Purr-Chance to Dream

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Purr-Chance to Dream
series = Tom and Jerry


caption = "Title card of Purr-Chance to Dream"
director = Ben Washam
story_artist = Irv Spector
animator = Dick Thompson
Ken Harris
Don Towsley
Tom Ray
Philip Roman
musician = Carl Brandt
producer = Chuck Jones
distributor = Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
release_date = 1967
color_process = Metrocolor
runtime = 6 min 05 secs
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0062162
preceded_by = Advance and Be Mechanized
followed_by = The KarateGuard (Warner Bros. Animation) - Final Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoon short.

"Purr-Chance to Dream" is a 1967 Tom and Jerry cartoon short directed by Ben Washam and produced by Chuck Jones. It was the last theatrical Tom and Jerry short released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the last of the Chuck Jones shorts in Tom and Jerry series, and certainly the last Tom and Jerry cartoon released during the Golden Age of Hollywood animation. The KarateGuard was the next Tom and Jerry cartoon from Warner Bros.The title is a play-on-words of "perchance to dream" a famous quotation from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, though the plot of this cartoon bears no resemblance to the play. Like several Chuck Jones-produced Tom and Jerry shorts, this one arguably tends to focus more on poses and personality than on storyline and plot.

Plot

Tom wakes up after a nightmare of being pounded into the ground by a giant bulldog. When he sees Jerry catching a bone, he grabs him but Jerry wallops him on the head with it and runs off, stopping at the giant bulldog's house. When Tom approaches it, he is reminded of his dream and runs off in horror. Instead, a tiny little bulldog (first seen in The Cat's Me-Ouch!) comes out. When Tom grabs Jerry, the bulldog grabs his tail and rapidly eats away at Tom's fur, spinning in a blur, and pounding his face to the ground. Tom has several attempts at catching Jerry, including stuffing an oversized bone with dynamite, spraying himself with dog repellent, or playing fetch with the dog by throwing a stick into a safe, and hurling the safe into a deep pit. However, every time, the minuscule pup manages to eat away at Tom until he is literally several pieces of hair on the ground. In the end, it turns out that all this was a dream. We see Tom taking some medicine and playing music before going back to sleep and calmly dreaming of being pounded once again into the ground.