This cartoon first came to my attention after having been aired on the program "Matinee at the Bijou" sometime in the mid 90s. It re-connected me with the past...as a baby-boomer I saw a number of these cartoons as a child because they were among the first items packaged to be sold to the then blossoming medium of television. Though I vaguely recalled the characters, I did not recall their names right off. It turns out that the first screen incarnation of Tom and Jerry was not of cat and mouse vintage, but they were "humans" in their form, and they predated the other duo by some ten or twelve years. However, they were no-where near as successful as the cat and mouse would be. And, due to the relatively early demise of the Van Beuren animation wing in the 30s, the characters remained under-developed and went no-where...so when Hanna and Barbera picked up on the idea, it was fair game...and they developed it to the hilt...only one of the first of their numerous successes in the TV milieu.
This cartoon is a bit strange, yet interesting. The "Magic Mummy" picks up on the horror genre in something of an under-stated way. Tom and Jerry are cops on patrol, listening to the radio police band to the singing cops coming across the airwaves ( cop cars had radios long before there was general consumption by the automobile buying public), and they are thoroughly enjoying the music...until they get a special alert from HQ in re. to a mummy stolen from the local museum. They immediately get on the trail, which leads them to a graveyard, where we observe a character carrying the mummy case, and entering secret passage via a grave. Tom and Jerry follow through to an underground venue reminiscent of the "Phantom of the Opera". In fact, this somewhat scary character is a composite of the "Phantom of the Opera" and "Svengali". He possesses magic powers that allow him to thwart any attempt at interference from T and J, and then proceeds to take the mummy--a female--from the case, and makes her sing. The mummy is kind of a composite of "Trilby" from Svengali, and could be the distaff counterpart of "Cesar", the sleeping, murderous somnambulist from "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari". A concert for the "dead" is delivered by the Svengali character and the mummy ( who sounds a lot like Mae Questal...the credits list Margie Hines, who was Questal's replacement when the Fleischers moved to Miami. Questal declined to travel to Miami, so for a few years the voice of Olive Oyl was done by Hines). Present in this theater of the dead are skeletons in the audience. The concert is broken up by Tom and Jerry, who have overcome the impediments imposed upon them by the Phantom, who grabs the mummy case and leads them on a chase in the underground catacombs as the skeletons hurriedly abandon the theater to return to their "digs". Jerry, the more diminutive of the duo, grabs the mummy case, and takes it to the police station. What happens then is a small surprise that I will not divulge...watch the cartoon and see for yourself. Not a good or even great cartoon. I just dig old celluloid. The directors of this cartoon later worked on the cartoons of Paul Terry doing Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse. No telling who did the music, but it could have been Winston Sharples, who had come on board with the NYC studios of Van Beuren by 1933. We may never know. But if you are curious, as I am, check out the cartoon---this and others produced by Van Beuren have surfaced after being out of circulation for over half a century...they are mildly entertaining, though others...such as Disney, Hanna Barbera, WB, and Paul Terry... would go on and further define the medium within the next decade.
This cartoon is a bit strange, yet interesting. The "Magic Mummy" picks up on the horror genre in something of an under-stated way. Tom and Jerry are cops on patrol, listening to the radio police band to the singing cops coming across the airwaves ( cop cars had radios long before there was general consumption by the automobile buying public), and they are thoroughly enjoying the music...until they get a special alert from HQ in re. to a mummy stolen from the local museum. They immediately get on the trail, which leads them to a graveyard, where we observe a character carrying the mummy case, and entering secret passage via a grave. Tom and Jerry follow through to an underground venue reminiscent of the "Phantom of the Opera". In fact, this somewhat scary character is a composite of the "Phantom of the Opera" and "Svengali". He possesses magic powers that allow him to thwart any attempt at interference from T and J, and then proceeds to take the mummy--a female--from the case, and makes her sing. The mummy is kind of a composite of "Trilby" from Svengali, and could be the distaff counterpart of "Cesar", the sleeping, murderous somnambulist from "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari". A concert for the "dead" is delivered by the Svengali character and the mummy ( who sounds a lot like Mae Questal...the credits list Margie Hines, who was Questal's replacement when the Fleischers moved to Miami. Questal declined to travel to Miami, so for a few years the voice of Olive Oyl was done by Hines). Present in this theater of the dead are skeletons in the audience. The concert is broken up by Tom and Jerry, who have overcome the impediments imposed upon them by the Phantom, who grabs the mummy case and leads them on a chase in the underground catacombs as the skeletons hurriedly abandon the theater to return to their "digs". Jerry, the more diminutive of the duo, grabs the mummy case, and takes it to the police station. What happens then is a small surprise that I will not divulge...watch the cartoon and see for yourself. Not a good or even great cartoon. I just dig old celluloid. The directors of this cartoon later worked on the cartoons of Paul Terry doing Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse. No telling who did the music, but it could have been Winston Sharples, who had come on board with the NYC studios of Van Beuren by 1933. We may never know. But if you are curious, as I am, check out the cartoon---this and others produced by Van Beuren have surfaced after being out of circulation for over half a century...they are mildly entertaining, though others...such as Disney, Hanna Barbera, WB, and Paul Terry... would go on and further define the medium within the next decade.
