Mouse Trouble
Tom is excited when the postman brings a package; it’s the Random Mouse book “How to Catch a Mouse.” Tom tries each chapter in succession: locating the mouse, the basic trap, the snare, being scientific, and preying on the mouse’s curiosity. At each turn, Jerry uses the chapter’s information better than Tom, so Tom turns to brute force: a mallet, a bear trap, a double-barreled shotgun, and a mountain of explosives. By the end, will the cat or the mouse have earned his eternal heavenly reward?
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). Tom works methodically through a how-to manual on catching mice, and every chapter fails worse than the last — a perfect structure, because the book supplies both the escalation and the running joke. The box gag at the end is one of the best-remembered moments in the whole series, and the film is Hanna and Barbera at the absolute height of their timing.
Features Mammy Two Shoes, and includes an explosion gag of the kind that dates the era.