The Cat Concerto is a 1946 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 29th Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor in 1946 and released to theatres on April 26, 1947 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision by Scott Bradley, and animation by Kenneth Muse, Ed Barge and Irven Spence. It won the 1946 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. In 1994 it was voted #42 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
The Cat Concerto
Written & Directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
Released on April 26, 1947
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
{You can also watch here: Oscar-Winning "The Cat Concerto" - Tom and Jerry}
Tom enters from stage left in white tie and tails, sits at the piano, gets his focus as the orchestra in the pit beneath him warms up, and begins to play Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody". Unbeknownst to Tom and the audience, Jerry is asleep across several of the high-note keys inside the instrument, so Tom's playing eventually wakes him. Jerry is pummeled by hammers, bounced by wires, and squeezed by Tom as the cat tries to play the concerto while dispensing with Jerry. Jerry's defensive antics, added to the brio of the program, answers Tom with Jerry's own skillful musical attack. By the concerto's end, the duet leaves only one animal standing for the audience's applause.
Topical Trivia
click to show The same year MGM produced The Cat Concerto, Warner Bros. released a very similar Bugs Bunny cartoon Rhapsody Rabbit, directed by I. Freleng, with Bugs against an unnamed mouse. Both shorts used near identical gags, and even use the same piece by Liszt.
Both MGM and Warner Bros. accused each other of plagiarism, after both films were shown during the 1947 Academy Awards ceremony. Technicolor was accused of sending a print of either cartoon to the competing studio, who then allegedly plagiarized their rival's work. This controversy was the subject of an episode on the Cartoon Network documentary show ToonHeads (the cartoons have been under the same ownership since 1981).