Mammy Two Shoes

 

Mammy's debut appearance was in Puss Gets The Boot (1940), while her last appearance was in Push-Button Kitty (1952). She was originally voiced by well-known African-American character actress Lillian Randolph.^[5] 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.^[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 residential segregation 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-eighth Negro 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]

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]

Three years after Turner Broadcasting System acquired Tom & Jerry from MGM ^[when?], 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 stereotype. 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's personality with a similar name, but without acts of animal cruelty.^{[citation needed][10]}

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".

• 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
• Lehman, Christopher P. (2007). The Colored cartoon : Black representation in American animated short films, 1907-1954. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1-61376-119-9. OCLC 794701592.