User Reviews

When I was a kid and I saw this short for the first time in my life, I had no idea what show was being referenced here, similar to the Honeymooners parodies made also by Robert McKimson.

That being said, I still find it to be a fun short, even if most of the humor was verbal, instead of the usual Looney Tunes slapstick.

The part which I most vividly remember was the ending sequence, done in live-action, with the cartoon versions of Jack and Mary escaping from the mouth of the cat.

I don't think it's necessary having seen The Jack Benny Program to enjoy this short, though it seems it probably would be more entertaining to watch knowing its source of inspiration.

. . . Warner Bros. Looney Tunes illustrate during THE MOUSE THAT JACK BUILT, which will come as no surprise to those of us who've dispatched dozens of mice over the years in our basements, and have had to remove their gruesome little corpses to Rebait the spring traps (in which peanut-butter works much better than cheese, and several traps clustered together are far more lethal than singletons set down here and there). It would not be much of a shock to find the models for the "Jack," "Rochester," and "Don" characters here stiff in the throes of Rigor Mortis down in the cellar any day. However, MOUSE's "Mary" is a different thing altogether. She's decked out with neither whiskers nor a tail. In fact, she's drawn as a miniature human being. This makes Mary's pairing with the rodent Jack pretty creepy. When the Real Life Jack Benny appears six minutes into MOUSE, viewers half expect a five-foot plus RODENT version of Mary Livingstone to emerge into the scene. Though some mixed marriages have been known to succeed (I myself know several men happily wed--apparently--to females), that FIDDLER ON THE ROOF dad probably would drop dead if he had a daughter elope, then return home, with a giant rat!

"The Mouse that Jack Built" was directed by Robert McKimson, probably the most unjustly neglected figure in the history of American animation. McKimson's cartoons were consistently attractive, imaginative and funny. Robert McKimson is as under-rated as Chuck Jones is over-rated. Chuck Jones took personal credit for every important achievement of the Warner Brothers studio, and I'm genuinely angry at how many people have fallen for Jones's self-serving distortions of animation history. Robert McKimson was not quite as talented as Bob Clampett or Tex Avery, but at least those animators are remembered. McKimson is totally forgotten (he was interviewed only once), and that's a disgrace.

"The Mouse that Jack Built" was made in 1959, when Jack Benny's long-running radio show had gracefully evolved into a TV show with the same cast. For many years, the talented Looney Toons voice actor Mel Blanc had also been a regular supporting comic on the Jack Benny show, in which he played many roles ... most notably a laconic Mexican named Cy ("Cy?" "Si!"), and Monsieur Le Blanc, the excitable Frenchman who was Jack Benny's violin teacher. Mel Blanc also used his vocal talents to create the sound effects for the sputtering, wheezing antique Maxwell car that Jack Benny drove on his show.

"The Mouse that Jack Built" cleverly uses the voices of Jack Benny and his castmates, recasting them as talking cartoon mice. Mary Livingston (Benny's real-life wife and TV/radio girlfriend) is a female mouse here. Don Wilson, Benny's tall and heavy announcer, is caricatured as a hefty-sized mouse. Eddie Anderson, who played Jack Benny's African-American manservant Rochester, provides the voice for a dark brown mouse. The relationships between the various mice parallel the relationships of the characters on Jack Benny's show.

Unusually, all of the actors who provided voices for this cartoon are listed in the opening credits. (Compare this to the 1945 Daffy Duck cartoon "Ain't that Ducky", for which Broadway star Victor Moore did the voice for a self-parody cartoon character ... but got no screen credit.)

Plot line: Mary (a cartoon mouse) wants Jack (ditto) to take her to a fancy restaurant, but the Jack Benny mouse (just like his human counterpart) is too cheap ... until an eavesdropping cat whips up an advert for a "free" dinner, and slips it into Jack's mousehole. Then the cat disguises his own mouth as the entrance of a ritzy restaurant, and Jack escorts Mary inside for a free dinner.

SPOILER COMING. Just as the cartoon cat is about to eat the cartoon mice, we suddenly cut to a live-action shot of the real Jack Benny, asleep in his living-room chair and having a nightmare. He glances suspiciously at a nearby live-action cat (who resembles the cartoon cat), and then Jack Benny does one of his famous "takes". The cartoon mice then climb out of the live cat's mouth ... probably to convince the kids in the audience that the mice are unharmed.

"The Mouse that Jack Built" is very funny, but it has dated badly ... as most modern audiences have only very limited familiarity with the characters on Jack Benny's show. I saw this cartoon recently on television, and I was disappointed that (probably to avoid accusations of racism) the TV station had sliced out all of Rochester's gravel-voiced dialogue, leaving only one brief shot of a brown mouse in a chauffeur's cap driving a mouse-sized jalopy (with its sound effects provided by Blanc).

I'll rate "Mouse that Jack Built" 9 out of 10, and I hope that this cartoon will encourage a few people to take more interest in Robert McKimson. Chuck Jones wasn't the whole show, people.

Wow, this was a shock - the real voices of Jack Benny and his TV stars: "Jack," "Rochester," "Mary" and "Don." Mel Blanc voices "The Maxwell." Anyway, it's strange to hear the real Jack Benny voice himself in this cartoon as we see him playing his violin early on and comparing himself (favorably) to the great violinist Isaac Stern.

The jokes are typical Benny lines, except he's a mouse here so counts his cheese instead of his dollar bills. The extent to which he locks up the cheese is extremely funny. In this cartoon, we get all the regular Benny jokes and blank stares! This is almost like watching the real Jack Benny Show.

The ending of this cartoon makes this a unique Looney Tunes one - a real treasure for Benny fans. (A hint: we see the actual Jack Benny!)

Directed by Robert McKimson, "The Mouse That Jack Built" is an excellent Warner Bros. cartoon that delightfully parodies the Jack Benny troupe as mice. It was apparently at the personal request of Mr. Benny himself that this cartoon spoof was made, and he & his troupe actually supplied the voices for their respective mice characters. As a mouse, Jack Benny is a star of stage, screen, radio, AND cartoons, believe it or not!

Here are my favorite scenes from "The Mouse That Jack Built" (DON'T read any further if you haven't yet seen this cartoon). The film opens with Jack playing Mendelssohn's famous "Spring Song" very badly on the violin. (While we're on the subject of music, composer/orchestrator Milt Franklyn did a fine arrangement of "Sweet Georgia Brown" in relation to the Kit Kat Klub, where Jack serenades his sweetheart Mary Livingston with "Tea for Two", again very badly.) When Ms. Livingston asks Jack's chauffeur Rochester (Eddie Anderson) for Jack's whereabouts, I love the rhythmic manner in which Rochester answers, "Down in the cheese vault counting out his cheese," and I also dig his humorous singing of "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair" just beforehand. And finally, the portly Don Wilson recites some silly Looney Tunes poetry.

Again, "The Mouse That Jack Built" is quite an enjoyable cartoon parody. Even though Jack Benny has been reduced to a mouse, he is still the same lovable cheapskate that we all remember him to be. I also especially admire the mouse characterization of the lovable, humorous Rochester; in our time, it may not be considered a "politically correct" characterization, but at least Rochester is presented in a respectable manner in this cartoon.