Tee for Two

Tee for Two  is a 1945 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 20th Tom and Jerry short. It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on July 21, 1945 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. The cartoon name is a pun on the phrase "Tea for two". It was the final wartime Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Plot
The cartoon opens on a wrecked golf course, which has trees chopped down or golf clubs wrapped around their trunks, hundreds of divots carved out of the ground and other scenes of devastation. As the camera pans across the golf course, we see Tom who keeps trying to hit a ball out of a gigantic divot. He finally hits the ball out on his 50th try. When Tom takes the flag out of the hole, the ball rolls in but bounces out. Tom is surprised by this, and lifts the green, to roll the ball back in, but the process continues until it is revealed that Jerry lives in the hole, and he was the one throwing the ball out. After throwing the ball directly into Tom's eye, Jerry draws an eyeball on the golf ball to make it look like an eye. This enrages the cat and causes him to swing at the mouse; the club misses and wraps around his own neck. Jerry escapes temporarily, but is caught when Tom hits his golf ball onto Jerry's head, knocking him silly.

The next scene shows that Jerry is being used as a tee and Tom places a ball on his head. Tom then readies his shot, which cuts out a huge divot while Jerry simply held onto Tom's club. Tom looks around to see where his ball is, but Jerry whistles and holds up the ball. Tom then puts Jerry through the ball cleaner, and the mouse responds by spitting soapy water in Tom's face. Jerry is then forced into holding the tee with the ball on it; Tom hits the ball and makes a fraudulent grin. This proves to be a mistake when the ball bounces back and smashes Tom's teeth.

In the next scene, Tom's ball is in front of two skinny, long trees. Tom cannot stand behind his ball to hit it, so he is forced to split the trees. The trees smash his head and decapitates Tom. Tom's body walks around and somehow reattaches his head to it. The ball ends up in a tree and triggers a "slot machine" display. Three lemons appear on the reels; when Tom looks inside an avalanche of golf balls comes out of the tree, covering him. Annoyed at this, Tom returns to his game, but Jerry has replaced his ball with a woodpecker egg. After Tom hits the egg, the egg hatches and the bird comes back to peck on Tom's head, then pecks out the handle of the golf club so the head lands on Tom's head.

Tom tries to hit the real golf ball, but Jerry cuts it in half, causing it to be unable to shot. Tom then places the shell on Jerry's head and swings at the ball-mouse, which lands right next to the hole. Jerry, with the ball still on his head, prances around the hole, and Tom pokes him in after making sure that nobody is looking. Tom then takes out his scorecard and tries to figure out his score for the hole. He writes down 3 in his card, as if for Jerry, but Jerry scolds him and Tom writes 33 instead.

When Tom tees off on the next hole, Jerry ties the club to Tom's tail; Tom ends up flying into the hole, leaving only his head exposed. Jerry hits the ball toward Tom's mouth, then whacks the cat on the head, forcing Tom to scream in pain and swallow the ball. Jerry runs away and the enraged cat emerges from the hole, but runs into his own clubs. Tom then swings a ball toward Jerry with some backspin on it, which scoops him up and brings him back to Tom. Tom swings, which sends a rectangular divot with ball and mouse through the air. When Jerry is in mid-air, he drops the golf ball which is a bomb, but when Tom picks it up, it explodes.

Meanwhile, Jerry's divot crashes into a tree which Tom pokes; in response, the mouse grabs his club and pokes back. Tom then climbs into the tree and Jerry smacks Tom's back, which causes the cat to peek out right below a beehive, which lands on his head. The bees swarm around Tom's head and he slowly realizes the situation, dives out of the tree, and hides in a bush. Jerry, not wanting to deny the plesure of humiliating the cat, runs the bush over with a lawn mower revealing Tom shaved like a poodle dog. The bees then chase Tom over a lake, where a stick of bamboo is seen; Tom hides underwater and uses the stick like a snorkel, revealed that he is used for breathing.

Jerry then whistles to get the bees' attention, turns a '150 yds.' sign around to say Guess Who? and points it at the bamboo stalk. The queen bee looks through the stick to see Tom, who spits water in her face. Enraged, the queen leads the swarm on a bombing run down the stick. Jerry then places a funnel on top of the stick to assist the bees in dive-bombing through it. The water is shown for a few seconds, and then Tom jumps out and lets out a frightening scream, which ends when the water lands back in the hazard. The cartoon ends when Jerry takes a driver and hits the golf ball, which hits Tom from a far distance, and Tom falls.

Production

 * Directed by: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
 * Animation: Ray Patterson, Irven Spence, Pete Burness, Kenneth Muse, Dave Tendlar, John Gentilella
 * Story by: Joe Stultz, Irving Dressler
 * Sequence Director: I. Sparber
 * Music: Scott Bradley
 * Produced by: Fred Quimby

Availability

 * Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases, Vol. 1
 * Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Vol. 1, Disc One
 * Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Volume One, Disc One