Tin Pan Alley Cats

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Tin Pan Alley Cats
series = Merrie Melodies|

director = Bob Clampett
story_artist = Warren Foster
animator = Rod Scribner
voice_actor = Mel Blanc
musician = Carl W. Stalling
producer = Leon Schlesinger
studio = Leon Schlesinger Productions
distributor = Warner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
release_date = July 17, 1943 (USA)
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 7 min
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0036441

"Tin Pan Alley Cats" is a 1943 animated short subject, directed by Robert Clampett for Leon Schlesinger Productions as part of Warner Bros.' "Merrie Melodies" series. A follow-up to Clampett's successful "Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs", released earlier in 1943, "Tin Pan Alley Cats" focuses upon contemporary themes of African-American culture, jazz music, and World War II, and features a caricature of jazz musician Fats Waller as an anthropomorphic cat. The short's centerpiece is a fantasy sequence derived from Clampett's black and white "Looney Tunes" short "Porky in Wackyland" (1938).

Like "Coal Black", "Tin Pan Alley Cats" focuses heavily on stereotypical gags, character designs, and situations involving African-Americans. As such, the film and other Warner Bros. cartoons with similar themes have been withheld from television distribution since 1968, and are collectively known as the Censored Eleven.

Synopsis

The cartoon opens with a cat who resembles a Fats Waller caricature going out for a night on the town. He is about to go into a club when a street preacher warns him that he will be tempted with "wine, women and song" if he goes in. This, however, only excites the cat ("Wine women an' song? What's de matter wid "dat"?") who immediately runs in. At first, he enjoys the club, but he becomes so immersed in the music that he is carried "out-of-this-world" to a manic fantasy realm filled with surreal imagery. This world frightens him so much that, when he wakes up, he gives up his partying ways and joins the religious music group singing outside, much to their surprise.

Production

In part because of budget limitations and wartime shortages, several sequences borrow animation and audio recordings from earlier Schlesinger cartoons. From Friz Freleng's 1937 "products come to life" Merrie Melodies short, "September In The Rain", the recorded performance of "Nagasaki" is re-used completely intact, and the "Fats Waller" cat, :Louis Armstrong: trumpeter, jitterbugging woman and the trio of singing bartenders are re-prurposed for this cartoon. Gags from the "out-of-this-world" sequence feature color-redrawn versions of characters and visuals (along with re-recorded audio segments) from Clampett's "Porky in Wackyland".

Segments specifically created for the nightmare sequence (such as the "Rubber [musical] Band" made up of rubber bands) would resurface in Friz Freleng's 1949 color remake of "Porky In Wackyland", "Dough for the Do-Do".

This cartoon would be the last Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon produced by Leon Schlesinger to feature an all-black cast, excluding Chuck Jones' Inki cartoons.

Home video release and Censorship

Following the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, United Artists banned "Tin Pan Alley Cats", along with the rest of the "Censored Eleven", from American television in 1968. Turner Entertainment (today owned by Time Warner) acquired the rights to these cartoons in 1986, and have upheld UA's ban (and also applied to home video release) to this day.

Bootleg copies have surfaced on videotape and DVD, and are frequently added to (and - due to copyright infringement - subsequently removed from) sites such as YouTube and Google Video. Warner Home Video has issued restored clips of the film as a part of a supplementary documentary on Bob Clampett on disc three of the "" DVD collector's set, but a complete version has yet to be officially released.

ee also

*Blackface
*Censored Eleven

External links

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