Dicky Moe

Dicky Moe is a Tom and Jerry cartoon produced in 1961 and released in 1962. It was directed by Gene Deitch and produced by William L. Snyder.

The plotline and title of the short is a parody of the book Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. It is the eighth of thirteen Tom and Jerry cartoons made in Czechoslovakia.

Plot
In a 19th-century fishing harbor, the captain of the Komquot is obsessed with catching the great white whale Dicky Moe. His obsession unnerves his crew so badly that they all desert the ship, angering the captain for their cowardly behavior. Shortly afterward, the captain finds Tom searching for food in the harbor, knocks him out, and takes him aboard. Tom believes at first that he is going on a cruise, but the captain soon puts him to work scrubbing the deck.

As Tom works, he sees Jerry set up a beach chair outside his hole. He grabs Jerry and scrubs away all his color, leaving the mouse visible only as an outline. Jerry returns to his hole to get his color back, switches Tom's water bucket for one filled with tar, and tricks him into scrubbing with it. Tom chases Jerry across the deck, only to get the entire bucket of tar dumped on his head; he briefly poses as the captain's shadow to avoid being spotted, then gets wiped clean when the captain throws a door open, smashing him into the wall.

Next Tom spots Jerry lounging in the rigging and tries to shake him loose by undoing the knots. One of the heavy blocks swings loose and knocks Tom into a barrel of harpoons, leaving his nose stuck in one of them as the captain grabs it and throws for target practice. Jerry tricks Tom into stabbing his own tail with the harpoon and dropping an anvil on his own head, which sends Tom crashing through the ship's hull and into the ocean.

With the help of a rope thrown by Jerry, Tom climbs aboard as the captain sights Dicky Moe and fires a harpoon gun. Tom realizes too late that he is holding the free end of the harpoon's rope, and he is yanked off the ship. As the whale swims off, with Tom tied to him by the rope, faintly yelling "Help", the captain yells for him to come back with "his whale", and Jerry settles down with a book and tsktsks.