Three Orphan Kittens

The 1930s often gave audiences cartoons chock full of happy singing animals and tons of cuteness. The edgier cartoons were mostly absent, though Disney's stock of reliable characters were awfully good. Today, these "sweet" cartoons are a pretty sad lot when you can compare them to the wonderful (and much more violent) cartoons of the 40s and 50s. However, making this comparison isn't 100% fair--this sort of cartoon was still waiting to be born.

For 1935, this cartoon is much better than average but I am frankly not particularly fond of it. My score of 7 represents it compared to the films of the day, though today I'd be hard pressed to give it a 4, as it's amazingly dull despite some very nice animation. The kittens bounce about the house and get into mischief--and this isn't enough to sustain a film. Speaking of animation, I loved the snow scenes--they were just so beautifully done. Ditto for the backgrounds. As for the three kittens, they actually were not as well animated as many of Disney's films of the day, but apparently the cuteness and the rest of the film was enough to propel it to the Oscar for Best Animated Short. Though, if you were to compare it to the other nominees that year, it is the best short. However, my nod would have been to award the Oscar to a more traditional Disney film--such as THE BAND CONCERT or MICKEY'S POLO TEAM.

By the way, you probably will notice that the film presents Black people as rather hard-hearted servants or as "pickaninny" dolls. Thank goodness times have changed.

I found Three Orphan Kittens purely by chance and wanted to check it out as I'm a huge cat- lover. It turned out to be every bit as gorgeous as I thought it would be. First of all, the kittens themselves are stunningly adorable and join my rankings of truly adorable characters alongside the kittens in Aristocats, Oliver (Oliver & Company), Bambi (Bambi), Dumbo (Dumbo), Lady (Lady & The Tramp), Banjo (Banjo The Woodpile Cat), Feivel (An American Tail), Winnie the Pooh, the title characters of PB&J Otter, and the main Land Before Time Cast (especially Petrie). Second, the animation both on the kittens and on the backgrounds has a nice innocent feel to it reminiscent of Beatrix Potter or Arnold Lobel (if you don't know either of those people you haven't had a childhood). Third, the music is sweet and mesmerizing, especially during the pie scene when the music 'spurts" in time to the squirting pie. All in all, a sweet, touching, simply precious little outing.

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

THREE ORPHAN KITTENS, abandoned on a stormy Winter's night, make their way into a cozy, well-appointed home, where they proceed to create havoc...

This is a very cute little film and was the winner of the Oscar for Best Cartoon Short Subject for 1935. Some of the scenes use a technique called a `moving vanishing point' by animators; this gives an added depth of perception & was considered an innovation at the time. Some viewers may perceive a little racism in the character of Mammy Twoshoes. The kittens, by the way, were named Fluffy, Muffy & Tuffy by the Studio, and would return in 1936 in MORE KITTENS.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.

While Three Orphan Kittens is undoubtably a good cartoon and is well worth watching, Who Killed Cock Robin? should probably have won and I think that in many ways The Calico Dragon is also better, although not by much. It was an excellent field and all three were worthy, but Three Orphan Kittens wasn't the best, at least to me. The title basically describes the cartoon. Certainly worth your time, this periodically appears on The Ink and Paint Club on The Disney Channel.

It wasn't until I discovered this on YouTube that I finally saw this Walt Disney Silly Symphony cartoon. It has three kittens without a home wandering into a house with the black maid making her pie and singing her song. But she doesn't notice those cats in the home for awhile so those three felines get into some scrapes, that's for sure! I'll stop there and just say I found most of it quite entertaining despite some scenes that wouldn't go in these Politically Correct times. So that's a recommendation of Three Orphan Kittens. P.S. The print I saw was a Spanish-dubbed one so that was something fascinating to view and hear...