Kitty Kornered is a 1946 Looney Tunes short directed by Robert Clampett.
Plot[]
At nine o'clock on a cold winter's night, the neighborhood's cat owners all literally throw their cats out for the night. Porky Pig attempts to do the same, but his four cats—a tall black-and-white lisping cat, a medium-sized tabby, a diminutive kitten, and a dumb drunkard cat—throw him out. Porky falls into the snow. Sticking his face out and now resembling Santa Claus, Porky states that he hates pussycats. Porky bangs on the door, demanding to be let in, but the cats pop out of the door and proclaim in unison, "Milkman, keep those bottles quiet!" (mainly because the vibrations from his banging are causing some empty ones to rattle noisily), and then slam the door in his face.
While the cats are lounging around while smoking cigars and getting drunk on wine, a furious Porky throws open the window while making an incredibly menacing face. He chases them around the house until one of them throws him into a teapot. Porky then orders the cats to leave, but the cats still proceed to stick around in the house laughing at his face, causing Porky to retaliate by setting his pet dog "Lassie" on the cats. The cats see the dog's shadow and run for their lives, not knowing that "Lassie" is really only a shadow puppet created with Porky's fingers.
When Sylvester finds out that they've been tricked, he and the others plot revenge. They fake an alien invasion, driving Porky into a panic over "M-m-me-m-me-m-m-m-me-m-me-m-men from Mars!" Assuming the appearances of Theodore Roosevelt and his personal Rough Riders cavalry, the cats charge at Porky and run him out of the house once and for all. Homeless, alone, and cold in the snow, Porky turns and asks, "Pardon me, but d-d-does anybody in the audience kn-kn-know somebody that kn-knows somebody that, uh, that has a house to rent?"
Caricatures[]
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Jim Jordan - "All kinds of stuff like that there"
Music Cues[]
- Joseph Meyer - "But I Did" - plays during the opening credits.
- Frédéric Chopin - "Nocturne in E flat, Op. 9, No. 2" - plays briefly at the beginning.
- "Good Night, Ladies" - plays when the cats are put out for the night.
- H.R. Bishop - "Home Sweet Home" - sang by the drunken cats.
- "Three Blind Mice" - plays when the mice are dragged out of their hole.
- Harold Arlen - "Blues in the Night" - plays when the cats are outside and Sylvester is talking to them.
- John F. Barth - "Frat" - plays briefly when the cats form a huddle.
- Stefan Weiß and Paul Mann - "Angel in Disguise" - plays when the cats dress up as Martians.
- M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl - "The Wish That I Wish Tonight" - plays right before Porky goes to sleep with the Martians.
- "The Three Little Kittens" - plays when the cats laugh at Porky after he jumps through the window.
Evolution of Sylvester[]
This was Sylvester's only appearance in a Bob Clampett cartoon, although the cat character in this short wasn't named "Sylvester" (or even had a name, for that matter), nor did he look like him (he was black and white, but had a black nose instead of a red one, yellow eyes instead of white eyes, and had no white tip on his tail), and was portrayed as a comically brash trickster (rather than neurotic, stubborn, dim-witted, or villainous as he would be under Art Davis, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Robert McKimson). Arguments can be made that it is still Sylvester because the tuxedo cat color scheme is similar, and Mel Blanc uses Sylvester's voice for that cat character.
Availability[]
Censorship[]
Versions shown on FOX's Merrie Melodies Show, The WB, and the United Kingdom's BBC channel cut the scene where the cats smoke cigars, read comics, lounge, and drink wine before Porky bursts in on them.[7]
Goofs[]
- When the drunk cat slips into the goldfish bowl, there is sound of the bowl rolling on the table, yet the bowl does not roll.
- Porky's front door has molding on most scenes, but when the smallest cat lowers the doorknob to jump through the keyhole, the door is plain. On the next shot, where the drunk cat dives for where the keyhole was and hits the door, the molding is back, then disappears again when the cat falls to the floor.
