What About Thad?

It’s hard to drum up enthusiasm for the Tom & Jerry Golden Collection Volume One, and with good reason – it really is difficult to get excited over another Tom & Jerry DVD.

This is the first time, however, that the cartoons are presented in complete, chronological order on DVD, something that hasn’t been done since the Art of Tom & Jerry laserdisc sets eons ago. The set, which you can buy on Amazon for less than $20 U.S., features the first 37 cartoons, straight from Puss Gets the Boot to Professor Tom.

This is, essentially, almost every Tom & Jerry cartoon worth owning. Great shorts like the lyrical Mouse in Manhattan, Flirty Birdy, the most sexually charged T&J ever, the bizarrely racist Lonesome Mouse (with Jerry talking like James Cagney), and uproariously funny entries like Mouse Trouble and Kitty Foiled are all present and accounted for. Every cartoon is also completely uncut and uncensored.

By and large, they look better than they ever have on home video or television. This is due to Warner Home Video utilizing the oft-forgotten CRI negatives, which, at their best, are the elements on the MGM cartoons that look closest to their original negatives. The MGM restorations will never reach the vibrancy of those on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection or Disney Treasure releases, but having seen rare nitrate material on several MGM cartoons, the best restorations on this set are not unreasonable facsimiles. Truth be known, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a copy of Old Rockin’ Chair Tom that wasn’t a faulty composite (meaning inferior, faded source material was used for the final thirty seconds).

The MGM cartoons, in general, never had a particularly striking sense of color. The color styling of the Tom & Jerrys was always pleasingly cool and low-key, in striking contrast to the abrasive subject matter and entertaining but overbearing soundtracks of Scott Bradley. Nevertheless, there is a decent level of prime restoration going on when you can finally make out Tom’s green irises in just about every shot of the cartoon.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect release. Unlike with other Tom & Jerry offerings, it’s not due to censorship. The huge plus in this release’s favor is the chronological and uncut presentation. Standards slipped however on the following ten cartoons, all mastered from lesser CRI elements (more on this later), so they fall very short of meeting the standards set by the other outstanding restorations contained therein. The quality ranges anywhere from serviceable to downright garbage quality. The tell-all sign is their retaining of the 1960s MGM lion logo (with no mention of Technicolor – because there was no intention of these versions ever replicating it).
Puss n’ Toots
The Bowling Alley Cat
Sufferin’ Cats
The Lonesome Mouse
The Zoot Cat
The Million Dollar Cat
Puttin’ on the Dog
Mouse Trouble
Quiet, Please!
The Milky Waif

I am not aware of all the inner-workings of this release. But, for the record, there is not a single set of CRI negatives for the MGM cartoons as has been perpetuated all over the Internet. Often, they have as many as two or three in existence. Some look amazing, as close to Technicolor as you can hope for, while some look absolutely putrid because they were made on the cheap (hence the later Metrocolor title cards). Puttin’ on the Dog in particular seems to be taken from faded Eastman elements. Seeing these versions mastered for Blu-Ray is akin to if WHV decided to remaster the old Turner material of the 1940s Warner shorts in high-def.

I know for a fact there are various CRI elements because MGM/UA Labs used them for the 16mm prints they distributed to TV stations and sold to collectors. Quality could vary wildly on the same title depending on how high on chemicals the lab technician was that day. Almost always, they looked absolutely fantastic. My print, struck in 1983, of Mouse Trouble looks wonderful, nothing like the embarrassing version seen on this latest release. (A comparison shot can be seen here. The digital camera didn’t get a great shot of the projected print, but the point is made.) Same goes for Lonesome Mouse and Quiet, Please!. On the other hand, some later 16s have passed through my hands that looked like hell because they were taken from what I’d like to call “Metrocolor” CRIs. One of them was Million Dollar Cat.

Perhaps it’s harsh to call the move of settling for the worser CRIs for some of the titles idiocy, but to invest thousands of dollars in brand new High-Definition transfers from source material that looks awful to begin with is pretty asinine. A lot can change in the thirty years since those pristine 16s were struck, but I have my doubts that the masters here were from the only CRI elements they had access to. Even the earlier Spotlight Collections looked better than the offending versions here. This is simply a continuation of WHV’s long pattern of ineptitude with the MGM cartoon library.

Without meaning to toot my own horn, you will never see a 100% perfect Tom & Jerry release unless either David Gerstein or I are looking over it every step of the way. This is a fact. But given that idealistic scenario will never happen, this is about as good as you’ll be getting. And 27 out of the 37 do look perfect. I’d buy it.

From the Sony press release posted on the Home Theater Forum:

Turner Classic Movies and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Team Up on New TCM Vault Collection DVDs

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) are joining forces on a new line of DVDs to be made available as part of the TCM Vault Collection. The offerings will include first-time DVD releases of classic films from the Columbia Pictures library. Like all films in the TCM Vault Collection, the new sets from SPHE are digitally remastered and include extensive on-screen bonus materials, including photos, posters, lobby cards and more. TCM Vault Collection sets are presented in beautiful gatefold packaging and available exclusively through TCM’s online store at http://shop.tcm.com.

UPA Jolly Frolics – This amazing DVD set includes, for the first time ever, 38 cartoons created by United Productions of America (UPA) and originally distributed by Columbia Pictures. The Jolly Frolics series began in 1949 with Ragtime Bear, which introduced audiences to the hilariously myopic Mr. Magoo. Included in this set are the Academy Award-winning [sic] cartoon Rooty Tooty Toot (1952) and the Oscar-nominated Madeline (1952) and Christopher Crumpet (1953). This set includes an abundance of bonus features, including introductions and audio commentaries by film historian and critic Leonard Maltin, who has written extensively on the history of animation. Street date: early 2012.

This set will obviously be a must for your animation library. It will likely contain every UPA cartoon worth seeing, from when John Hubley was the creative leader, a very brief period, but one as important to the art of animation as Tex Avery’s time at MGM or the Fleischer Studio in the 1930s (both inadequately represented on DVD at the moment).

UPDATE: Jerry Beck confirms that this will indeed contain every non-Mister Magoo UPA theatrical (save Ragtime Bear – the best one). A preview image from the remastered Robin Hoodlum can be seen below. It was the first UPA cartoon with the old “Columbia favorites” Fauntleroy Fox and Crawford Crow, one that owes most of its success to Warner Bros. moonlighters than John Hubley.