Tennis Chumps is the 46th Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
Plot[]
Tom comes out from a locker room at a tennis court. His entrance is interrupted by his competitor Butch, who slams the door into Tom causing him to look like a figure from the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Jerry then comes out from the locker room, but Tom orders him to pick up his tennis equipment. Jerry hands Tom his racquet and a tennis ball, and a match between Tom and Butch begins. With no further need for the mouse, Tom dismisses Jerry by hitting him into the locker room wall and he ends up landing in the drinking fountain, angering Jerry. Tom serves the ball and Butch returns it with such speed that it causes Tom's racket to burst into flame when it grazes the handle. Tom grabs another racket and serves three balls to Butch. Butch then splits his racket into three and returns all three balls back into Tom's mouth, and they settle into his tail.
Tom's next serve resembles a badminton serve and he pulls the net to force a drop shot. Butch then hits the ball hard into the ground and Tom has to stretch his arm all the way to the end of the court to make the return. Butch is then shown making many returns at the net, but the ball is actually bouncing off Tom's face. Butch then hits Tom with his racket and the ball eventually bounces back towards the end of his court. Butch takes Tom's racket and hits the ball with a lot of backspin, causing it to buzz in the air. The ball goes to Tom, but curves and boomerangs back. Tom grabs his new racket and chases after the ball trying to hit it, but ends up running into the post of the net and wrapping himself in the net. Jerry now gets in the fun by playing the cats against each other. He hands Tom a small white bomb which looks like a tennis ball so as to blow up Butch. Jerry winks at Tom and Tom winks back. Tom lights the bomb and serves it to Butch. Butch is about to return the bomb but it explodes just before he makes contact with it, making him look like a blackfaced ballet dancer. Jerry then removes a round, white piece of a gate that resembles a tennis ball. It is heavy enough to cause Butch to be pulled into the ground when he grabs it. Jerry winks at Butch, who winks back and swings the racket, allowing the force of the net to serve the heavy ball to Tom. The overconfident Tom gets hit in the head and breaks into pieces.
Jerry starts to laugh at this and then he ducks out of the way as Tom is trying to hit him with tennis balls. Jerry ends up swallowing one of the tennis balls and he gets used as a rodent tennis ball between the two cats. After a small rally, Jerry lands up walking on the net like a tightrope and then wobbles onto Butch's head. Tom swings, hitting Butch instead as Jerry flies over and then throwing him onto the ground behind Tom. Butch is about to hit Tom but he sees Jerry running away on the other side of the court and he hits a tennis ball towards Jerry. Jerry grabs a tennis racquet and starts rallying with Butch. Tom gets involved in the rally when the ball gets stuck in his mouth, which Butch simply hits out of it. Butch runs through a chain link fence to return the next shot by Jerry, and Jerry has to move the sideline after a ball hits the net and drops over. Tom tries to get involved again, but Butch stops him. The rally continues and Butch runs back and forth on his side of the court with Tom next to him.
Jerry then hits a ball up high and both cats run towards the middle with an attempt to hit the ball, but they crash into each other and become a pair of conjoined cats. They separate and realize that they need to work together. They both chase after Jerry and he runs toward an automatic tennis ball server, activating it at its highest speed. The huge force of the tennis balls hits the cats before they can dodge them, pushing them into the net until it rips, throwing both of them all the way into a tree hundreds of feet away, where they are tangled in the net, acting like marionettes. Jerry is then shown putting on a jacket and writing his name on the tennis trophy using a pencil. He stands up and waves to a crowd of people, who cheer for him.
Trivia[]
- This is the fourth Tom and Jerry cartoon to involve a sport.
- This cartoon was featured in the VHS compilation Tom and Jerry: Festival of Fun.
- This is the final Tom and Jerry cartoon of the 1940s.
- This is one of the nine cartoons where Tom loses with another cat. The other cartoons are Sufferin' Cats!, Smarty Cat, Casanova Cat, Jerry's Cousin, Saturday Evening Puss, Cat and Dupli-cat, Catty-Cornered, and A Mouse in the House.
Censorship[]
- The UK version of Boomerang (before the short itself was banned in 2006) cuts two scenes:
- The scene of Butch puffing on a cigar as he waits for Tom to serve the ball
- The scene of Tom serving the bomb painted up like a tennis ball, Butch winding up to hit it, the bomb exploding, and Butch ending up in blackface.
- It should be noted that, despite Cartoon Network and Boomerang in the United States also editing out scenes of tobacco smoking and characters in blackface after an explosion in other cartoons, those two scenes were left uncut.