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Back Alley Oproar is a 1948 Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng.

Title[]

The title is a play on "uproar" and "opera."

Plot[]

Elmer is ready for bedtime, but Sylvester has other plans. He starts singing on the fence in Elmer's backyard. A series of gags play out, as Elmer tries everything up his sleeve to get rid of that unwanted pest. Elmer eventually confronts Sylvester, but before Elmer can blast him with his shotgun, Sylvester sings a sweet, gentle lullaby to ease him to dreams. However, this doesn't last, and the insanity continues.

Elmer eventually dies from explosives from his attempts to get rid of Sylvester. He winds up as an angel on a cloud. Momentarily he thinks he will finally get some peace and quiet. However, the spirits of Sylvester's nine lives continue to sing as they ascend around him, each with a numeral on his back (there are actually more like 18 Sylvester's depicted overall), singing the sextet from "Lucia di Lammermoor". One of them even takes Elmer's halo. The exasperated Elmer dives off his cloud with a crash.

Quotes[]

  • Elmer Fudd: (has Sylvester at gunpoint eventually) Now I've got you, and I'm gonna wub you out compwetwy.
    Sylvester: Now just a minute, my fine feathered friend. Ain't you got no aesthetic sense? No ear for musical appreciation?
    Elmer Fudd: No, and I'm gonna bwow you to smitheweens.
    Sylvester: (singing) Go to sleep,
    Elmer Fudd: (getting sleepy) Stop it.
    Sylvester: ...Go to sleep, close your big, blood-shot eyes...
    Elmer Fudd: Now you stop that. (falls asleep)

Musical Cues[]

  • Sylvester starts his concert by singing Rossini's operatic piece "Largo al factotum" from The Barber of Seville, complete with sheet music on a music stand. He is bonked by one of Elmer's shoes just as he finishes a climactic "Fiii-gaaa-rooo!"
  • Sylvester evokes another classical staple as he sings "la-la-la, la-la-la..." to Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" while tromping in heavy boots, up and down Elmer's backstairs.
  • The cat sings "Some Sunday Morning" (by M.K. Jerome, Ray Heindorf and Ted Koehler) until being bonked again when Elmer throws a book titled The Thin Man at him, after which Sylvester throws a book called Return of The Thin Man at Elmer, who closes the window before the cat can finish. Then the phone rings (in a phone booth in Elmer's house), and the cat sings the final line through the phone.
  • Sylvester sings Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's "You Never Know Where You're Goin' Till You Get There" (this song would be the opening music only a few weeks later in "Hop, Look and Listen").
  • Elmer charges after Sylvester, interrupting that number, and Sylvester hands the sheet music to a dopey-looking cat before fleeing. The cat turns the music sheet every which way, and then begins singing an excerpt from the aria, "Carissima" (by Arthur A. Penn), in a classically operatic female voice. That song comes to a sudden end when Elmer whacks her over the head, and the cat and the song both fade out like a record slowing down. Then the cat staggers and falls off the porch roof, in rhythm to the tune's closing notes.
  • Confronted by Elmer and his shotgun, and a threat to "bwow him to smitheweens", Sylvester sings a variation of "Brahms' Lullaby" ("Go to sleep, go to sleep, close your big bloodshot eyes...") He then carries Elmer back to his bedroom and tucks him in, still singing until he finishes. He then kisses him on the cheek sweetly and walks out the door, turning off the lights.
  • Seconds later, the cat jolts Elmer awake by playing a fast-paced march "Frat", by John F. Barth, another frequent WB staple, on a one-man band apparatus. Elmer chases him again, and he runs out a door and closes it. Elmer opens the door and slams his head into another door labeled "Surprize!" (sic)
  • Sylvester rows a rowboat across the top of the fence, singing a jazzy version of Percy Wenrich and Edward Madden's "Moonlight Bay". Elmer puts out a saucer of milk, which he has laced with alum, and summons the cat. Sylvester dances to The Sailor's Hornpipe to reach the saucer, and carefully holds a cane and straw hat out to see if Elmer has the site booby-trapped. The cat slurps down the milk, hornpipes back to his fence, and resumes singing "Moonlight Bay" until the alum shrinks his head to the size of a ping-pong ball (another oft-used WB joke), while his voice speeds up to chipmunk-level.
  • Sylvester apes Spike Jones with his last solo number, "Angel in Disguise" (by Paul Mann, Stefan Weiss and Kim Gannon), which also foreshadows the film's conclusion. He performs in the manner of Jones' band, starting with a brief, serious-sounding introduction (apparently not Blanc's voice), immediately seguĆ©ing into a jazzy rendition featuring a collection of crazy sound effects produced by firing guns, breaking bottles, and exploding firecrackers. As with some of the other songs in the cartoon, Sylvester sings directly to the viewing audience (see illustration). Elmer caps the performance by lighting the fuse to a box full of dynamite -- which explodes instantly and kills Elmer and Sylvester.
  • As Sylvester's nine-plus lives soar past Elmer, singing together like a choir, they perform part of the sextet from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, which was used in the original "Notes to You" and is also recognizable from 1946's "Book Revue" - "You can't do dis to me / I'm a citizen, see" - and from 1949's "Long-Haired Hare".

