Mammy Two Shoes
| Mammy Two Shoes | |
|---|---|
Push-Button Kitty (1952) | |
| Created by | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Voiced by | Lillian Randolph (original) June Foray (1960s redubbed shorts) Thea Vidale (1990s redubbed shorts) |
| In-universe information | |
| Nickname | Dinah (1940s Tom and Jerry comics) |
| Family | Tom (pet) |
Mammy Two Shoes is a fictional character in MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons. She is a middle-aged African American woman who is the housemaid in the house which Tom and Jerry reside. However, the fact that she has her own bedroom in the short Sleepy-Time Tom (1951) raises the possibility of her being the owner of the house, as no other human is present in the house in shorts she appears. She would scold and discipline Tom whenever she believed he was misbehaving; Jerry would sometimes be the cause of Tom's getting in trouble.
As a partially-seen character, her head was rarely seen, except in a few cartoons including Part Time Pal (1947), A Mouse in the House (1947), Mouse Cleaning (1948), and Saturday Evening Puss (1950).
Mammy appeared in 19 cartoons, from
Theatrical Tom and Jerry cartoons
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Mammy's debut appearance was in
One of Mammy's roles in the films was to set up the plot by warning Tom that she will toss him out of the house if he failed to act according to her wishes. She invariably catches Tom acting against her orders, and there are grave consequences. Naturally, it is Jerry that sabotages Tom to get him in trouble.[5] She always called Tom by his full name Thomas (originally Jasper), and almost always used is in place of are and am ("is you" and "I is"). Her signature quotes are "Land Sakes!" and "What in the world is going on in here?", the latter of which is usually delivered upon rushing in to investigate the commotion being caused by Tom and Jerry.
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera initially portrayed Mammy as the maid of the house, with the real owners unknown to audiences - at least, her apron suggests she is a maid. Later, Hanna and Barbera seemed to suggest, through dialogue and occasional behavior, that the house was Mammy's own. She refers to it as 'my house' in "Saturday Evening Puss". On one occasion, she goes to her bedroom. This suggests she owns the house and is its sole human occupant,[4] though the cutting continuity filed with each short at the Library of Congress always referred to the character as "Maid."[6]
Mammy Two-Shoes was retired from the Tom & Jerry cartoons by Hanna and Barbera following several years of protests and condemnations from the NAACP. A 1949 reissue of the 1943 short The Lonesome Mouse prompted the start of the NAACP's campaign against Tom & Jerry.[3] In this short, Mammy is scared by Jerry onto a stool and shaken as a straight razor, dice, and other stereotypical props fall from beneath her dress.[7]
In response to the NAACP's campaign and angry about the potential loss of acting roles, Lillian Randolph questioned the authority of then-NAACP president
Censorship, discontinuation, and callbacks
Rembrandt Films produced 13 Tom and Jerry shorts and they were released from 1961 to 1962. Director Gene Deitch stated in an interview that he opted not to use Mammy's character in the 13 shorts, as he felt a "stereotypical black housekeeper" character "didn't work in a modern context."[8]
Three years after
A white woman named "
Name
Within the animated canon of Tom and Jerry, the character is never referred to by any name. In the known written publications of the period by the studio, she is referred to by generic terms such as "the housekeeper"[10] or "the maid".[11] The first known official name given to the character was Dinah, which originated in the comic book series Our Gang Comics.[12]
A very similar character, who was also played by Lillian Randolph, had appeared previously in Disney's Silly Symphony series, most notably Three Orphan Kittens (1935). This is the character that originated the name Mammy Twoshoes, via a storybook retelling of the original Three Orphan Kittens short.[13] In the context of the book, "Mammy Twoshoes" is a nickname playfully given to her by the kittens, due to the fact that her big shoes is what stands out about her in their perspective.
