Voices of Eva Gabor, Phil Harris, Scatman Crothers, Paul Winchell. Dir. Wolfgang Reitherman, Disney, 1970
Little kids love receiving mail. I've had friends with young children ask if I'll send them mail - a postcard, a greeting card - just because it makes them feel special. I was no different. I suppose it gave me an early sign of individuality, of being a real person apart from my parents and, conversely, of belonging to a larger world. The grownups get mail. If I get mail, it's some small step toward adulthood. Not that I could have articulated that at age five. Then, it was pure novelty, long before life - and my parents - taught me to fear new experiences.
When I was a child, Disney used to release lps of their movies. Not soundtrack albums, these were a condensed version of the film, itself, featuring the actual dialog and sound from each picture. They came as gatefold albums with a full-color booklet attached to their inner spine so a listener could read along with the action. If I recall correctly, each featured a character from the picture narrating the record, even for movies which didn't utilize voiceover narration. My brother and I owned a number of them. Winnie the Pooh (& Tigger, Too!), Treasure Island, Herbie the Love Bug, and Robin Hood received frequent spins in our house.
Most special, however, was the record of The Aristocats, Disney's 20th animated feature, first released theatrically in 1970, and for the simplest of reasons. It came in the mail, addressed to me. I still remember the UPS truck stopping in front of our house as I played on the porch. Mom must have suggested I go down the walk to get it for her, because I remember the sense of absolute wonder and delight when the driver put the brown-paper parcel in my hands, addressed to me. If Mom were not already a magical being, she became one that day.
I was three years old when Aristocats had its US premiere on Christmas Eve, 1970. I wouldn't see my first Disney movie in a theatre until the live-action/animation hybrid, Bedknobs&Broomsticks, released the following year. I don't think the record came until I was about five, and I know I didn't see it until its first re-release in 1978.
That was the joy of those records. I didn't have to see the movie to experience it. I did not see Treasure Island or ...& Tigger, Too! until after I owned the album versions, but I knew their stories. I would have been 10 by the time I saw The Aristocats, but it holds a special place in my memory as one of my first encounters with Disney movies.
When I sat down to watch The Aristocats yesterday afternoon, I had not seen it in 43 years. I felt a certain trepidation, knowing it hailed from the time when Disney's animation lost some of its artistic lustre, the era of the Nine Old Men behind them by then. Too, I had seen three underwhelming movies already this weekend, so a lot was riding on it, maybe more than it could support.
If Disney has mutated in this century into a darker, less-benign corporate behemoth, the old, white magic of its past persisted in this now-50 year-old movie. It lit me up inside the way the record album did so long ago. I could feel the smile of childlike delight creasing my face within minutes of the start. The tears of pure, unalloyed joy began a few minutes later. I spent 80 perfect minutes laughing and grinning and weeping yesterday evening, the ideal tonic to discovering, again, some films of my young adulthood have not aged well.
The Aristocats is not a high-water mark for Disney animation. It has the same, somewhat cheap, flat look which also plagues 1967's The Jungle Book and most of the studio's '70s output. The textured, deep-focus look Disney achieved in the '40s and '50s is long gone. The story qualifies as Disney-lite compared to more classic titles, sort of a mashup of both 101 Dalmations and Lady & the Tramp, only with cats.
In 1910 Paris, retired opera diva Madame Adelaide Bonfamille dotes on Duchess (Eva Gabor) and her three kittens, Marie, Toulouse, and Berlioz, to the extent that she plans to leave her estate to them, followed by her English butler, Edgar, who takes umbrage and kidnaps Duchess and her children, abandoning them in the countryside. Accosted by two farmdogs, Napoleon and Lafayette, who speak like stereotypical American southerners, voiced by Pat Buttram and George Lindsey - Mr. Haney on Green Acres and Goober on Andy Griffith, respectively - Edgar flees before he can do the cats more permanent injury. Journeying back to Paris, Duchess and the kittens meet an older alley cat, Thomas O'Malley, voiced by bandleader and Jack Benny-alum Phil Harris, who helps lead them home, where he introduces them to his alley cat friends, a jazz band led by Scatman Crothers and featuring the singer of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," Thurl Ravenscroft as a Russian-accented cat, who perform the movie's sole musical number, "Ev'rybody Wants to be a Cat," an uproarious, bouncing rhumba I amazed myself by still knowing all the lyrics.
Hijinks, of course, ensue, as Duchess's family friend, Rouquefort, a mouse, and Madame's horse try to help reunite a grieving Madame and the cats while deposing Edgar. That brings O'Malley and the Jazz Cats back to the rescue, enabling O'Malley to have the wife and family he's always longed for.
Not that any of this matters, really. What matters is the characters and the genuine warmth and joy with which their voice actors imbue them. Eva Gabor turns her Green Acres character, Lisa, into a doting mama cat with a cod-French accent, perhaps the least interesting performance here, but the rest of the cast rise to the occasion, particularly Buttram and Lindsey as Napoleon and Lafayette. Napoleon, the alpha dog, constantly asserts his dominance before following Lafayette's more sensible suggestions. Scatman Crothers, Ravenscroft, and Paul Winchell (the voice of Tigger and The Smurfs' Gargamel) and the rest of the band play, of course, quintessential hepcats. Sterling Holloway (the voice of Pooh) is fun as the earnest, almost unctuous Roquefort, but this show belongs to Harris, whose long career in radio's Golden Age, both on Benny's show and then eight seasons on his own program with real-life wife Alice Faye gives him mad skills as a voice actor. His O'Malley perfectly balances cool-daddy and wannabe-Dad, a solo act ready to form a little combo of his own. His immediate and unconditional acceptance of and love for Duchess and the kittens, and his longing for same from humans, touched me. There's no bravado or bluster or he-cat posturing in the performance, just the warmth and sincerity of a feral cat ready and eager to be domesticated by love, family, and a home of his own.
The Aristocats may not be one of Disney's great works, but it's a fun and warm and good one, and on a cold grey Super Sunday those were more than enough to ensure it stood the test of time. Enthusiastically endorsed to everyone who has not grown too old to giggle and sob at a gaggle of cartoon cats.
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