The Flying Sorceress

The Flying Sorceress
Tom and Jerry series

The title card of The Flying Sorceress
Directed by William Hanna
Joseph Barbera
Produced by William Hanna
Joseph Barbera
Voices by June Foray
Music by Scott Bradley
Animation by Ed Barge
Irven Spence
Lewis Marshall
Kenneth Muse
Layouts by Richard Bickenbach
Backgrounds by Robert Gentle
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)
  • January 27, 1956 (1956-01-27)
Color process Technicolor
CinemaScope
Running time 6:40
Language English
Preceded by That's My Mommy
Followed by The Egg and Jerry

The Flying Sorceress is a 1956 one reel animated Tom and Jerry short directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley. The cartoon was animated by Kenneth Muse, Ed Barge, Irven Spence and Lewis Marshall, with backgrounds by Robert Gentle and layouts by Richard Bickenbach. It was produced in CinemaScope and released to theatres on January 27, 1956 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.

Plot

Tom is chasing Jerry through the house, then bumps into a table and breaks an ornament and Tom gets scolded by Joan. While Tom is cleaning the mess, he sees an advertisement in the newspaper for an intelligent cat as an old lady's traveling companion, and gets interested in the job and leaves for the given location.

Tom walks along a road and sees a creepy house, he enters the place and a witch (voiced by June Foray) comes in riding on her broom. Seeing the job is less appealing than he thought, Tom tries to leave but the witch grabs Tom on her broomstick. She then gives her broom a kick and they take off. She notes that he doesn't look much like a witch's cat so she screams at him, scaring him so that he rears up and all his hair stands on end. Before the ride, the witch points out a cemetery, where there are seven graves, each with a previous applicant. Next to the seventh grave is an open one, reserved for Tom, marked "eight". She tells him that's what will happen if he doesn't hang on. During the ride, the witch loses her hat. Tom had taken it and uses it to parachute down, but the witch grabs Tom, they return to the house and the witch tells Tom that he gets the job. Tom is left to sleep in a coffin. As the witch retires, Tom looks at her broom and decides to take it on a joyride. He gets the hang of riding a broomstick by himself, he does a few tricks and then gets hit by a tree.

Tom then flies by his house spying Jerry, who thinks that he saw something, Jerry then opens the front door and gets knocked down by Tom, who then gets off the broom and points to Jerry. The broom hits Jerry and sweeps him into a dustpan. Tom leaves and returns to the witch's house where the witch is waiting for him. She is very angry about Tom "stealing a ride" so the witch casts a spell on the broom saying that she'll give Tom a REAL ride. The broom takes off on a painful ride with Tom on it. The broom drags Tom's head through the ceiling, causes him to bounce down the stairs, and into a table. The broom then acts like a pogo stick with Tom holding on to it.

However, Tom wakes up to see Joan shaking the broomstick. Realising it was only a dream, Tom is relieved and goes back to clearing up his mess. He then decides to sit on the broom and gives it a kick. Before he can react, the broom takes off with him on it, sailing towards the night sky. Jerry and his owner see this and Joan says, "Now, what is that cat up to??".

Trivia

. This short uses a new title card for the first time, only seen in a handful of cartoons made between 1955 and 1956.

. This was one of the first Tom and Jerry cartoons to be shot in CinemaScope , and the first in which a human's full body could be seen, including the head.

. The scene when Tom runs into the tree and the scene where Tom suffers the witch's wrath are reused in Matinee Mouse.

. Also, in Matinee Mouse , the witch's line "Stealing a ride, eh? Well, I'll give you a real ride has been fitted out.

. Butch was hired by the witch before Tom was buried in the 7th grave next to Meathead, though these, of course, may not refer specially to Tom's rival Butch and Meathead, but could be two generic cats.


. The witch from the cartoon can be briefly spotted next to Clara Cluck as one of the Toons leaving for Toontpwn in the final scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

. The same witch in this cartoon appears again in the Tom and Jerry Tales episode "Which Witch". . Veteran voice actor June Foray did the voices of both Tom's owner (which is her real voice) and the Witch. She is well-known as the current voice of Granny and Witch Hazel of Looney Tunes as well as the latter's similarly named predecessor in a Disney short.


Availability

DVD

External links

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