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Censorship[]

When this cartoon aired on the WB!, the three times Elmer runs down the steps (which are slippery from grease) and steps on tacks when trying to stop Sylvester from singing were cut.[2]

Notes[]

  • The cartoon is a color remake of 1941's "Notes to You", also directed by Freleng. It has a similar plot (although the ending of the original doesn't have the characters die from an explosion; instead the cat dies from getting shot, and returns as nine singing angels), but the Elmer and Sylvester roles in "Notes to You" were taken by Porky Pig and an unnamed alley cat (the latter bearing a striking resemblance to the cat from Bob Clampett's "The Hep Cat").
  • The gag where Elmer hurls a book out the window and is then clobbered by a sequel to the book also happened to Porky in ā€œNotes to Youā€ and again in 1944ā€™s ā€œTick Tock Tuckeredā€.
  • "Back Alley Oproar" is notable in the Warner cartoon canon as one of the very few shorts in which Sylvester actually "wins out" over another character, albeit at the presumed cost of his life.
  • Sylvester's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" was reused in Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster. It used the same audio but the animation was new because Warner Brothers at the time did not have the rights to pre-August 1948 footage, although Warner still has the cartoon's original negatives stored in the vaults (the publishing rights to the music track were owned separately by Warner/Chappell Music).
  • The Tom and Jerry short by Chuck Jones, "The Cat Above and the Mouse Below", had a similar concept but with a different plot.
  • "Kit for Cat" and this cartoon share the same night city title card. Coincidentally, both original title cards were cut in 1955. The original opening and credits for this cartoon and the former were restored on DVD, this one on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, Disc 4 and the former on the European Wideo Wabbit (VHS).
  • When Sylvester puts the tacks down, they are right next to the stairs. However, when Elmer comes down they are moved a little further from the stairs.
  • Because the short credits Warner Bros., the original closing title card was kept in the Blue Ribbon re-release.
  • This cartoon was shown in theatres with April Showers during its original release.
  • On the LTPC Volume 2 Blu-ray and DVD, the scene where Sylvester goes to drink the milk and back is noticeably choppy.

Gallery[]

References[]

