The Mouse That Jack Built

Edit links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Mouse That Jack Built
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date
  • April 4, 1959 (1959-04-04) (U.S.)
Running time
6 minutes 54 seconds
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The Mouse That Jack Built is a 1959 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodie cartoon short starring Jack Benny and the regular cast of The Jack Benny Program as mice.[1] The short, released on April 4, 1959, was written by Tedd Pierce and directed by Robert McKimson.[2]

Plot

Somewhere in

Beverly Hills, in the house of Jack Benny (a sign out front proclaims, "Star of Stage * Screen * Radio * Television...also cartoons"), a mouse version of Jack is practicing his violin—off-key—and saying to himself, "Who is this guy Isaac Stern
?" (In real life Benny and Stern were good friends.) Outside Jack's mouse hole, a cat is lying in wait, wearing ear muffs to filter out the discordant sound of Jack's violin.

Jack calls his servant, Rochester (portrayed as a dark brown mouse) to get his white suit, which Rochester is wearing at the time. Jack tells the valet that his rental period is up (a week for $5.00, equal to $52.26 today) and he needs the suit because he is taking Mary Livingstone out for her birthday, and, true to character, is looking for a good cheap restaurant.

While waiting for Mary, Jack decides to count his cheese in a basement vault. Using a coin on a string, he opens the lock, which appears to be a coin-operated lock from a pay toilet. As soon as he walks through the door, he takes a cane from a nail on the wall and starts humming "

the Kaiser
?"

Mary arrives while Jack is inspecting his cheese vault, and he emerges wondering who has been pilfering his best

champagne, while Jack says that he prefers a good "mousecatel
". Unbeknownst to them, the "club" is actually the maw of the cat, and as Jack and Mary enter, the cat's mouth closes on them.

Jack cries: "Help! Help!" as the camera cuts to the live-action Jack Benny, who wakes up and, breaking the

Rock-a-Bye Baby
" played on the violin, coming from within Jack's live-action cat. From there, the rodent versions of Jack and Mary emerge unharmed from the live-action cat. Following one last bit of animation (where the rodent Jack and Mary return to their mousehole), the real Jack Benny does one of his famous "takes" as the cartoon fades out.

Voice cast

The cartoon is noticeable to credit all of the voice actors rather than only crediting Mel Blanc. The list of actors includes:

Production

The cartoon was released on April 4, 1959. Written by

This is the House that Jack Built
". As revealed on the audio commentary for this short, Benny only supplied his voice, but not his violin playing, as evidenced by the "pre-score" music of the violin soloist attempting to play as badly as Benny did on the radio show.

Home media

The Mouse That Jack Built is available on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc 2.

See also

The Honeymousers, another TV show parody (that is, of The Honeymooners), featuring mice as caricatures of the TV actors. In this case, however, the original actors did not perform. The voices were impressions done by June Foray (Alice) and Daws Butler (Ralph and Ed).

Mel Blanc had stated that he did not like doing impressions, believing that to be like stealing from other actors. This personal objection may have led to Warner Bros. using the actual cast of The Jack Benny Program to do their own voices in The Mouse that Jack Built.

References

  1. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2
    .
  2. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7
    . Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  3. ISBN 0-8050-0889-6
    .

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Mouse_That_Jack_Built&oldid=1216397686"