- When Sylvester dives under the bed, the production cells of him diving were placed over the bed by mistake, so that he appears to dive on top of the bed and then disappear.
- At the beginning of the cartoon, every time the font door of Porky's house is opened or closed, the door changes color often. Although the original door color is white, when half opened the door turns green and when wide open the door turns yellow. Then, when the door is closed, the door color changes from yellow to green and finally white.
Notes[]
- "Lassie" is a reference to the dog of the same name from the 1943 film Lassie Come Home from MGM.
- Considered among Bob Clampett's best and wackiest films, "Kitty Kornered" was his final cartoon starring his longtime star Porky Pig, although he made a cameo in his next cartoon, "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", as a train driver.
- This marks the only appearance of the then-unnamed Sylvester in a Clampett-directed cartoon, and only one of two times Sylvester spoke in a Porky Pig cartoon. It was also the first appearance of Sylvester in the Looney Tunes series and also the only short where Sylvester does not have his red nose.
- Porky and Sylvester would later be paired in a trio of shorts directed by Chuck Jones: "Scaredy Cat", "Claws for Alarm", and "Jumpin' Jupiter" where they explore spooky settings in which Sylvester is aware of, but Porky takes no notice. Both also co-starred with Daffy Duck, which has a speed-up version of Sylvester's voice, including the lisp, in the Jones-directed short "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" as villian roles, the only other time Sylvester spoke in a Porky Pig cartoon, and the only time Sylvester spoke in a Jones-directed cartoon.
- This is the first color Looney Tunes cartoon to use the written-out "That's all Folks!" ending sequence and onwards. This trend would be used until 1964.
- At the cartoon's start, the WB shield doesn't zoom to the viewers, similar to the Daffy Duck short "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", only the sound effect is heard.
- The alien disguises worn by Sylvester and his cohorts were real characters in the "Spaced Out" episode of The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries. One of the disguises would also appear as a real character in the Looney Tunes Cartoons short "A Pane to Wash".
- The wine bottle the drunk cat drinks from is named "Arsenic and Old Grapes", a reference to the 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace, as is the Teddy Roosevelt charge.
- Even though this is a Looney Tunes short, it uses the Looney Tunes end title with the 1941–55 rendition of the Merrie Melodies theme playing over the end title. This is because WB was making a new version of the music to replace the 1939–46 ending, as that one had Porky say, "Th-th-th-that's all Folks!"
- The drunk cat is a parody of Spooky the Cat from Bill Holman's Smokey Stover comic strip.
- Starting with this cartoon, the "MPPDA" circle underwent a redesign that saw the letters in it stand up straight; this design would be used until 1952, when the circle was updated to say "MPAA".
- Sylvester's yellow eyes in the short would later be incorporated into his Looney Tunes Cartoons appearance.
- In the series of interstitials featuring Porky and Sylvester, "Put the Cat Out", Porky would attempt to put Sylvester out for the night on a cold winter's night with disastrous results similar to this cartoon, except that here Sylvester is Porky's only pet cat, while the other three cats from this cartoon, a medium-sized tabby, a diminutive kitten, and a dumb drunkard cat, all do not appear.
- The drunkard cat makes a cameo appearance in "Snow Laughing Matter", and the other cats also return in "Kitty Krashers".
- Despite being in the original book as a runner-up, this short was not featured in Cartoon Network's "50 Greatest Cartoons" marathon.
- Vitaphone release number: 1461[8]
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3281213li/page/81/mode/1up
- ↑ (3 October 2022) Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2 (in en). BearManor Media, page 129.
- ↑ (1991) I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat: Fifty Years of Sylvester and Tweety. New York: Henry Holt and Co, page 89. ISBN 0-8050-1644-9.
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVoMpidVlFg
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEa1IhMiPWo
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 https://twitter.com/_ibcf_/status/896618848375291904
- ↑ http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-k-l.aspx
- ↑ Liebman, Roy (2003). Vitaphone Films: A Catalogue of the Features and Shorts. McFarland, page 289. ISBN 978-0786412792.
External Links[]
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