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Angel Puss

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Angel Puss
Directed byChuck Jones
Story byLou Lilly
Produced byLeon Schlesinger
StarringMel Blanc
Music byCarl W. Stalling
Animation byKen Harris
Color processTechnicolor
Distributed byWarner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date
June 3, 1944
Running time
7 minutes

Angel Puss is a 1944 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Chuck Jones.[1] The short was released on June 3, 1944.[2]

Plot

A young African-American boy (drawn in blackface style) carries a sack to a river and laments that he has agreed to drown a cat. While the boy stares at the water, the cat slips out of the sack and fills it with bricks. When the boy says that he can't go through with the task, the hidden cat, pretending to be the boy's conscience, says, "Go ahead, Sambo, go ahead, boy," and reminds him that he has been paid "four bits" to do the job. Sambo reluctantly drops the bag in the river rather than return the money.

The cat then disguises itself as its own ghost, painting itself white and donning wings and a halo, and proceeds to "haunt" Sambo by repeatedly sneaking up on him and whispering "boo." Sambo runs away, but the cat rattles a pair of dice, causing Sambo to fall into a trance and sleepwalk back to the cat.

The hauntings continue until Sambo and the cat fall in a pond, washing off the cat's paint. When Sambo realizes that he has been tricked, he kills the cat with a shotgun blast. Immediately afterward, a line of nine ghost cats (representing a cat's nine lives) marches toward Sambo, saying, "And this time, brother, us ain't kiddin'."

Notes

The short is one of the "Censored Eleven," a group of Warner Bros. animated shorts that are withheld from circulation due to their dated racist stereotyping and portrayals.

References

  1. ^ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 151. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
  2. ^ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 100–102. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.