Mammy Two Shoes

Mammy Two Shoes is a fictional character in MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons. She is a heavy-set middle-aged African American housemaid who takes care of the house in which Tom and Jerry reside. She would scold and attack Tom whenever she believed he was misbehaving; Jerry would sometimes be the cause of Tom getting in trouble.

Mammy Two Shoes
Tom and Jerry (MGM) character
Mammy Two Shoes in a scene from the Tom & Jerry short Saturday Evening Puss. This is the only time her facial features are clearly seen, albeit for only a few frames.
First appearance	Puss Gets the Boot February 10, 1940
Last appearance	Push-Button Kitty September 6, 1952
Created by	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Voiced by	English Lillian Randolph Thea Vidale (redubbed shorts) French Monique Thierry Spanish Leyla Horne Japanese Tomie Kataoka
In-universe information
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Family	Tom (pet)

As a partially-seen character, her head was rarely seen, except in a few cartoons including Part Time Pal, A Mouse in the House, Mouse Cleaning, and Saturday Evening Puss.

Mammy appeared in 19 cartoons, from Puss Gets the Boot (1940) to Push-Button Kitty (1952). Mammy's appearances have often been edited out, dubbed, or re-animated in later television showings, since her character is an archetype now usually considered racist.[1] Her creation points to the ubiquity of the mammy in American popular culture.[2]

Theatrical Tom and Jerry cartoons

Actress Lillian Randolph in an ad listing from 1939, the year she began voicing the character.

Mammy's debut appearance was in Puss Gets The Boot (1940), while her last appearance was in Push-Button Kitty (1952).[3] She was originally voiced by well-known African-American character actress Lillian Randolph.[3] She was the second prominent black character of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio, following Bosko. She appeared in 19 Tom and Jerry animated shorts between 1940 and 1952.

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.[4] 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. In one occasion, she goes to her bedroom. This suggests she owns the house and is its sole human occupant.[3]

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 housekeep" character "didn't work in a modern context."[5]

MGM Animation/Visual Arts, under the supervision of Chuck Jones, created replacement characters for Mammy in the Tom and Jerry cartoons featuring her for television. These versions used rotoscoping techniques to replace Mammy on-screen with a similarly stocky white woman (in most shorts) or a thin white woman (in Saturday Evening Puss); Randolph's voice on the soundtracks was replaced by an Irish-accented (or, in Puss, generic young adult) voice performed by actress June Foray.[3][6] Paul Mular, head of Broadcast Standards and Practices (BS&P) at KOFY-TV (Channel 20) in San Francisco in the late 1990s (now owned by Granite Broadcasting) believes this was an overreaction to calls for racial sensitivity as the original Mammy was inoffensive.[3]

Three years after Turner Broadcasting System acquired Tom & Jerry from MGM, the cartoons featuring Mammy were edited again. This time, Lillian Randolph's voice was replaced with that of Thea Vidale, who re-recorded the dialogue to remove Mammy's use of potentially offensive dialect. These re-recorded versions of the cartoons would air on Turner's Cartoon Network-related cable channels, and have at times turned up on DVD as well. However, some European TV showings of these cartoons, especially the UK, as well as the US DVD release of Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection, and Tom and Jerry: The Deluxe Anniversary Collection and the US DVD and Blu-ray releases of Tom and Jerry Golden Collection, retain Randolph's original voice. The Region 2 Complete Collectors Edition DVD boxset has Vidale's voice on the first DVD and Randolph in a number of the episodes after that (such as A Mouse in the House and Mouse Cleaning).

A white woman named "Mrs. Two-Shoes" appeared in some episodes of Tom and Jerry Tales. She had most aspects of Mammy Two Shoes' personality and a similar name.

Featured shorts

No.	Title	Released
1	Puss Gets the Boot	February 10, 1940
2	The Midnight Snack	July 19, 1941
4	Fraidy Cat	January 17, 1942
5	Dog Trouble	April 18, 1942
6	Puss N' Toots	May 30, 1942
10	The Lonesome Mouse	May 22, 1943
18	The Mouse Comes to Dinner	May 5, 1945
28	Part Time Pal	March 15, 1947
32	A Mouse in the House	August 30, 1947
36	Old Rockin' Chair Tom	September 18, 1948
38	Mouse Cleaning	December 11, 1948
39	Polka-Dot Puss	February 26, 1949
40	The Little Orphan	April 30, 1949
48	Saturday Evening Puss	January 14, 1950
53	The Framed Cat	October 21, 1950
58	Sleepy-Time Tom	May 26, 1951
61	Nit-Witty Kitty	October 6, 1951
67	Triplet Trouble	April 19, 1952
70	Push-Button Kitty	September 6, 1952

References

General

• Cohen, Karl F. (2004), "Racism and Resistance:Stereotypes in Animation", Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America, McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-0786420322
• Walker-Barnes, Chanequa (2014), "Jezebels, Mammies, and Matriarchs", Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength, Wipf and Stock, ISBN 978-1620320662

Specific

1. Anne Perkins, The Tom and Jerry racism warning is a reminder about diversity in modern storytelling
2. Walker-Barnes (2014), p. 86
3. Cohen (2004), p. 57
4. Cohen (2004), p. 56-57
5. Deitch, Gene (2015). Tom and Jerry...and Gene in Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection (DVD). Warner Home Video.
6. A History of Mammy Twoshoes