Pecos Pest

Having seen a lot of these Tom and Jerry cartoons, I usually enjoy a departure from the normal cat-chasing-mouse story, but this one just didn't connect. Once again, Tom suffers needlessly.

The story begins when Jerry receives a telegram one night which reads: "Me and My Guitar On Way To Big City for Television Debut --Stop - Will Spend Night With You, (signed) Uncle Peso"

Soon Uncle Pecos is there, a little guy with a long mustache, sombrero hat, cowboy boots and a two-string banjo. He can't stop singing, "Frog Went A- Courtin," which is going to perform the following night on TV.

The gag of the entire cartoons come next when a string breaks on the guitar. Uncle Peso wakes a sleeping Tom Cat and plucks out one of his whiskers. This happens about every 15 seconds the rest of the way, no matter what Tom does to get away from this maniac.

As mentioned, once again, poor Tom gets hurt while just minding his own business. The stuttering singer Uncle Peso, was cute for a short while but his act grew thin and too much of this cartoon - over half of it - was just him singing that stupid song.

I'm not usually a fan of 'guest' characters in T&J cartoons, who are more often than not unbearably twee, but Jerry's Uncle Pecos (voiced by Shug Fisher) is anything but: when he needs a new string for his guitar, he pursues Tom like an unstoppable Terminator, fearlessly plucking the poor cat's whiskers to mend his instrument. As if this wasn't funny enough, he does so all the while singing a very silly song (Froggy Went A Courting) in a stuttering style that is quite frankly just bizarre. Bizarre and very funny!

To top it all off, there is a delightfully surreal gag at the end of the cartoon where Pecos, performing on TV, breaks another string and reaches out of the television set to pluck Tom's last whisker. Great stuff!

This cartoon introduces (for the only appearance, sadly) Jerry's Uncle Pecos (voiced by Shug Fisher, who also plays the "gee-tar" here, marvelously) who is gonna be a star on TV. A word of advice: stay on his good side. You do not want to rile this boy at all! I wonder if Uncle Pecos is the father to Jerry's cousin Muscles? Oh, well, I digress. The end of this is hilarious and there is an incredible guitar solo that Uncle Pecos does for an encore. Most highly recommended.

Jerry the mouse's guitar playing Uncle Peco from Texas comes to spend the night with him before he goes for his big debut on national TV. When his guitar string breaks he just plucks the whiskey of Tom the cat. This happens multiple times. Yea it's pretty much a one-joke premise, but it's pretty entertaining none the less. Perhaps not the best of the tom and jerry shorts, but I enjoyed it enough. Someone should post the lyrics to Peco's song LOL This humorous animated short can be found on disc 2 of Warner Brother's 2-DVD Spotlight Collection set.

My Grade: B-

The brilliant team of Hanna/Barbera knew that their "Tom and Jerry" series was pretty much creatively out of gas by the early fifties (though the Oscars didn't realize this--the safest bet in Hollywood was on a T & J cartoon for at least an Oscar nomination)...so they began introducing 'guests' to attempt new plots. This short was by far the most successful!

Uncle Pecos is hilarious...as he warbles and sputters through "Froggie Went A'Courtin'" time and time again--and breaking his "geee-tar strangs" as he preps for his big television debut (in color, no less!). It falls upon Tom to supply the replacements--with his whiskers painfully removed (all six are ultimately sacrificed for the guitar).

Some marvelous guitar playing--one solo is so remarkably like Les Paul, I checked the Internet to see if it was him. It wasn't--but that doesn't detract from a marvelous cartoon. There are not many Tom and Jerry cartoons worth watching today (their violent and racist antics throughout their overview are rather repulsive), but this one is worth watching over and over. Give Hanna/Barbera credit--they knew when to let other characters do what the 'stars' could no longer pull off.