Kitty Kornered is a 1946 Looney Tunes short directed by Bob Clampett.
Contents
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!", and then slam the door in his face.
While the cats are lounging around while smoking cigars and getting drunk on wine, 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 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
Evolution of Sylvester
The still anonymous Sylvester appears in the film, with a black nose, yellow eyes, and lacking a white-colored tip at the end of his tail. He is joined by, among others, a drunk cat with the red nose, gray fur, big lips, and saggy jowls who was popular enough to appear in several later cartoons such as in the Rolling Stones music video "Harlem Shuffle" with art by Ralph Bakshi and John Kricfalusi, in a few episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures, an episode of Animaniacs, and among the many cats in Tweety's High-Flying Adventure.
Availability
Viddy-Oh! For Kids Cartoon Festivals: Porky Pig Cartoon Festival Featuring "Nothing but the Tooth"
Porky Pig
Cartoon Moviestars: Porky!
Cartoon Moviestars: Daffy! and Porky!
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 1, Side 4: Bob Clampett
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 4: Bob Clampett
Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition, Vol. 1: All-Stars (1995 USA Turner Dubbed Version)
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, Disc Three (restored)
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 2 Disc 1
Blues in the Night (1995 Turner dubbed version)
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1, Disc One (restored)
Tweety Pie
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1, Disc One (restored)
Looney Tunes Showcase: Volume 1
Looney Tunes 3 Feature Collection Best Of
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volumes 2-3 Repack
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volumes 1-3 Repack
Censorship
Sylvester and the other three cats after throwing Porky outside, a scene cut from some BBC, Kids WB, and FOX airings
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.[6]
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 movie Lassie Come Home from MGM.
- Considered among Clampett's best and wackiest films, "Kitty Kornered" was Clampett's final cartoon starring his longtime star Porky Pig, although he made a cameo in Clampett's 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 and 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 Chuck Jones directed cartoon.
- This is the first color Looney Tunes cartoon to use the written-out "That's all Folks" ending sequence and onwards, although the Merrie Melodies ending music is heard 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!" 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.
- The wine bottle the drunk cat drinks from is named "Arsenic and Old Grapes", a reference to the 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 1941-1955 rendition of the Merrie Melodies theme playing over the end title.
- 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.
- On that topic, in the Looney Tunes Cartoons interstitials featuring Porky and Sylvester such as "Put the Cat Out - Door Spin" for example, 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.
Gallery
.png "KITTY KORNERED (2).png (655 KB)")
.png "KITTY KORNERED (3).png (578 KB)")
.png "KITTY KORNERED (4).png (614 KB)")
.png "KITTY KORNERED (11).png (627 KB)")
References
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3281213li/page/81/mode/1up
- ↑ (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
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 https://twitter.com/_ibcf_/status/896618848375291904
- ↑ http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-k-l.aspx
External Links
| ← Peck Up Your Troubles | Sylvester Cartoons | Tweetie Pie → |
