The Cat Concerto: History and Key Facts

The Cat Concerto is a 1947 American one-reel animated cartoon and the 29th Tom and Jerry short. It was released to theaters by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer under their cartoon division on April 26, 1947. The short film centers on Tom's attempts to perform Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 on the piano as Jerry constantly disrupts the performance, leading to an escalation of slapstick antics. The short film 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.

The Cat Concerto faced a plagiarism dispute with Warner Bros. cartoon Rhapsody Rabbit (1946), as it featured both Tom and Bugs Bunny fighting against a mouse, similar slapstick gags, and the same composition by Liszt, with production timelines coinciding. After Hanna and Barbera saw a near-complete revision of the latter short film, they rushed The Cat Concerto in production and submitted it for Academy consideration by spring 1947.

The short film won Best Animated Short Subject at the 19th Academy Awards, which served as the fourth consecutive Tom and Jerry film to win an Oscar. Its classical approach would influence the subsequent short films The Hollywood Bowl (1950) and Johann Mouse (1953). Retrospectively, The Cat Concerto was ranked at number 42 on The 50 Greatest Cartoons (1994), praising its slapstick violence in connection to the background music. Additionally, the short film influenced Chinese pianist Lang Lang, who considered it to have started his interest in playing the piano.

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