The Cat Concerto
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The Cat Concerto is a one-reel animated cartoon short subject in the Tom and Jerry series, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on April 26 1946 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision by Scott Bradley. It won the 1946 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons.
The plot centres on a formal concerto, where Tom is giving a piano recital of Hungarian Rhapsody number 2 by Franz Liszt. Jerry, who has been asleep inside the piano, is entranced by the music and sits on top of the grand piano to listen. Tom cannot abide this, and flicks Jerry off the piano. This begins their cat-and-mouse antics, which continue throughout the cartoon. All the while, Tom continues playing without any interruptions regardless of anything either opponent does.
The Warner Bros. animation studio released a very similar cartoon the same year MGM released The Cat Concerto. This cartoon, named Rhapsody Rabbit had a very similar plot to The Cat Concerto, except it featured Bugs Bunny in place of Tom and an unnamed mouse in place of Jerry. Both MGM and Warner Bros accused each other of stealing their ideas.
External references
- The Cat Concerto (http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/97-98/9403359w/concerto/cartoon2.htm), a section of Nicola Watts' "Cartoons and Music" 1997 media studies project at Glasgow University.
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