![]() ![]() The film was released after civil rights groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had started targeting cartoons with ethnic stereotypes during World War II, but Tin Pan Alley Cats escaped the scrutiny of civil rights activists. The musicians provide a lively soundtrack for the cartoon. The animation is frenetic and rubbery, which fits the chaos of the jazzworld Waller-cat enters. ![]() After the trumpeter blows notes to send the cat back to Earth, he flees the club and joins the missionaries–to their astonishment. A trumpeter plays notes that send the cat into another world, but that world proves to be too chaotic for him. The plot concerns Waller-as-cat shunning religious missionaries to enjoy jazz at a nightclub. Previous cartoons associated African Americans with creatures having big mouths MGM’s frogs and the studio’s fish in Swing Social are examples of those designs.īob Clampett directed Tin Pan Alley Cats, and he arranged for African American musicians to sing and play instruments in the film. Finally, Tin Pan Alley Cats depicts African Americans as cats. Also, the jazz musician is the cartoon’s protagonist–not the star of a random musical number or the antagonist, as in Max Fleischer’s cartoons pitting Betty Boop against a jazz singer. Waller is the only jazz celebrity in the film, and his solo appearance breaks from the ensembles of celebrities in Clean Pastures, Have You Got Any Castles, and the frog cartoons from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. On the other hand, much of Tin Pan Alley Cats is original. Also, the jazz musician Thomas “Fats” Waller is caricatured, just like in Clean Pastures and The Isle of Pingo Pongo. African Americans are depicted as either jazz musicians or devout Christians, as in Clean Pastures, and borrows from the earlier film’s conflict of religion vs. Some of this cartoon’s content draws from previous cartoons. The eighth installment of my Censored Eleven series of columns looks at the 1943 Technicolor “Merrie Melodies” episode Tin Pan Alley Cats from Warner Brothers. ![]()
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