FRAIDY CAT (1942)
Cartoon Short
Article 3706 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-22-2011
Posting Date: 10-7-2011
Directed by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna
Featuring the voices of William Hanna, Lillian Randolph, Martha Wentworth
Country: USA
What it is: Tom and Jerry Cartoon

Tom gets frightened by a radio show. Jerry decides to use this opportunity to engage in scary gags to frighten him further.

I associate the Tom and Jerry cartoons with a certain manic comic violence that can sometimes be a little hard to take. However, this is one of the earlier cartoons, and is somewhat gentler in spirit. The most memorable gags involve a sheet draped over a vacuum cleaner; the latter item is so powerful that it almost sucks up all of Tom’s nine lives. The radio show was based on a real one at the time called “The Witching Hour”, and features the voice of the real-life narrator of the show in the opening scenes. All in all, this is a fairly amusing cartoon.