The similarity between the two characters would cause the conflation of their identities. In a 1975 article, animator Mark Kausler referred to the Tom & Jerry character as Mammy Two-Shoes, elaborating that she was "so named because her face was never shown; only shots from the mid-shoulders down".[14] The name would then establish its usage in official material. For example, the 2005 DVD Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Vol. 2 includes an introduction featuring Whoopi Goldberg explaining the racial stereotyping in the cartoons, where she explicitly refers to the character as "Mammy Two Shoes".
Featured shorts
| Title | Released | Lillian Randolph | June Foray | Thea Vidale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Puss Gets the Boot | February 10, 1940 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| The Midnight Snack | July 19, 1941 | Yes | Yes | |
Fraidy Cat
|
January 17, 1942 | Yes | Yes | |
Dog Trouble
|
April 18, 1942 | Yes | Yes (recolored) | Yes |
Puss N' Toots
|
May 30, 1942 | Yes | Yes | |
| The Lonesome Mouse | May 22, 1943 | Yes | Yes | |
The Mouse Comes to Dinner
|
May 5, 1945 | Yes | Yes | |
Part Time Pal
|
March 15, 1947 | Yes | Yes | |
A Mouse in the House
|
August 30, 1947 | Yes | Yes | |
Old Rockin' Chair Tom
|
September 18, 1948 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mouse Cleaning | December 11, 1948 | Yes | Yes | |
Polka-Dot Puss
|
February 26, 1949 | Yes | Yes | |
| The Little Orphan | April 30, 1949 | No (cameo) | ||
| Saturday Evening Puss | January 14, 1950 | Yes | Yes (reanimated) | Yes |
The Framed Cat
|
October 21, 1950 | Yes | Yes (reanimated) | Yes |
Sleepy-Time Tom
|
May 26, 1951 | Yes | Yes | |
Nit-Witty Kitty
|
October 6, 1951 | Yes | Yes (recolored) | Yes |
Triplet Trouble
|
May 3, 1952 | Yes | Yes (recolored) | Yes |
Push-Button Kitty
|
September 6, 1952 | Yes | Yes (recolored) | Yes |
References
References
- ^ Perkins, Anne (2014-10-02). "The Tom and Jerry racism warning is a reminder about diversity in modern storytelling". The Guardian. Retrieved 2020-08-29.
- ^ Walker-Barnes (2014), p. 86
- ^ a b c Lehman (2007), p. 97-99
- ^ a b c Cohen (2004), p. 57
- ^ Cohen (2004), p. 56-57
- ^ Lehman (2007), p. 96
- OCLC 1009241552.)
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link - ^ Deitch, Gene (2015). Tom and Jerry...and Gene in Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection (DVD). Warner Home Video.
- ^ Pilgrim, David. "Mammy Two Shoes - January 2013". Jim Crow Museum - Witness, Understand, Heal. Retrieved June 22, 2024.
- ^ Morgan, Herbert, ed. (January–February 1939), "Puss Gets the Boot", Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Short Story, Broadway, New York: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, p. 182
- ^ Morgan, Herbert, ed. (January–February 1941), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Short Story (PDF), Broadway, New York: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, p. 80
- ^ Gaylord Du Bois (w), John Stanley (p), John Stanley (i). "Tom and Jerry" Our Gang Comics, no. 3, p. 46/2 (January–February 1943). Dell Publishing Co. Inc..
- ^ Walt Disney Studios (1935). The Three Orphan Kittens. Racine, Wisconsin: Whitman Publishing Company. [ISBN unspecified]
- ^ Kausler, Mark (January–February 1975), "Tom & Jerry: The cartoon animator is an artist, too", Film Comment, vol. 11, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, p. 74
External references
- Cohen, Karl F. (2004), "Racism and Resistance:Stereotypes in Animation", Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America, ISBN 978-0786420322
- ISBN 978-1620320662
- Lehman, Christopher P. (2007). The Colored cartoon : Black representation in American animated short films, 1907-1954. Amherst: OCLC 794701592.
