Kitty from Kansas City

"Kitty from Kansas City" was a 1930 song, famously sung by Hubert Prior Vallée, a French Vermont singer, popularly called Rudy Vallée. The song is about a Midwestern girl called Kitty and her apparent lack of intelligence, and obesity, due to a lyric: "She wasn't hard to see; she weighed 243."

Some recordings have been made by Vallée, the Imperial Dance Orchestra, and Johnny Walker.

Animated Film

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Kitty from Kansas City
series = Screen Songs


caption =
director = Dave Fleischer
story_artist =
animator =
voice_actor = Mae Questel (uncredited)
Rudy Vallée
musician = Rudy Vallée and his Connecticut Yankees
producer = Max Fleischer
Fleischer Studios
distributor = Paramount Pictures
release_date = October 31, 1931
color_process = B&W
runtime = 7 mins
movie_language = English

"Kitty from Kansas City" was the 47th part of the Screen Songs series. It includes an early (although very identical) version of Betty Boop. The title card music is a lyrical variation of the song "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile".

Kitty (Betty) was walking to a Kansas City train station, and she waited for her train to “Rudy Valley”, a place where her friend (Rudy) lives. As she waited, the train’s mail compartment sign snatches her. A mouse writes “Fe” behind mail, as a parody of the word “female”.

She reaches “Rudy Valley”, where the cartoon changes to a live-action performance of Vallée and his “Connecticut Yankees” singing and playing the song. Then, the scene goes back to the cartoon, where Kitty does some of the antics in the lyrics, the film ending with Kitty unpluggin a water stopping cork in a pond, with a parade of marine creature following Kitty.

The live-action performance (and the second cartoon sequence) have the pre-recorded soundtrack off, by about a second and a half.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKIanGG9vQY Watch the Film Online]