{"id":35159,"date":"2021-05-07T08:05:03","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T12:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=35159"},"modified":"2021-05-07T08:05:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T12:05:03","slug":"the-bootleg-files-tin-pan-alley-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/07\/the-bootleg-files-tin-pan-alley-cats\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Tin Pan Alley Cats"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 765:<\/strong> \u201cTin Pan Alley Cats\u201d (1943 Warner Bros. animated short).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On DailyMotion.com.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> Withheld from release due to politically incorrect humor.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Not likely.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s woke environment, the possibility of giving a second chance to the long-banned racially insensitive Warner Bros. cartoons collectively known as the \u201cCensored Eleven\u201d is nil. At least one of these cartoons, the 1943 \u201cTin Pan Alley Cats,\u201d is certainly deserving to be kept out of circulation \u2013 but not so much for its broadly demeaning caricatures as for the laziness and sloppiness that went into its creation.
\n<\/p>\n

The central focus of \u201cTin Pan Alley Cats\u201d is an anthropomorphic feline meant to be a parody of the legendary singer\/songwriter Fats Waller. The character \u2013 who is not given an on-screen name \u2013 is drawn to resemble Waller\u2019s rotund physique and trademark derby and cigar, and it carries a gravelly voice that is eerily close to its inspiration. (There are no voice actors cited in the cartoon\u2019s credits, and the texture of the Waller imitation does not sound like something Mel Blanc would have created.)<\/p>\n

The Waller-cat (as he will be known in this review) is out for a night on the town, and he finds himself choosing between two very different venues located side-by-side: Kit Kat Klub, with a neon pink exterior and a jumping crowd bouncing to a loud jazzy beat, and Uncle Tomcat\u2019s Mission, where a Salvation Army-style band offers a dour rendition of \u201cGive Me That Old Time Religion.\u201d When the leader of the mission urges the Waller-cat not to \u201cgo into that den of inequity or you will be tempted with wine, women and song,\u201d the hep feline looks at the audience and says, \u201cWow! What\u2019s da motta wid dat?\u201d<\/p>\n

Up until now, \u201cTin Pan Alley Cats\u201d consists of original animation. But then, director Bob Clampett and producer Leon Schlesinger decided to recycle the animation from the 1937 short \u201cSeptember in the Rain,\u201d which also offered racially exaggerated stereotypes including a character riffing on Waller\u2019s distinctive appearance. In \u201cSeptember in the Rain,\u201d the novelty song \u201cNagasaki\u201d is performed by a piano pounding faux-Waller, a takeoff on Louis Armstrong, a large Black woman dancing a wild shimmy and a trio of smiling Black men singing the chorus stanza. \u201cTin Pan Alley\u201d repurposed these characters, reanimating them as jazzy cats but otherwise retaining the same physical movements and scene framing.<\/p>\n

If that isn\u2019t bad enough, the Waller-cat tells the Armstrong-caricature \u201cSend me out of this world!\u201d And with a few blasts of the trump, the Waller-cat goes out of his world and into another highly recognizable world \u2013 the surreal lunacy from the 1938 animated classic \u201cPorky in Wackyland.\u201d Much of the footage featuring the Wackyland denizens is recycled here, with a new addition featuring Dadaist caricatures of Hitler and a stereotypical depiction of a World War II-era Japanese soldier \u2013 and Stalin shows up to kick Hitler in the butt.<\/p>\n

The Waller-cat is agitated by his surroundings and screams \u201cGet me out of here!\u201d He is suddenly propelled back to the Kit Kat Klub, floating amid a jazzy trumpet beat while moaning \u201cGabriel, blow dat horn!\u201d Coming back to his senses, the Waller-cat speedily exits the club, goes next door to the mission, grabs the drum and takes the lead in singing \u201cGive Me That Old Time Religion.\u201d The mission members look in astonishment at their unlikely new recruit and turn to the camera to ask in unison, \u201cWhat da motta wid him?\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the exaggerated depiction of Black characters is not the least bit funny today, but what is truly striking about \u201cTin Pan Alley Cats\u201d was the blatant cheapness in taking recognizable sequences from two very well-known earlier cartoons and haphazardly trying to get new life from them in this context. This is probably the least original work of the Warner Bros. animation studio during its halcyon days \u2013 and it is all the more baffling, considering the studio was at its peak of creative innovation when this work was dropped.<\/p>\n

Clampett would later insist that \u201cTin Pan Alley Cats\u201d and an earlier work also in the Censored Eleven, \u201cCoal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs,\u201d were not racially insensitive, claiming, \u201cEverybody, including Blacks, had a good time when these cartoons came out. All the controversy about these two cartoons has developed in later years merely because of changing attitudes towards Black civil rights that have happened since then.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not certain if Waller was ever aware of \u201cTin Pan Alley Cats\u201d \u2013 the cartoon came out in July 1943 and Waller passed away from pneumonia five months later. <\/p>\n

\u201cTin Pan Alley Cats\u201d and the other Censored Eleven cartoons were removed from television syndication in 1968 and have never been broadcast again. Ten years ago, there was talk of restoring these films for DVD release, but nothing came of that. This film can easily be found in unauthorized postings of faded prints on DailyMotion.com. While animation aficionados might want to seek this out for the sake of curiosity, this is clearly one elusive film that is best left forgotten.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to the award-winning podcast \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud, with new episodes every Monday. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 765: \u201cTin Pan Alley Cats\u201d (1943 Warner Bros. animated short). LAST SEEN: On DailyMotion.com. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Withheld from release due to politically incorrect humor. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely. In today\u2019s woke environment, the possibility of giving a second chance to the long-banned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":35160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[99,2725,1816,1815,2726,2728,1589,2727,2724,1175],"class_list":["post-35159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-animation","tag-bob-clampett","tag-cartoons","tag-censored-eleven","tag-fats-waller","tag-jazz","tag-politically-incorrect","tag-racial-stereotypes","tag-tin-pan-alley-cats","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35161,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35159\/revisions\/35161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}