Catch as Cats Can is a 1947 Merrie Melodies short directed by Arthur Davis.
Title[]
The title is a play on the term "catch-as-catch-can."
Plot[]
An emaciated canary, singing like Frank Sinatra, is getting on the nerves of a pipe-puffing parrot, who speaks like Bing Crosby. The parrot spots Sylvester, foraging through the trash. Telling Sylvester he needs more vitamins, which the canary has been swallowing in bulk, he lures Sylvester inside to snare the canary.
The straightforward approach fails (the canary bops him in the eye instantly). After Sylvester gives up instantly, the Crosby parrot stops him and forces him to continue "to get the vitamins he needs". Sylvester employs the following tricks to eat Frankie, all of them ending in failure;
- He carves a female canary from soap, lures Frankie there; the birds slide down a greased counter, into the sink, and down the drain, but only the soap bird goes through the pipe and down Sylvester's throat.
- Sylvester creates a trail of birdseed into the garage. This technique seems to work, but Frankie jacks Sylvester's mouth open.
- Sylvester laces the vitamins with buckshot; like all cartoon magnets, his attracts everything metal in sight except his prey.
- Sylvester uses the vacuum cleaner to suck up Frankie. After opening the vacuum bag, the canary turns Sylvester's vacuum cleaner against him, with a crash in the fireplace giving Sylvester a hot-stomach; as he buries his head in the sink, the bird adds Foamo-Seltzer to the water; Sylvester rockets off, crashing into a wall.
Just as the Crosby parrot is about to give an injured Sylvester a new plan to eat Frankie, the cat finally realizes the portly parrot is a better meal. The canary sees Sylvester sitting on the parrot's perch, imitating his mannerisms.
Caricatures[]
- Bing Crosby - parrot
- Frank Sinatra - canary
Availability[]
Streaming[]
Censorship[]
- According to the podcast Cartoon Logic, the ending in which the Sinatra canary discovers that Sylvester ate the Crosby parrot and begins acting like him had a scene cut before its theatrical release where the camera pans to the backyard showing a tombstone that reads, "Came In Before His Horse," a joke about Crosby's poor luck at betting on horses. Versions of this short shown on domestic and international television, as well as home media (including its recent addition to the first volume of the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Blu-ray set), and on Boomerang Streaming Service, end on the scene of Sylvester, as the Bing Crosby parrot, saying, "Ah, there's nothing like vitamins..."[3][4]
Notes[]
- This short is one of three non-Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1947 not to be reissued. The others were "Mexican Joyride" (a Daffy Duck cartoon) and "A Pest in the House" (a Daffy Duck/Elmer Fudd cartoon).
- Songs sung by "Frank" include: "As Time Goes By", "It Can't Be Wrong" and "A Little on the Lonely Side".
- This one of the only two shorts featuring Sylvester to be directed by Arthur Davis, joining "Doggone Cats". In contrast to the former short, where Sylvester didn't talk and had an orange, unnamed feline partner, "Catch as Cats Can" has Sylvester speaking, albeit with a dopey voice (that sounds like an early version of the voice Mel Blanc would use for Barney Rubble on The Flintstones) and no lisp. Coincidentally, both cartoons were released in 1947.
- This is the only Sylvester short made in 1947 to not be reissued.
- This is the first Merrie Melodies short to use the 1947-48 color rings in both the opening and ending titles.
- MeTV aired this short in November 2021 as part of their Toon In with Me block. The MeTV airing of this short was unrestored.
- As of November 8th, MeTV began airing the restored version of this short from the Collector's Choice Blu-ray release, replacing the unrestored one.
- This is the first, and so far only, short to have its MeTV copy upgraded from an unrestored print to a restored one.
- As of November 8th, MeTV began airing the restored version of this short from the Collector's Choice Blu-ray release, replacing the unrestored one.
- The Bing Crosby parrot from this cartoon would later reappear in "Curtain Razor" two years later, albeit redesigned and given the name "Bingo".
Gallery[]
References[]
- ā https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3291213libr/page/n118/mode/1up?view=theater
- ā (3 October 2022) Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2 (in en). BearManor Media, page 136.
- ā https://cartoonlogic.libsyn.com/cartoon-logic-episode-26-art-davis-two-gophers-from-texas
- ā https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/looney-tunes-collectors-choice-vol-1
ā Doggone Cats | Sylvester Cartoons | Back Alley Oproar ā |