Tin Pan Alley Cats is a 1943 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Bob Clampett.
A fat black cat (modeled after jazz pianist Fats Waller) goes to a hot jazz club, despite a religious mission urging him and others like him not to be tempted by wine, women, and song. When the cat goes inside the club, he ends up so taken by the music that he ends up in a surrealistic nightmare, not unlike Wackyland as seen on Porky in Wackyland and desperately tries to get back to Earth.
The film is infamous for being one of the Censored Eleven, but it is also notable for being one of The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes (much like Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs). It was also chosen by the Library of Congress as a "prime example of the music and mores of our times" and a print was buried in a time capsule in Washington, D.C. so future generations might see it.
Tin Pan Alley Tropes:
- Cat Folk: The lady cat that the lead cat encounters in the opening is depicted with a naturally drawn human body, but has a cat like face.
- Comically Missing the Point: When the Fats Waller cat is about to enter a jazz club, a preacher warns him not to go in there, lest he be tempted by wine, women and song. Unfortunately, he is all for those three things.
- Disney Acid Sequence: The wackyland sequence that the Waller cat experiences.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The protagonist cat is a caricature of musician Fats Waller.
- No Indoor Voice: The Fats Waller cat constantly speaks at the top of his lungs.
- Opinion-Changing Dream: The dream sequence the Waller cat experiences convinces him to take up "that old time religion."
- Pun-Based Title: On the real life Tin Pan Alley and the phrase Alley Cats.
- Space Whale Aesop: Don't listen to jazz music or you'll literally be sent "outta this world" and into a dimension of pure chaos.
- Stock Footage: A big chunk of the cartoon consists of colorized and reworked animation from Clampett's previous film Porky in Wackyland. Some of the animation from the Kit Kat Club scenes were rotoscoped from 1937's "September In the Rain."
- Visual Pun: Among the sights the Waller cat sees in the dream sequence is a literal Rubber Band.
- Wartime Cartoon: During the dream sequence, nightmarish caricatures of Hitler, Hideki Tojo and Joseph Stalin appear.
