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, although for only a few frames.
Mammy appeared in 19 cartoons, from Puss Gets the Boot (1940) to Push-Button Kitty (1952). Her appearances have often been edited out, dubbed, or re-animated in later television showings, since the mammy stereotype is now usually considered racist.[2] Her creation points to the ubiquity of stereotype in American popular culture,[3] and the character was removed from the series after 1953 due to protests from the NAACP.[4]
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.[6] She always called Tom by his full name Thomas (originally Jasper), and frequently used African-American Vernacular English with a Southern accent. 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.
Cultural norms at the time led viewers to believe she was the maid due to her apron and ethnicity. Housing, financial, and residentialsegregation of Black Americans was the norm before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Later, through dialogue and occasional behavior, it was suggested that the house was Mammy's own. One example is that, because she has her own bedroom in the short Sleepy-Time Tom (1951), it raises the possibility of her being the owner of the house, as no other human is present in the house in shorts she appears.[5] She refers to it as 'my house' in "Saturday Evening Puss." Nevertheless, the cutting continuity filed with each short at the Library of Congress always referred to the character as "Maid."[7]
Mammy Two-Shoes was retired from the Tom & Jerry cartoons by Hanna and Barbera following several years of protests and condemnations from the NAACP. A 1949 reissue of the 1943 short The Lonesome Mouse prompted the start of the NAACP's campaign against Tom & Jerry.[4] In this short, Mammy is scared by Jerry onto a stool and shakes with fear as a diamond ring, false teeth, a pair of dice, and a straight razor fall from beneath her dress.[8]
In response to the NAACP's campaign and angry about the potential loss of acting roles, Lillian Randolph questioned the authority of then-NAACP president Walter White, stating that the light-complexioned White was "only one-eighthNegro and not qualified to speak for Negroes." When Randolph departed from Tom & Jerry to appear on television, Hanna and Barbera declined to recast the voice role and Mammy ceased to appear in the cartoons.[4]
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 housekeeper" character "didn't work in a modern context."[9]
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.[5]
Within the animated canon of Tom and Jerry, the character is never referred to by any name. In the known written publications of the period by the studio, she is referred to by generic terms such as "the housekeeper"[11] or "the maid".[12] The first known official name given to the character was Dinah, which originated in the comic book series Our Gang Comics.[13]
A very similar character, who was also played by Lillian Randolph, had appeared previously in Disney's Silly Symphony series, most notably Three Orphan Kittens (1935). This is the character that originated the name Mammy Twoshoes, via a storybook retelling of the original Three Orphan Kittens short.[14] In the context of the book, "Mammy Twoshoes" is a nickname playfully given to her by the kittens, due to the fact that her big shoes is what stands out about her in their perspective.
The similarity between the two characters would cause the conflation of their identities. In a 1975 article, animator Mark Kausler referred to the Tom & Jerry character as Mammy Two-Shoes, elaborating that she was "so named because her face was never shown; only shots from the mid-shoulders down".[15] The name would then establish its usage in official material. For example, the 2005 DVD Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Vol. 2 includes an introduction featuring Whoopi Goldberg explaining the racial stereotyping in the cartoons, where she explicitly refers to the character as "Mammy Two Shoes".
^Morgan, Herbert, ed. (January–February 1939), "Puss Gets the Boot", Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Short Story, Broadway, New York: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, p. 182
^Morgan, Herbert, ed. (January–February 1941), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Short Story(PDF), Broadway, New York: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, p. 80
^Gaylord Du Bois (w), John Stanley (p), John Stanley (i). "Tom and Jerry" Our Gang Comics, no. 3, p. 46/2 (January–February 1943). Dell Publishing Co. Inc..
^Walt Disney Studios (1935). The Three Orphan Kittens. Racine, Wisconsin: Whitman Publishing Company. [ISBN unspecified]
^Kausler, Mark (January–February 1975), "Tom & Jerry: The cartoon animator is an artist, too", Film Comment, vol. 11, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, p. 74