a link but as I found a few weeks ago, that link is no longer valid. The link is:

http://home.worldwidedvdforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=15276&p=58315

It even has Mammy's face. There are many pictures and illustrations.

Somebody hacked our forum a couple of months back, I only just republished the guide.

[zavkram]

Ummm...that's not June Foray in those re-dubbed Mammy cartoons, at least not the most recent ones. That's a different actress entirely.

Well, I was specifically referring to the cartoons that were re-dubbed in the 1960's. I'm not aware of any Tom and Jerry cartoons that were done later than that. One thing's for sure, and I'm in complete agreement with Ray on this one... that sure as heck ain't Julie Kavner on those soundtracks!

I'll go back and watch the cartoons posted on YouTube... but I'm certain that June Foray's voice is the one heard in Saturday Evening Puss. She is obviously using a different voice-characterization for each version in that YouTube compilation clip. At times, her voice-characterization for the re-animated teenage girl sounds like a cross between "Cindy-Lou Who" and Woody Woodpecker's niece, "Splinter". Other times it's reminiscent of her "Alice Krumden" voice in Robert McKimson's The Honey-mousers.

[zavkram]

OK, I just watched the clip compilation for The Lonesome Mouse, Polka-Dot Puss and Nit-Witty Kitty... and I will concede that in the first and third titles the re-dubbed versions sound like they were done later than the second (and also later than Saturday Evening Puss).

The voice actress in the re-dub of Polka-Dot Puss definitely sounds like June Foray. Maybe you're correct in your statement that another actress did the re-dubs for The Lonesome Mouse and Nit-Witty Kitty. If it is a different actress than June Foray, I can't imagine who it might be. I seriously doubt, however, that it's Debra Wilson, formerly of MAD-TV.

In all of the original versions, though, the voice is clearly Lillian Randolph's.

At the end of Nit-Witty Kitty, in the re-dubbed version it sounds like the editor simply forgot to mix in the voice-track at that point; all you can hear are the original music and SFX. Then again, maybe no new dialogue was actually recorded for that scene. Maybe the producers intended the scene to have just the music and SFX and to completely omit Lillian Randolph's original dialogue; although I agree that without it Mammy's actions in that scene are inexplicable to the viewer (especially to one who never saw the original version of the cartoon).

[zavkram]

BTW, I forgot to mention that there's a version of Sleepy-Time Tom floating out there which has the original footage of Mammy matched with the Irish maid's voice... so I guess Mammy was actually "Black-Irish"! :D

I believe that there is also a re-animated version of Mouse Cleaning that features a white housewife... I vaguely remember seeing it on The Tom and Jerry Show when I was about 4 or 5-years old.