“Everybody, everybody, everybody wants to be a cat!” “Why did I listen to that O’Malley cat!”50 years ago today Walt Disney Productions’ animated classic “The Aristocats” opened in theaters. It had a premiere in LA on 12/11/70 but opened two weeks later.
One of the most important films in my life, it was “The Aristocats”, and two weeks later “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, that I saw in the Walt Disney Summer Film Festival in 1975 that made my knowledge of what paradise was like in film. With its wonderful songs, from the opening titles with Maurice Chevalier singing the title song, to “Thomas O’Malley” introducing the Phil Harris voiced character, to most of all “Everybody Wants To Be A Cat” the film is a joyous affair from beginning to end. The songs were written by the Sherman Brothers, along with Terry Gilkyson contributing “Thomas O’Malley”, and Floyd Huddleston and Al Rinker contributed “Everybody Wants To Be A Cat”.
There are many wonderful contributing characters like Roquefort (Sterling Holloway) the mouse, Frou Frou (Nancy Kulp) the horse, and Scat Cat (Scatman Crothers) and his gang. Originally Louis Armstrong was going to be playing Scat Cat, but his ill health never allowed it. What are the chances that a man NAMED Scatman would play Scat Cat: it was destined to be.I already loved “Green Acres” so I knew who Eva Gabor and Pat Buttram were, and the humor in the film, especially with Buttram’s Napoleon and George Lindsey’s Lafayatte was a delight, but even more, there is EDGAR (Roddy Maude-Roxby), the butler. Edgar is one of the most delightful villains ever in animation, especially because you sort of like him, him being just unable to control his greed in thinking he should get the money of Mademoiselle Chiffon (Hermione Baddley).
I’d get the album for the film in the summer of 1973, the record being advertised in pamphlets included inside Disneyland Records released that year, and I asked my cousin Ana to help me order it. Even though I loved the album and its graphics, the songs were different versions, and the film would take the songs to a much higher plane when I’d see it two years later. Add to that the delights of a pair of nutty English geese Amelia (Carole Shelley) and Abigail (Monica Evans) Gabble, and their inebriated Uncle Waldo (Bill Thompson in his final role), and you have one of the most perfect animated films ever. The ending, with everyone, EXCEPT EDGAR, living in paradise is what films are all about, somehow everybody being knowledgeable about how joyous things have become, even though they are NOT in the same location. It is one of the most joyous endings ever on film.
It is simply brilliant.“The Aristocats” is in my top five animated films ever, and among my top films period. It is a film that’s etched in my soul till eternity. It is one of the films that changed my life forever.“Hey Napoleon, that sounds like the end.”“Wait a minute! I’m the leader! I’ll say when it’s the end.”BUMP “The End”“It’s the end.”“Everybody, everybody, everybody wants to be a cat!” “OH YEAH!”