Directed by: Abe Levitow

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Set in mid-1890’s, Mewsette (voiced by Judy Garland) is an innocent farm cat who dreams of going to Paris to seek her fortune, much to the dismay of her champion mouser boyfriend Jaune-Tom (voiced by Robert Goulet).

Cartoon Cats: Mewsette gets the idea of going to Paris from the sister of the farm wife who raves about all the fabulous things to do and see in the City of Lights.

Jaune-Tom catches a mouse to present to Mewsette but she is appalled. A farm kitten named Robespierre is Jaune-Tom’s best buddy and encourages her to go to Paris if she is so miserable on the farm. She quickly agrees, stowing aboard the sister’s carriage and later a train.

On the train Mewswette meets Meowrice (voiced by Paul Frees), a scoundrel of a cat just looking for hapless young females to prey upon. He promises to introduce Mewswette to Paris society.

Meowrice takes Mewsette to meet hs “sister,” Mme. Rubens-Chatte (voiced by Hermione Gingold) who will teach her poise and etiquette.

What Mewsette doesn’t realize is that Meowrice is dealing in cat trafficking by selling beautiful Parisian brides to overseas clients looking for mail-order brides. He even has a group of henchmen; sleek black cats who do his bidding.

In the meantime, Jaune-Tom and Robespierre undertake the arduous trip to Paris, following the railroad tracks.

Once in the city they also happen upon Meowrice, who sees an oppportunity to cash in on Jaune-Tom’s mousing prowess.

Taking Jaune-Tom and Robespierre to a nightclub, Meowrice gets them good and drunk on champagne and then sells them to a ship heading for Alaska and the gold rush.

While they are gone, Mewsette continues her training, including a clever segment in which she is painted by the notable artists of the day.

Once she is fully cultured, Mewsette assumes Meowrice is going to propose to her. She is understandably horrified when she learns she is to be shipped off to a fat, old cat in America instead.

Mewsette manages to escape and spends lonely nights alone on the streets of Paris.

Eventually she is captured just as Jaune-Tom and Robespierre return from Alaska, now rich from having struck gold.

The pair are able to rescue Mewsette and send Meowrice packing in his own crate to America.

Behind the Scenes

Those of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies and who also love cats undoubtedly have a soft spot in our hearts for this animated film, which aired often on local syndicated television.

Animated in a unique style by UPA, the whole film revolves around the cat characters who live in a world alongside the human one (interestingly, the farm cats seem content to just be cats while the cats of Paris run their own establishments, i.e. the Mewlon Rouge next to the Moulin Rouge.) The film is rife with cat-oriented puns. Jaune is yellow in French so Jaune-Tom is basically “yellow tom.” Also Mme. Rubens-chatte is a play on the term Rubenesque attributed to the paintings of Paul Rubens who usually painted heavier-set women (chatte, of course, meaning cat).

Indelibly embedded on our impressionable young minds were Meowrice’s henchmen (dubbed The Money Cats by production), those skinny black cats that seemed able to crawl into and out of every nook and cranny imaginable. Both comical and frightening, they remain the most memorable characters from the film.

An interesting bit of production art found amongst promotional materials show Robespierre with what appears to be a miniature version of Mewsette. Did the story originally have Mewsette and Jaune-Tom having kittens? Did Robespierre somehow find a little Mewsette of his own and have a change of heart about love? We are eaten up with curiosity as to what this image is all about! It certainly does not appear anywhere in the film itself.

Update added September 27, 2023:

We received an email from Anthony Simpson with some interesting materials which may well explain the above image! As Anthony explains, “The Gold Key comic book adaptation of the film includes a different ending. Robespierre is riding on the back of Mewsette and Jaune Tom’s carriage, admiring the love between his friends and admitting that l’amour might be good after all. The horse carriage bumps and Robespierre falls to the street. He hears a giggle and notices a cute feline kittenish presence laughing. He introduces himself and admits she’s a pretty cat, to which she replies that she is a ‘feline.’ Robespierre sighs, ‘Here we go again! . . . but somehow I won’t seem to mind.’

“A close examination of the finale in the actual film shows Robespierre with the Champagne and sardines on the back of the carriage, but in later long shots his silhouette has disappeared! So it’s very possible that the comic book’s ending was a proposed alternative “happily ever after” final scene, and we’ll never know if this was scripted, storyboarded or animated.”

Many thanks to Anthony for his insight and speculation regarding this mystery and for the corresponding comic book pages below.

The story was written by animator Chuck Jones and his wife Dorothy. While Jones is not listed as an animator on the film, his style is very apparent in some of the character styling (Jaune-Tom and Meowrice in particular). This is especially true for early design sheets for Robespierre which look very much like the kitten character in Go Fly a Kit. Jones wanted the film to be released through United Artists which caused an irreparable rift between him and Warner Bros.

This movie is aimed at younger kids but contains certain themes and plotlines that they likely won’t fully understand until they are older, making it fun for the whole family. Amazingly this was often cited as a negative factor in reviews of the day which stated that the film was lost somewhere between both audiences, causing it to fall between the cracks.

Many current reviewers having pointed out the glaring similarities between this film and The Aristocats released by Disney eight years later. One could make the argument that the soundtrack of Gay Purr-ee, with songs written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg (brought aboard the project by Judy Garland who worked with them on The Wizard of Oz) is much more memorable than the later film (with the possible exception of Everybody Wants to Be a Cat).

The voice cast was very impressive with top name stars lending not only their speaking voices but their impressive pipes to these songs. It was Judy Garland’s only voice work for an animated feature film.

Also released were numerous tie-in products including books, games, puzzles and comics, not to mention paper dolls!

Final Mewsings: Gay Purr-ee? Oui! C’est maqnifique!

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