Back Alley Oproar (released in 1948). Mike Maltese and Tedd Pierce pack in a lot of funny stuff.
One scene everyone seems to like is when Sylvester hands a piece of sheet music to a dopey looking orange cat, who turns out to have a female operatic voice.
She gets clobbered by Elmer Fudd.
Expressions as she goes down.
To state the obvious to any cartoon fan, Friz Freleng is a master of timing. The scene cuts to the cat staggering in time to the music and then dropping out of the cartoon as the orchestration ends.
An added throwaway gag is the cat can’t read music and keeps turning the sheet upside-down and sideways.
The song is “Carissima,” written in 1907 by English composer Arthur A. Penn. Composer Carl Stalling also employed it in Malibu Beach Party (1940) sung in the same way by the Deanna Durbin character. You can read the lyrics at this site.
Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross, Manny Perez and Ken Champin are the animators, while Paul Julian supplied some attractive backgrounds.
Of course the real joke is that it's a male cat.
ReplyDeleteI always considered that cat female, and yes, I always thought the scene of her with the sheet of music turned upside down sideways this way and that was very, very funny!
DeleteFreling's cartoons always seem to be populated by backgrounds showing has-gone-shabby Victorian details like the knob-and-tube wiring, fish-scale shingles and tar paper of the porch roof (including the nails holding it on). Always liked this of his cartoons as they give it a real sense of time and place!
ReplyDeleteJohn Kricfalusi: "Friz is a really boring director; not cartoony."
ReplyDeleteI beg to differ!
Yes, this is definitely the best Sylvester cartoon.
ReplyDelete