Tom and Jerry used to be Cops.

 Let's endure a mad old cartoon about skeletons for Hallowe'en proper, shall we? 

 Before the famous cat and mouse, before the male leads of The Good Life – but after Pierce Egan's 1821 box office hit that I've only just learnt about* – Tom and Jerry were apparently these two guys on the right, and after last week's dancing, and Saturday's march, I look upon their floating, supple forms now with envy.  

 

 I'm back rehearsing The Love Goddess this week, and the trick to dancing seems to be to get the top half of my body to hold up the bottom half, which after forty-eight years of having my bottom half hold up the top half is quite a revelation. There's a sexy dance in this too, although not on the same level as Tex Avery, or Jessica Rabbit, or Betty Boop, or actually any woman drawn outside of a toilet cubicle on a building site. I think the animators knew too that they weren't up to this task without any reference material, which is why they spent more time having their vamp just take incredibly deep breaths in a low cut top while standing still.

 

  Has David Cairns written about this cartoon? Of course he has. Do the skeletons all start playing each other's ribs like xylophones at any point? Well actually, not quite. We're literally a second into the action when either Tom or Jerry turns his hat into a telescope, so let's not expect too many set-ups and pay-offs. 

 

 Apart from that though, Magic Mummy is just your standard, run-of-the-mill , proudly-gay-police-force-hunting-down-a-necrophiliac-Svengali cartoon from the thirties. I don't think it was one of the ones Dad used to show us on his Super 8 projector, but the scratchy soprano of its wind machine still summons the dread of many he did. Skeletons were such a faff to draw, weren't they? Happy Hallowe'en, ol' unattendees!

 

 

"At last"?!

 

 *UPDATE: I have also just learnt that "Tom and Jerry" was a drink! Okay. I reckon the drink was named after the play, and the cops were named after the drink, and the animals were named after the cops (Joseph Barbera worked on both cartoons) and the neighbours were named after the animals.