Quiet Please!

Spike is stressed out and in need of a good sleep. Which is kind of hard to do when Tom is chasing Jerry, blasting at him with a shotgun and trampling over poor Spike. Threatened with silence or death, Tom backs off, but has to deal with Jerry running around deliberately making noise.

This short won an Academy Award back in 1945, but I wouldn't really say that's THAT funny. For a T&J cartoon it's pretty much in the middle. Yes, there are laughs but not Oscar material laughs and it's not too inventive. There is actually some dialogue too, further proving the awful 1992 movie wrong, but no one is credited for providing the voices.

This Tom and Jerry cartoon features Spike the dog trying to keep everything quiet so his little boy can nap. But, as usual, Tom and Jerry make a huge racket trying to kill each other. So, Spike threatens to beat Tom up if the noise continues (how Jerry didn't get the blame, too, is beyond me). Despite this imminent threat of severe bodily harm, Tom wakes the pup again and again and even goes so far as tossing the puppy about and getting him covered in mud. Tom seems to definitely have a death wish. Plus, Jerry takes full advantage of this and again and again does what he can to wake the pup--knowing Tom will get the blame.

This cartoon gets high marks for being a lot of fun. Also, like all Tom and Jerry cartoons of he 40s, it has absolutely top-notch animation. While this cartoon isn't quite as original as some Warner Brothers cartoons, the animation is clearly superior. A wonderful toon.

Spike the dog is attempting to sleep and if there's any commotion that wakes him up he will beat Tom the cat to a pulp. Out of this simple plot, comes one of the best Tom and Jerry shorts, as Jerry does pretty much everything in his power to get Spike to wake up so Tom can get a vicious beating. Simply great, genius in it's simplicity and utterly hilarious. And goes to show what a great addition Spike truly was to the comedic duo of Tom and Jerry. Kudos all around. This award winning cartoon can be found on disc one of the Spotlight collection DVD of "Tom & Jerry"

My Grade: A

Spike the dog is desperate for some shut-eye, but finds sleeping impossible with Tom and Jerry causing a ruckus around the house. The stressed-out bulldog warns Tom that he'll skin the cat alive if he is woken one more time; Jerry naturally takes this as his cue to try and make as much noise as possible.

'Quiet Please!' won an Oscar for best animated short in 1945, but to be honest, I cannot see why (unless, perhaps, there was not a lot of competition that year). The cartoon is admittedly funny, with the usual plethora of violent gags providing laughs mostly at Tom's expense, but it is pretty standard fare for the cartoon cat and mouse and nothing we haven't seen many times before.

Quiet Please! (1945)

**** (out of 4)

Oscar winning Tom and Jerry short has an angry bulldog trying to sleep but Tom keeps getting blamed for Jerry waking him up. I think this is one of the best T&J shorts as it contains non-stop action and plenty of laughs including the scene where the dog gets blown up with dynamite.

Warner has released most of the Tom and Jerry shorts onto DVD but there are storms of controversy around the releases. Many of the shorts are edited so do some homework before you buy. Foreign sets are also cut. As of right now the only way to get uncut shorts is if you were lucky enough to record them off TV years ago.