ā† Catch as Cats Can Sylvester Cartoons I Taw a Putty Tat ā†’
Sylvester Cartoons
1945 Life with Feathers ā€¢ Peck Up Your Troubles
1946 Kitty Kornered
1947 Tweetie Pie ā€¢ Crowing Pains ā€¢ Doggone Cats ā€¢ Catch as Cats Can
1948 Back Alley Oproar ā€¢ I Taw a Putty Tat ā€¢ Hop, Look and Listen ā€¢ Kit for Cat ā€¢ Scaredy Cat
1949 Mouse Mazurka ā€¢ Bad Ol' Putty Tat ā€¢ Hippety Hopper
1950 Home, Tweet Home ā€¢ The Scarlet Pumpernickel ā€¢ All a Bir-r-r-d ā€¢ Canary Row ā€¢ Stooge for a Mouse ā€¢ Pop 'Im Pop!
1951 Canned Feud ā€¢ Putty Tat Trouble ā€¢ Room and Bird ā€¢ Tweety's S.O.S. ā€¢ Tweet Tweet Tweety
1952 Who's Kitten Who? ā€¢ Gift Wrapped ā€¢ Little Red Rodent Hood ā€¢ Ain't She Tweet ā€¢ Hoppy Go Lucky ā€¢ A Bird in a Guilty Cage ā€¢ Tree for Two
1953 Snow Business ā€¢ A Mouse Divided ā€¢ Fowl Weather ā€¢ Tom Tom Tomcat ā€¢ A Street Cat Named Sylvester ā€¢ Catty Cornered ā€¢ Cats A-weigh!
1954 Dog Pounded ā€¢ Bell Hoppy ā€¢ Dr. Jerkyl's Hide ā€¢ Claws for Alarm ā€¢ Muzzle Tough ā€¢ Satan's Waitin' ā€¢ By Word of Mouse
1955 Lighthouse Mouse ā€¢ Sandy Claws ā€¢ Tweety's Circus ā€¢ Jumpin' Jupiter ā€¢ A Kiddies Kitty ā€¢ Speedy Gonzales ā€¢ Red Riding Hoodwinked ā€¢ Heir-Conditioned ā€¢ Pappy's Puppy
1956 Too Hop to Handle ā€¢ Tweet and Sour ā€¢ Tree Cornered Tweety ā€¢ The Unexpected Pest ā€¢ Tugboat Granny ā€¢ The Slap-Hoppy Mouse ā€¢ Yankee Dood It
1957 Tweet Zoo ā€¢ Tweety and the Beanstalk ā€¢ Birds Anonymous ā€¢ Greedy for Tweety ā€¢ Mouse-Taken Identity ā€¢ Gonzales' Tamales
1958 A Pizza Tweety-Pie ā€¢ A Bird in a Bonnet
1959 Trick or Tweet ā€¢ Tweet and Lovely ā€¢ Cat's Paw ā€¢ Here Today, Gone Tamale ā€¢ Tweet Dreams
1960 West of the Pesos ā€¢ Goldimouse and the Three Cats ā€¢ Hyde and Go Tweet ā€¢ Mouse and Garden ā€¢ Trip for Tat
1961 Cannery Woe ā€¢ Hoppy Daze ā€¢ Birds of a Father ā€¢ D' Fightin' Ones ā€¢ The Rebel Without Claws ā€¢ The Pied Piper of Guadalupe ā€¢ The Last Hungry Cat
1962 Fish and Slips ā€¢ Mexican Boarders ā€¢ The Jet Cage
1963 Mexican Cat Dance ā€¢ Chili Weather ā€¢ Claws in the Lease
1964 A Message to Gracias ā€¢ Freudy Cat ā€¢ Nuts and Volts ā€¢ Hawaiian Aye Aye ā€¢ Road to Andalay
1965 It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House ā€¢ Cats and Bruises ā€¢ The Wild Chase
1966 A Taste of Catnip
1980 The Yolks on You
1995 Carrotblanca
1997 Father of the Bird
2011 I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat


Elmer Fudd Cartoons
1937 Little Red Walking Hood
1938 The Isle of Pingo Pongo ā€¢ Cinderella Meets Fella ā€¢ A Feud There Was ā€¢ Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas
1939 Hamateur Night ā€¢ A Day at the Zoo ā€¢ Believe It or Else
1940 Elmer's Candid Camera ā€¢ Confederate Honey ā€¢ The Hardship of Miles Standish ā€¢ A Wild Hare ā€¢ Good Night Elmer
1941 Elmer's Pet Rabbit ā€¢ Wabbit Twouble
1942 The Wabbit Who Came to Supper ā€¢ Any Bonds Today? ā€¢ The Wacky Wabbit ā€¢ Nutty News ā€¢ Fresh Hare ā€¢ The Hare-Brained Hypnotist
1943 To Duck .... or Not to Duck ā€¢ A Corny Concerto ā€¢ An Itch in Time
1944 The Old Grey Hare ā€¢ The Stupid Cupid ā€¢ Stage Door Cartoon
1945 The Unruly Hare ā€¢ Hare Tonic
1946 Hare Remover ā€¢ The Big Snooze
1947 Easter Yeggs ā€¢ A Pest in the House ā€¢ Slick Hare
1948 What Makes Daffy Duck ā€¢ Back Alley Op-Roar ā€¢ Kit for Cat
1949 Wise Quackers ā€¢ Hare Do ā€¢ Each Dawn I Crow
1950 What's Up Doc? ā€¢ The Scarlet Pumpernickel ā€¢ Rabbit of Seville
1951 Rabbit Fire
1952 Rabbit Seasoning
1953 Upswept Hare ā€¢ Ant Pasted ā€¢ Duck! Rabbit, Duck! ā€¢ Robot Rabbit
1954 Design for Leaving ā€¢ Quack Shot
1955 Pests for Guests ā€¢ Beanstalk Bunny ā€¢ Hare Brush ā€¢ Rabbit Rampage ā€¢ This Is a Life? ā€¢ Heir-Conditioned
1956 Bugs' Bonnets ā€¢ A Star Is Bored ā€¢ Yankee Dood It ā€¢ Wideo Wabbit
1957 What's Opera, Doc? ā€¢ Rabbit Romeo
1958 Don't Axe Me ā€¢ Pre-Hysterical Hare
1959 A Mutt in a Rut
1960 Person to Bunny ā€¢ Dog Gone People
1961 What's My Lion?
1962 Crows' Feat
1980 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bunny
1990 Box Office Bunny
1991 (Blooper) Bunny
1992 Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers
2012 Daffy's Rhapsody
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