Angel Puss

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Duck Soup to Nuts	Slightly Daffy

Airdate:
3 June 1944

Series:

Looney Tunes

MPAA Number:	Production Number:
9137	LT-4-14

Copyright Renewed:

7 January 1972^[1]

Crew

Voice Characterizations:

Mel Blanc (uncredited)

Film Editor:

Treg Brown (uncredited)

Musician:

Carl W. Stalling

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Angel Puss is a 1944 Looney Tunes short directed by Chuck Jones.

Plot[]

A young African-American boy (drawn in blackface style) carries a sack to a river and laments that he has agreed to drown a cat. While the boy stares at the water, the cat slips out of the sack and fills it with bricks. When the boy says that he can't go through with the task, the hidden cat, pretending to be the boy's conscience, says, "Go ahead, Sambo, go ahead, boy," and reminds him that he has been paid four bits to do the job. Sambo reluctantly drops the bag in the river rather than return the money.

The cat then disguises itself as its own ghost, painting itself white and donning wings and a halo, and proceeds to "haunt" Sambo by repeatedly sneaking up on him and whispering "boo." Sambo runs away, but the cat rattles a pair of dice, causing Sambo to fall into a trance and sleepwalk back to the cat.

The hauntings continue until Sambo and the cat fall in a pond, washing off the cat's paint. When Sambo realizes that he has been tricked, he kills the cat with a shotgun blast. Immediately afterward, a line of nine ghost cats (representing a cat's nine lives) marches toward Sambo, saying, "And this time, brother, us ain't kiddin'."

Caricatures[]

Stepin Fetchit

Bans[]

Because the film contains stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans, it is among the group of controversial cartoons known to animation buffs as the Censored Eleven. "Angel Puss" is the only Chuck Jones film and the only Looney Tunes release on the list. In addition, this short was not shown at the TCM Movie Festival in Los Angeles in 2010, but has been restored for an indefinitely delayed DVD.

Notes[]

Porky Pig and Daffy Duck do not appear in this cartoon, but their faces still appear in the opening target sequences. This also happens in "I Got Plenty of Mutton".
- This was the last cartoon to use the 1942-1944 Looney Tunes title card with Porky and Daffy in the rings. It wouldn't return until the late 1940s; with updated designs of Porky and Daffy, it was used in "Riff Raffy Daffy" and the original non-Blue Ribbon versions of "Boobs in the Woods" and "The Prize Pest". Despite this, Porky and Daffy's faces would still continue to appear separately in the Looney Tunes rings in subsequent cartoons starring either Porky Pig or Daffy Duck respectively until at least the end of the early-1950s.
This is the first known Warner Bros. cartoon with the "Direction" byline to credit directors, as previous cartoons from 1933 to 1944 used "Supervision".
Vitaphone release number: 1239^[2]
This only collaboration between writer, Lou Lilly and director Chuck Jones. The rest were directed by Robert Clampett.