Hep Cat Symphony

1949 Animation 6 minutes Directed by Seymour Kneitel

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About Hep Cat Symphony

A jazz cat in Tin Can Alley cannot stand the mouse symphony practicing next door. He dresses as the Pied Piper and pipes the mice away. The mice still get the last of the music.

Cast & crew

More about Hep Cat Symphony

Seymour Kneitel directed. Dave Tendlar and Marty Taras animated, Tom Ford painted the backgrounds, and Carl Meyer and Jack Mercer wrote the story. Paramount released the Technicolor Noveltoon on February 4, 1949.

Themes

  • Jazz next to a symphony
  • A Pied Piper disguise
  • The mice's last tune
  • hep cat
  • mouse orchestra
  • Pied Piper
  • Tin Pan Alley
  • jazz
  • classical

Making

The Internet Animation Database times a print at 6 minutes 10 seconds, MPAA number 4388, 35mm Technicolor, 1.37:1, RCA mono. Winston Sharples is the credited composer.

Music

Winston Sharples's score uses the Poet and Peasant Overture and the William Tell Overture against the cat's jazz.

Preservation

Public domain in the United States since 1977. An Internet Archive copy runs 6 minutes 11 seconds. NTA's television print keeps a silent opening card and an unblacked Technicolor notice.

Notes

  • Hep cat" was current slang for someone in on jazz.
  • The score quotes Franz von Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture and Rossini's William Tell Overture.
  • Jack Mercer voices the cat. Jackson Beck voices the cat when he is reading.
  • The Internet Animation Database says it was submitted for the 1948 Academy Award for animated short and was not nominated.
  • An NTA television print uses a silent opening card, the same treatment as The Mite Makes Right and Leprechauns Gold.
  • The Paramount Cartoons Wiki says the cat-and-mouse music fight was later reused as a pattern for Herman and Katnip.
  • NTA missed the renewal. The short entered the U.S. public domain in 1977.

Scenes

  • The cat tries to play jazz while the mice rehearse a symphony in the next room.
  • He dresses as the Pied Piper and pipes them off.
  • The mice turn the tune back on him.

Also available

  • Internet Archive (HepCatSymphony)
  • DVD 300 Cartoon Classics (Image Entertainment, 2011)
  • DVD Toon Factory — Porky: Ali Baba Bound (Digiview, 2004)
  • DVD Cartoon Craze — Bosko & Friends: Bosko Shipwrecked (Digiview, 2004)

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