Katnip Kollege (1938)
At the Katnip Kollege, we see a roomful of cats taking a course in Swingology. Everyone swings except Johnny, who can't cut it and has to sit in the dunce chair. Miss Kitty Bright tells him to look her up when he learns how to swing. Finally, listening to the pendulum clock at night, Johnny gets the beat. He rushes out to where everyone is playing and sings "Easy As Rollin' Off a Log" to Kitty Bright. She joins in; he grabs a trumpet for an instrumental break, with the complete band. They both fall off a log; she covers him with kisses.
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Such a frustrating disappointment
Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
By the late 1930s, the Schlesinger studio had phased out plugging popular tunes in favor of broad comedy. This short was probably one of the last of its kind to feature popular tunes as opposed to aiming for comedy.Like most musical cartoons, the featured songs were lifted from recent WB features. Let That Be A Lesson To You came from HOLLYWOOD HOTEL (1937), As Easy As Rolling Off A Log is briefly heard in OVER THE GOAL (1937). The trumpet solo is directly taken from the latter films soundtrack. Johnnie Davis, who sang and performed a trumpet solo in the aforementioned films, does the voice of the bespectacled cat. His meek design is in contrast to Davis' actual handsome appearance. The college setting of OVER THE GOAL was probably an inspiration. Maybel Todd, who sang a part in the Let That Be A Lesson To You number in HOLLYWOOD HOTEL, voices Kitty Bright.For a Cal Dalton short, this is a very handsome effort. A good quintessential late 1930s WB short with catchy jazz numbers. Be sure to check out the films where the musical numbers originated. Although I have yet to hear a full recording of As Easy As Rolling Off A Log.
I wouldn't call this a perfect film, or spend any effort to obtain it by itself, but if you get it anyway (in my case, as part of the Warner Night at the Movies extra suite on the Adventures of Robin Hood 1938), it provides decent, if somehow museum-like entertainment, and contributes to the viewer feeling like back in 1938 (the included newsreel reports that Hitler has annected Austria). Colors look a bit faded, humor is not worth mentioning, but the swing music was pleasant to me.And that Kitty girl moved nicely lasciviously, though Betty Boop was better at that :^)
Watching the classic Looney Tunes cartoons, one can see that they had a thing for jazz. In "Katnip Kollege", the focus is on swing music, as a feline in school can't keep time and gets made the dunce...until he figures out the beat. Even though I love the classic Looney Tunes cartoons, it always seemed to me like their musical cartoons from the '30s tried a little too hard to be cute. Of course, any emphasis on swing music is something to be acknowledged. Still, I prefer their other music-centric shorts (such as "I Love to Singa", "Three Little Bops" and "What's Opera, Doc?").Anyway, this one's worth seeing as a historical reference, if nothing else.
"Katnip Kollege" is a delightful Warner Bros. musical cartoon. The plot involves a swingology class at Katnip Kollege, where all the "young cats" go to study one of my favorite subjects: how to swing! Every student in the class does a fine job of singing, clapping, dancing, and playing instruments to a tireless swinging jazz groove! That is, every student except one bespectacled cat named Johnny, who is so terrible at swinging that his classmates ridicule him, and his professor declares him to be a dunce. At the end of the school day, as all the other cats swing their way into the night, Johnny stays after school and listens to the ticking of a clock, which ultimately kicks off a tempo for him, and he finally understands how to swing! Showing off his newly-acquired skill, Johnny becomes the star of the evening as he wins the respect of his classmates and the affections of a spunky gal named Ms. Kitty Bright.My favorite moments from "Katnip Kollege" include the following. During the opening shot of the classroom before the professor arrives, Johnny quite humorously stands out from the rest of his classmates as he cannot even clap his hands in time to the beat. The professor has a Bing Crosby-type voice as he swings his rhymed speech while calling on different students to give their swinging recitations. And how could I not mention the wonderful jazz music that fills this entire cartoon? In closing, here is one final interesting observation that relates to "Katnip Kollege." Dave Brubeck, one of my favorite jazz pianists/composers, wrote a tune in 1955 titled "The Duke" as a homage to one of the greatest composers/bandleaders/pianists of the 20th Century: Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington. Decades later, when an interviewer asked Brubeck how he actually went about writing the tune, Brubeck replied, "Just think of windshield wipers." As Brubeck was driving his car on a rainy day, the motion of the wipers ultimately kicked off a tempo for him!