The Cat Concerto
| The Cat Concerto | |
|---|---|
 Title card | |
| Directed by | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Produced by | Fred Quimby |
| Animation by | Kenneth Muse Ed Barge Irven Spence |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Running time | 8' |
The Cat Concerto is a 1946 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 29th Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor in 1946 and released to theatres on April 26, 1947 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision by Scott Bradley, and animation by Kenneth Muse, Ed Barge and Irven Spence. It won the 1946 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. In 1994 it was voted #42 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. The short won the duo their fourth consecutive Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Plot
In a formal concert, Tom, a piano virtuoso, is giving a piano recital of "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by Franz Liszt. Jerry, who is sleeping inside the piano, is rudely awakened by the hammers, then sits on top of the piano to mock the cat by "conducting" him. Tom flicks Jerry off the piano. Tom continues playing without any interruptions.
Jerry arises from under one of the keys. Tom plays tremolo on this key, knocking Jerry on the head, and then Jerry runs back and forth underneath. Tom smashes the mouse under the keys, plays the main theme of the rhapsody, and when Tom lifts his two fingers from playing a trill, the piano continues playing. He looks over the edge of the piano and spots Jerry playing the felts from inside. To quiet him, he whacks the mouse with a tuning tool. Jerry retaliates by slamming the piano lid onto Tom's fingers. Tom still plays, and then Jerry pops out on the far right of the piano to attempt to cut Tom's finger with a pair of scissors as he plays a note from the very highest minor third of the piano. After the sixth miss, Jerry pants from this effort, and then substitutes a mousetrap for the white keys just below it. Tom plays the keys on either side for a few seconds but eventually, Tom's finger gets caught in the trap.
Jerry prances up and down on the piano, upon which Tom climbs and proceeds to play with his feet. As Tom gets back down to play with his fingers, Jerry dances around on the felts, changing the tune from the rhapsody to "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe". Tom then plays a chord where the mouse is standing repeatedly, receiving increasingly rude gestures in return, and eventually catches the mouse and stows him into the piano stool. Jerry then crawls out of an opening and manipulates the seat's controls, cranking it up, and sending it crashing down.
Tom stuffs Jerry into the felts and then goes crazy on the piano. The felts take on a life of their own, bashing Jerry about, spanking him, and squashing him to and fro. Eventually, Jerry gets squashed and comes out, very angry about this, and then breaks off some felts and plays the finale of the musical piece. Jerry constantly increases the speed of his playing, plays two fake endings, and generally taunts the cat, such that Tom is left with raggedy clothes and collapses at the end of the tune. And Jerry takes all the applause and credit for himself.
Controversy
The same year MGM produced The Cat Concerto, Warner Bros. released a very similar Bugs Bunny cartoon called Rhapsody Rabbit, directed by I. Freleng, with Bugs against an unnamed mouse. Both shorts used near identical gags, and they even used the same piece by Liszt.
Both MGM and Warner Bros. accused each other of plagiarism, after both films were shown during the 1947 Academy Awards ceremony. Technicolor was accused of sending a print of either cartoon to the competing studio, who then allegedly plagiarized their rival's work.
It was often suggested by animation historians that this cartoon was rushed to its release - meaning it was released before the shorts produced during the same time to qualify for the Academy Award. Its production number is #165, while the other shorts released during the same year have production numbers around #155.[1]
References and external links
- The Cat Concerto, a section of Nicola Watts' "Cartoons and Music" 1997 Multimedia Analysis and Design project at the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow.
- Peter Gimpel, son of Jakob Gimpel explaining his view of the controversy
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