Little Runaway is a 1952 American one-reel animated cartoon and the 68th Tom and Jerry short.
Characters[]
Starring[]
Featuring[]
Plot[]
At a closed-for-business circus at midnight, a baby seal cuts his way out of his cage while the circus owners are sleeping and makes his way to Tom and Jerry's house.
Meanwhile the next morning, at the house Jerry is getting ready for a swim. He dives headdown into the pond and then he sees the seal. They quickly become friends and the seal tells him where he came from and asks for his help. Jerry is glad to help the seal and they shake hands while the seal happily says "Thanks!" He continues "Can you spare a fish?".
Jerry takes a sleeping Tom's fish, but Tom wakes up before he can get away. Jerry then hides behind the fish, does a little dance with it, then waltzes away. Tom enjoyed this performance very well so he whistled for an encore. The dancing fish took a bow with finale music. But as Jerry does repeated bows he accidentally reveals himself behind the fish and takes a bow himself. Tom gives chase. Jerry tosses the fish into the pool, only to have Tom retrieve it but the seal eats it. Tom notices the fish is gone and Jerry laughs at him when he's about to run away, Tom grabs Jerry, but the seal picks up Tom with his nose and throws him into a birdbath. Just then, the news announces:
"Good morning, everyone. This is News Time. And the top bit of news this morning is the reward offered by the circus for the return of their valuable baby seal. The reward of $10,000 will be paid to anyone who returns this little seal to the circus."
After several failed attempts at catching the baby seal, Tom cuts up a tire and covers himself in black rubber to disguise himself as an adult seal. The little seal and Jerry are playing catch and Tom joins the game. The little seal follows Tom's every move, and is just about to be captured by the cunning feline until a circus worker grabs Tom, thinking it's their seal. The real seal and Jerry saw Tom being seal-napped. Tom is brought to the circus, and is forced to play Yankee Doodle on the trumpet. Though annoyed at first, Tom receives a thunderous applause and soon embraces the adoration. As a finale, a fish is thrown into his mouth.
Quotes[]
- Seal: I am a seal. I ran away from the circus. They made me blow horns, like this: Ain't it awful? Will you help me? Thanks! Can you spare a fish?
Censorship[]
- On Cartoon Network and Boomerang in the United States, the part where the birdbath lands on Tom's head, making him look like a stereotypical Qing Chinese official, is cut.
- A similar scene is also censored in Bad Luck Blackie.
Notes[]
- During the scene where the baby seal talks, subtitles appear onscreen to translate what he's saying.
- This is the first cartoon where Jerry's laughing can be clearly audible to the audience, which is a high-pitched squeaky rodent-like laugh provided by William Hanna, which officially becomes the norm in subsequent Tom and Jerry cartoons since then. This is in stark contrast to previous cartoons where Jerry's laughing is silent while music plays in the background in tune to his laughing poses to represent the mouse's "laughing sounds".
- Though, over the years, Jerry's laughing sounds has drastically varied, likely due to varying replacement voice actors e.g. Allen Swift (during the Gene Deitch Era), June Foray and Mel Blanc (during the Chuck Jones era), just to name a few, but still remain in a relatively high-pitch tone, at least when compared to Tom's.
- Jerry's laughing sounds from this cartoon, as well as from "Cruise Cat" and "Neapolitan Mouse" would eventually be used as recurring stock sound effects for Jerry in recent Tom and Jerry entries since 2014 such as The Tom and Jerry Show and Tom and Jerry in New York.
Gallery[]
- Main article: Little Runaway/Gallery