The Missing Mouse is a 1953 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 73rd Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
Plot[]
Jerry tries to steal food from the refrigerator while he is being watched by Tom, without him knowing. Jerry is then attacked. When Jerry looks back at Tom, he accidentally runs into a wall.
The cat laughs and sits down, and Jerry breaks out of the wall and onto the floor. The impact tips over a bottle of white shoe polish from the shelf above over and spills its contents onto Jerry, painting him white. Tom reads a magazine and listens to the radio until a breaking news story is announced that an escaped laboratory white mouse, who has consumed enough of an experimental explosive to blow up an entire city, is on the loose. The slightest jar will cause the mouse to explode, much to Tom's appalled horror.
While listening to this, Jerry knows that Tom will mistake him for the white mouse and decides to have some fun. Tom slams the open window shut and relaxes by eating some nuts. As he breaks open the nuts with a hammer, Jerry uses this opportunity and stands on the table. Tom grabs the mouse, thinking he is a nut, but stops the hammer when he feels Jerry, and looks to see the white mouse and his hammer droops down.
Tom jumps away and dashes to the phone to call the police. Jerry whistles at him and tries to fall off the table, and Tom immediately sets a pillow for Jerry to fall on. Tom tries to make a call again, but Jerry draws attention to himself trying to drop a lid of the piano on himself, and Tom has to substitute his head. Tom sneaks away and tries to make a call a third time, but sees Jerry jumping off a butter knife. Tom blows Jerry to safety atop the counter, where the mouse drops a clothes iron down on him. Tom manages to keep it airborne for a few seconds, going purple in the face, before the inevitable happens and it lands on his face.
Tom begins a chase, which ends quickly when Jerry threatens to hit himself with a hammer. The cat begs him not to do it, and Jerry takes this chance to whack his enemy on the head. Tom, stopped by the mouse renewing his "suicidal" threat, allows Jerry to hit him on the head several times. Satisfied, the rodent filches a few cookies, which gives the cat the chance to swipe the hammer.
In response, Jerry bounces himself on the counter making the cat flinch. The mouse continues bouncing across the counter but does not see the sink full of water. He jumps out and doesn't realize the polish has washed off. Tom grins and allows Jerry to bounce and hit himself with the hammer. Not knowing he's been exposed, Jerry hits himself even harder and ends up bruising himself. Tom then takes the hammer and pounds Jerry into the counter like a nail. He then grabs Jerry by the tail and takes him to the mirror to show him devoid of the polish. After giggling bashfully in an attempt to laugh the whole thing off, Jerry is then kicked out of the house by Tom.
The real white mouse appears as Tom kicks Jerry out and runs into the house. Tom goes back to reading his magazine and he hears the white mouse eating some nuts. Thinking that Jerry is trying to fool him again, Tom tries to attack him with his hammer and catches him, then tries to wash the "polish" off in the fishbowl but it doesn't work. He tries using a washboard only to hear a whistle, Jerry reveals himself grinning from an open window. Tom realizes that he must be holding the real white mouse, and the shock of it causes him to age about 100 years. Trembling due to his advanced age, Tom sets the mouse down then fumbles to call the police but snaps back to reality when the radio announcer comes back on the air with important news that the explosive consumed by the white mouse is no longer dangerous and that the mouse will not explode.
Tom is instantly rejuvenated and takes the white mouse to kick him out of the window, just as Jerry jumps out of the window, believing that the white mouse may still explode. The moment Tom's foot makes contact, the mouse causes a massive explosion which reduces the entire neighborhood to rubble, leaving only the radio speaker intact. The radio announcer states: "We repeat, the white mouse will not explode". A battered Tom emerges from the rubble and sarcastically drones, "Don't you believe it!" as the cartoon closes.
Notes[]
- This is the only Tom and Jerry short not to be scored by Scott Bradley, as he was on vacation around the time the short entered production. Instead Edward Plumb took over the score.
- This was Harry E. Lang's final voiceover credential and the last time he voiced Tom Cat before his death on August 3, 1953.