"The Mouse that Jack Built" was directed by Robert McKimson, probably the most unjustly neglected figure in the history of American animation. McKimson's cartoons were consistently attractive, imaginative and funny. Robert McKimson is as under-rated as Chuck Jones is over-rated. Chuck Jones took personal credit for every important achievement of the Warner Brothers studio, and I'm genuinely angry at how many people have fallen for Jones's self-serving distortions of animation history. Robert McKimson was not quite as talented as Bob Clampett or Tex Avery, but at least those animators are remembered. McKimson is totally forgotten (he was interviewed only once), and that's a disgrace.
"The Mouse that Jack Built" was made in 1959, when Jack Benny's long-running radio show had gracefully evolved into a TV show with the same cast. For many years, the talented Looney Toons voice actor Mel Blanc had also been a regular supporting comic on the Jack Benny show, in which he played many roles ... most notably a laconic Mexican named Cy ("Cy?" "Si!"), and Monsieur Le Blanc, the excitable Frenchman who was Jack Benny's violin teacher. Mel Blanc also used his vocal talents to create the sound effects for the sputtering, wheezing antique Maxwell car that Jack Benny drove on his show.
"The Mouse that Jack Built" cleverly uses the voices of Jack Benny and his castmates, recasting them as talking cartoon mice. Mary Livingston (Benny's real-life wife and TV/radio girlfriend) is a female mouse here. Don Wilson, Benny's tall and heavy announcer, is caricatured as a hefty-sized mouse. Eddie Anderson, who played Jack Benny's African-American manservant Rochester, provides the voice for a dark brown mouse. The relationships between the various mice parallel the relationships of the characters on Jack Benny's show.
Unusually, all of the actors who provided voices for this cartoon are listed in the opening credits. (Compare this to the 1945 Daffy Duck cartoon "Ain't that Ducky", for which Broadway star Victor Moore did the voice for a self-parody cartoon character ... but got no screen credit.)
Plot line: Mary (a cartoon mouse) wants Jack (ditto) to take her to a fancy restaurant, but the Jack Benny mouse (just like his human counterpart) is too cheap ... until an eavesdropping cat whips up an advert for a "free" dinner, and slips it into Jack's mousehole. Then the cat disguises his own mouth as the entrance of a ritzy restaurant, and Jack escorts Mary inside for a free dinner.
SPOILER COMING. Just as the cartoon cat is about to eat the cartoon mice, we suddenly cut to a live-action shot of the real Jack Benny, asleep in his living-room chair and having a nightmare. He glances suspiciously at a nearby live-action cat (who resembles the cartoon cat), and then Jack Benny does one of his famous "takes". The cartoon mice then climb out of the live cat's mouth ... probably to convince the kids in the audience that the mice are unharmed.
"The Mouse that Jack Built" is very funny, but it has dated badly ... as most modern audiences have only very limited familiarity with the characters on Jack Benny's show. I saw this cartoon recently on television, and I was disappointed that (probably to avoid accusations of racism) the TV station had sliced out all of Rochester's gravel-voiced dialogue, leaving only one brief shot of a brown mouse in a chauffeur's cap driving a mouse-sized jalopy (with its sound effects provided by Blanc).
I'll rate "Mouse that Jack Built" 9 out of 10, and I hope that this cartoon will encourage a few people to take more interest in Robert McKimson. Chuck Jones wasn't the whole show, people.
"The Mouse that Jack Built" was made in 1959, when Jack Benny's long-running radio show had gracefully evolved into a TV show with the same cast. For many years, the talented Looney Toons voice actor Mel Blanc had also been a regular supporting comic on the Jack Benny show, in which he played many roles ... most notably a laconic Mexican named Cy ("Cy?" "Si!"), and Monsieur Le Blanc, the excitable Frenchman who was Jack Benny's violin teacher. Mel Blanc also used his vocal talents to create the sound effects for the sputtering, wheezing antique Maxwell car that Jack Benny drove on his show.
"The Mouse that Jack Built" cleverly uses the voices of Jack Benny and his castmates, recasting them as talking cartoon mice. Mary Livingston (Benny's real-life wife and TV/radio girlfriend) is a female mouse here. Don Wilson, Benny's tall and heavy announcer, is caricatured as a hefty-sized mouse. Eddie Anderson, who played Jack Benny's African-American manservant Rochester, provides the voice for a dark brown mouse. The relationships between the various mice parallel the relationships of the characters on Jack Benny's show.
Unusually, all of the actors who provided voices for this cartoon are listed in the opening credits. (Compare this to the 1945 Daffy Duck cartoon "Ain't that Ducky", for which Broadway star Victor Moore did the voice for a self-parody cartoon character ... but got no screen credit.)
Plot line: Mary (a cartoon mouse) wants Jack (ditto) to take her to a fancy restaurant, but the Jack Benny mouse (just like his human counterpart) is too cheap ... until an eavesdropping cat whips up an advert for a "free" dinner, and slips it into Jack's mousehole. Then the cat disguises his own mouth as the entrance of a ritzy restaurant, and Jack escorts Mary inside for a free dinner.
SPOILER COMING. Just as the cartoon cat is about to eat the cartoon mice, we suddenly cut to a live-action shot of the real Jack Benny, asleep in his living-room chair and having a nightmare. He glances suspiciously at a nearby live-action cat (who resembles the cartoon cat), and then Jack Benny does one of his famous "takes". The cartoon mice then climb out of the live cat's mouth ... probably to convince the kids in the audience that the mice are unharmed.
"The Mouse that Jack Built" is very funny, but it has dated badly ... as most modern audiences have only very limited familiarity with the characters on Jack Benny's show. I saw this cartoon recently on television, and I was disappointed that (probably to avoid accusations of racism) the TV station had sliced out all of Rochester's gravel-voiced dialogue, leaving only one brief shot of a brown mouse in a chauffeur's cap driving a mouse-sized jalopy (with its sound effects provided by Blanc).
I'll rate "Mouse that Jack Built" 9 out of 10, and I hope that this cartoon will encourage a few people to take more interest in Robert McKimson. Chuck Jones wasn't the whole show, people.