Film #107: Feed The Kitty

Of course, as a cat lover first and a dog lover second, I have to adore Chuck Jones' 1952 Warner Brothers cartoon Feed the Kitty. With only three characters, minimal dialogue, and the barest of plots--bulldog Marc Anthony absurdly tries to hide the teeny kitten he's adopted from the lady of the house--Jones' film is absolute animation mastery. The director once described himself as "an actor with a pencil," and Feed the Kitty is proof of this thesis. Marc Anthony's catalogue of hilarious facial expressions are a delight. He's at turns ferocious, smitten, sweaty, red-eyed with tears, horrified, sickened, coquettish, crushed, desperate, scolding, and protective.

And, of course, this big-eyed kitten he's taken in represents exactly what us cat lovers adore about felines. We all can relate to the "oooch ouch oooch eep" feelings Marc Anthony goes through as his kitten "makes biscuits" on his back, and then to the warm sensation he feels as kitty finally curls up to sleep. Of course, the cartoon's funniest bits are the ones in which Marc Anthony tries to hide the kitten from the lady (who's pretty funny in her own right, even if only her two legs are seen). I particularly love the moments where the kitty instantly stiffens up as the dog pretends it's only a wind-up toy; where Carl Stallings' sweet, speeded-up version of "Oh You Beautiful Doll" scores a moment in which Marc Anthony humorously disguises his new pet as a powerpuff; and the famous scene where, while peering through the kitchen window, the bulldog witnesses what he thinks is the mixing-bowl death of his kitty, and faints uproariously (this is homaged in Pixar's great 2001 film Monsters, Inc.).

The voices here are provided by WB's own Mel Blanc, of course, and Bea Benaderet, both of whom would be reunited as Betty and Barney Rubble on TV's The Flintstones. Marc Anthony and Pussyfoot (as the cat has come to be called) would reteam in 1953's Kiss Me Cat (where the dog tries to teach Pussyfoot how to catch mice) and in 1958's Cat Feud (a variation on traditional cat-and-dog acrimony with Marc Anthony protecting Pussyfoot from a scuzzy alley cat). However, neither of these still-amusing cartoons approach the subversive mixture of sentimentality and laughs on display in Feed the Kitty.

Film #91: The Dover Boys at Pimento University, or: The Rivals at Roquefort Hall

Warner Brothers animator extraordinaire Chuck Jones says that, after he and head animator Robert (Bobe) Cannon produced the groundbreaking 1942 cartoon The Dover Boys, he almost got fired from WB's Termite Terrace (the name for the WB animation house which included Frank Tashlin, Friz Freling, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson and other WB-contracted animators). The wacked-out style of "smeared" cartooning he and Cannon pioneered with this 9-minute masterpiece was so ahead of its time it raised the ire of his bosses who didn't cotton to any of this new stuff. And despite being in the running for the funniest animated piece of its era, The Dover Boys' foray into a new animation form would not be properly capitalized upon for a decade or so. Even still, today, it remains a total original.

It follows a turn-of-the-century team (a spoof of dime-store novel heroes The Rover Boys) mawkishly named Tom, Dick, and Larry (given the reference of three cheeses in the film--pimento, Roquefort, and cheddar--they could each be renamed, which makes the film even funnier, in a subtle way). In their intro, we see them each jauntily yet extra-stoically vogueing on a different cornball period bi-cycle, on their way to Miss Cheddar's Home for Girls. Their scenic afternoon out playing hide-and-seek with their collective finance'--the impossibly graceful and deceptively powerful Dainty Dora Standpipe--gets cruelly interrupted by the green-skinned Dan Backslide, determined to bust up a perfectly good date. Commandeering a "run-about," he kidnaps Dora and escapes with her to his mountain lair, so it's up to the chivalrous Dover Boys to bring her back home.

You'll notice that the animation here is kept down to the very barest minimum. Much of this cartoon's beauty lies in Jones' justly excessive use of softly-airbrushed backgrounds to convey a stillness that clashes brightly with the movement of his cast. And what pixilated movements they are. Part of The Dover Boys freshness comes from the extremely fleet form of "smeared" animation that Jones and Cannon appropriated to give these characters a wild panache. Watch this frame-by-frame (as you can above) and notice the unpredictable transitions from movement to movement that, with those abnormally stretched heads and bodies, pave the way for the belly laughs the film provides.

However, it's just this wry innovation which made the brass at Warner Brothers angry with Jones--so much so that this likable cartoon trio was never seen on screen again, and that smeared animation technique has still to this day been little used (though I have seen tried humorously with Bart on a few 1st season episodes of The Simpsons). Maybe Warner Brothers didn't think much more could be done with The Dover Boys. But I would've liked to have seen Chuck Jones and Bobe Cannon give it another try, 'cuz this frenzied cartoon is an absolute hoot. Hooray for good ol' P.U.!! Enjoy!