Directed by: C.C. Burr

This review contains a mild Kitty Carnage Warning!

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

Synopsis: Torchy (Ray Cooke) is an all-American office boy who is in love with the boss’ daughter, Vee Ellins (Marion Shockley). Vee’s Aunt Zenobia (Dot Farley) plans a cat show fundraising event, but when there are not enough felines to make a decent show, Torchy is enlisted to round some up, leading to comic consequences.

Cat Cattle Call: After her cat show is sabotaged by Mrs. Whipplewater, Aunt Zenobia calls Zee’s father Hickory (Edmund Breese) and tells him they must have cats. Hickory, who hates cats, orders his office manager (Franklin Pangborn) to round up some felines. The manager in turn inducts Torchy to help him after Torchy insists he knows where to find plenty of cats. The manager drives slowly down an alley while Torchy “fishes” for cats from the back using a fish attached to a string on a pole while calling “Here kitty kitty!”

Torchy gathers up the kitties and places them in the car, which is already filled with cats.

Torchy and the manager arrive at the Ellins’ mansion. When Hickory opens the door to his car the cats come pouring out. Torchy grabs his fishing pole and chases after them, calling “Here kitty kitty!”

The women putting on the upcoming cat show can’t get any cats from the pet store and so they hope that Torchy can catch some of the loose cats that are running around after escaping from the car. But all he manages to catch is a skunk which he mistakes for a cat. Meanwhile Hickory is infested with fleas from riding back to work in his formerly feline infested car. Eventually the show begins with one prize black Angora on display.

Behind the scenes, Torchy moves the Angora from one cage to another so the spectators will think they are viewing multiple cats. A fake cat paw reaches out and bops him on the nose.

Hickory returns home but is miserable from the flea bites. Hickory’s butler rubs him with fish oil to stop the itching and places him in a steam cabinet with the window open behind him. Hickory orders Torchy to entertain him and Torchy obliges him by putting on a Victrola record of the song Kentucky Kitty (which was sung by the Ellins’ help in the opening scene). In the funniest gag in the short, the record starts to skip on the line, “And you should hear Kitty rave . . . ” with the singer repeating “Hear Kitty, hear Kitty, hear Kitty.” Sure enough cats start pouring in through the window, attracted by the fish oil smell and the sound of the record calling!

The cats are pushed and “catapulted” through the windows, some even getting into fights with one another!

Cats are seen coming from far and wide.

Hickory is helpless in the box as the number of cats grow.

One kitten indulges in a cup of shaving cream.

A bicolor tabby climbs awkwardly through the window and manages to knock over a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

The cats gathered below lick up the spilled compound.

The cats then run around in slow motion, indicating they are drunk on the alcohol (achieved by slowing down the film, a common joke in this era of short comedies).

Mild Kitty Carnage Warning! Note that at the end of the clip the cat opens its mouth and belches. In actuality, it appears as if someone offscreen is pulling the poor cat’s tail to make him meow angrily so the sound can be dubbed in.

Torchy arrives and turns off the sauna before picking up the skipping phonograph and leading the multitude of cats downstairs.

With all the cages now full the cat show is a success!

A truly bizarre moment occurs where the prize black Angora is in a cage next to a tabby alley cat wearing a ribbon. The Angora has a dubbed voice which says, “Get out! You’re full of fleas!” The camera moves in for a tighter shot and a fake paw rises in front of the tabby, its “fingers” extending out and rising up to the cat’s nose as a dubbed voice says, “Oh, Nertz!” The paw forms the gesture which often accompanied that dated sentiment.

In the final scene everyone is looking at a newspaper article about the successful cat show. The Bide-a-Wee home, which was the recipient of the charitable donation, sends the family a large (and rather ugly) cat statue, which leaves Hickory speechless. At the first opportunity he chucks it away, breaking it.

Behind the Scenes

While not well known today, the Torchy stories by Sewell Ford, which followed the adventures of a red-headed All-American Office Boy, were quite popular at one time. (Note: This Torchy should not be confused with the Torchy Blane films starring Glenda Farrell [and later Lola Lane and Jane Wyman] about a crime-solving ambitious reporter.) The Torchy stories were serialized in the Associated Sunday Magazines and published as books. Silent film shorts starring Johnny Hines as Torchy came out between 1920 and 1922. The availability of these early productions was announced by the studio:

In 1931, Educational Pictures once again set out to make a series of short comedies based on these stories, this time starring Ray Cooke as Torchy. The producer of the short films was C.C. Burr, who also produced the silent Torchy comedies. Educational Pictures was one of the “Poverty Row” studios in Hollywood which churned out short films intended for immediate public consumption, mainly as part of Saturday matinee lineups or as companions to main features. Everything about the productions shows off their low budget attitude and the mostly forgotten Torchy shorts are no exception. Badly written and even more poorly acted, the short only stands out because of the sheer number of cats involved in the production and the clever use of the original song Kentucky Kitty by Lee Zahler.

Also notable is the animated paw motion accompanying the expression “Nertz!” (or Nerts!), which was a popular term of dismissal at the time. Nertz was a less offensive way of saying “Nuts!” which was actually considered to be tantamount to swearing back in the day (referring as it did to male genetalia). It wasn’t unusual for characters in pre-code films to say “Nuts!” or “Nertz!” to another character with their hand held up to their face, thumb to the nose and fingers sometimes wiggling. There are possibly examples of animated cats using this term and gesture but this is likely the only time in film history that a live action cat performed this feat (with the help of a prosthetic paw).

While researching the short we were surprised to see that the profile picture for actress Marion Shockley on IMDb happens to be the same photograph of her holding a cat which appears on the newspaper page announcing the success of the cat show in this short.

Because of the low-budget aspect of Educational Pictures’ productions, most of the promotion for such shorts came in the advertisements that mentioned which shorts were playing with which movies. Occassionally a critic would spare a few words about one of these two-reelers, such as one reviewer who offered just one line in his review of this particular short, ” . . . Torchy’s Kitty Coup, in which numerable cats do some surprising things . . . . “

But one tiny story in the August 6, 1921 edition of the Brooklyn Life about one of the original Torchy comedy shorts entitled Torchy’s Promotion (which does not seem to be readily available to view and may in fact be a lost film) might give us an inkling of an idea what the creators of these comedies may have had in mind when it came to casting cats:

    Work will be started in a few days on a new Torchy Comedy for Educational release. The latest comedy of this series, based on the famous stories by Sewell Ford and featuring Johnny Hines, will be released early in August. It is called “Torchy’s Promotion.”
    “Alley cats are best for moving pictures,” says Jack White, director of Educational-Mermaid Comedies. Scenes planned by Mr. White a few days ago called for the use of a cat. After “interviewing” more then two-score of the animals, Mr. White gave the first try-out to a Maltese. The part called for a bit of acrobatic work, such as jumping over a stick, standing on the hind legs and other simple tricks. The Maltese was handsome — and aristocratic — but it failed to perform the stunts. Then an Angora cat was tried. It failed, too, as did representatives of other fancy breeds. Finally a call was sent out for an ordinary, every-day alley cat, and with but a little coaching, the first one tried performed the tricks satisfactorily. “No more aristocrats for me,” said Mr. White.

One wonders what Mr. White would have done with the massive Cat Cattle Call required on this later Torchy short!

Final Mewsings: Too many cats don’t spoil the comedy short!

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