Tom and Jerry mysteries ...

[Osi Osgood]

I and my family were watching Tom and Jerry in the morning, on TV, and the cartoon, "Touche, Pussycat" was on, and Jerry's little cousin was painting graphitti of Tom on the wall. In every other copy of this cartoon, it always had the little mouse singing a classical french song, almost from beginning to end, on my super 8 copy as well, but it's missing in this TV copy? I highly doubt that this song, which has been around for hundreds of years, has some copyright on it, so why would this dialogue be missing? What other dialogue is strangely missing from other Tom and Jerry's?

[Tom Photiou]

I cant think of anything the PC brigade would have against it, but you never know, what other reason would it be removed?

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

The song may be in public domain, but that does not mean the specific performance of it is not copyrighted.

Remember that Peggy Lee successfully sued Disney over using her performance of the song Lady & The Tramp on the VHS release. Disney cleared the rights to the song, but not the performance. Her contract specifically gave her the rights to all future formats that did not yet exist at the time of the film’s first release.

I suspect that whoever now holds the rights to that performance wanted too much money.

The other possibility is that it was cut to make more time for commercials.

[Osi Osgood]

No, the whole sequence was in the cartoon, only Jerry's cousins song was eliminated.

[Maurice Leakey]

Regarding copyright on music.
Grahame Newnham put a number of 9.5mm sound films from his collection on YouTube, but quite a lot were removed by them, due he was told, copyright on the music.

Tom and Jerry, 89 Episode - Touché, Pussy Cat! (1954) - YouTube

[Osi Osgood]

That may not mean that the music was still copyrighted. Sometimes YouTube will do that if the music is professionally recorded music, but they don't know for sure, in order to " cover they're butts", they proclaim copyright infringement.

[Lee Mannering]

In my voluntary time as youth officer for the film institute I could catalogue the tube removed young peoples home movie works for no reason. These days I believe its all managed by The Terminator computer but back then they must have had a army pulling files. No middle ground for the young film makers who did have the various copyright licences in hand.
Bad news for the young creatives.

My dear 9.5 friend and probably yours if in the UK has collected the Little Black Sambo cartoons for years. Now where do we go from that!

I just appreciate the animation.

[Maurice Leakey]

I have got Castle release C-907 "Little Black Sambo" on 16mm in Cinecolor. It has a blue sound track and the perfs say Kodak Safety Film. Its date code is 1944. Castle released it in colour from 1942 to 1951, thereafter, only in black & white until 1968.
Little Black Sambo - YouTube

[Lee Mannering]

Beautiful Maurice would love to see that. Innocent animation and enjoyed.

[Osi Osgood]

Maurice, I have that in 16mm, but my copy is the silent double perf version. Cool to have it in sound, though. The copy I obtained looks like it was never put through a projector, and though it is an actual Cinecolor print, I am always surprised as to how good and vibrant the color is. Usually, when one considers Cinecolor, you think of a limited spectrum of color, but that's just not so. BTW, I also have "Little Black Sambo" on standard 8mm, and the standard 8mm prints seem to be too small of a guage to properly use Cinecolor.