Katnip Kollege

1938
5.8| 0h7m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 11 June 1938 Released
Producted By: Warner Bros. Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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At the Katnip Kollege, we see a roomful of cats taking a course in Swingology. Everyone swings except Johnny, who can't cut it and has to sit in the dunce chair. Miss Kitty Bright tells him to look her up when he learns how to swing. Finally, listening to the pendulum clock at night, Johnny gets the beat. He rushes out to where everyone is playing and sings "Easy As Rollin' Off a Log" to Kitty Bright. She joins in; he grabs a trumpet for an instrumental break, with the complete band. They both fall off a log; she covers him with kisses.

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Director

Cal Howard, Cal Dalton

Production Companies

Warner Bros. Pictures

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Katnip Kollege Audience Reviews

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Greenes Please don't spend money on this.
Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Edgar Allan Pooh . . . KATNIP KOLLEGE KUTUPS, and you get to the three-letter title abbreviation that sums up this Jim Crow Era animated short's homogeneous student body: KKK. It's fascinating that the infamous Looney Tunes Forbidden Eleven consists entirely of cartoons black-marked for their Sins of Commission (that is, caricaturing racial stereotypes prevalent in their day), and NOT ONE of the blacklisted shorts is tarred with the same brush for a Sin of Omission (which KATNIP KOLLEGE, with its Groupspeaking Gathering of Suburban White Kids--I mean, Kits, would be a leading candidate for Prohibition by the Self-Appointed Thought Police). It's truly sad that some cerebral runt of the litter at Warner Bros. gets to play the God of Political Correctness, and no one's marching in the street toting "All Cartoons Matter!" picket signs protesting against this anonymous Czar of Good Taste. Since it's so well known that "one person's trash in another's treasure," exactly WHY is Warner Bros. suppressing the work of mostly dead people? (The few crew members still alive when the ban went into effect pointed out that they were so PC in Real Life none of them had ever paid a nickel to see a Clippers game!)
suchenwi I wouldn't call this a perfect film, or spend any effort to obtain it by itself, but if you get it anyway (in my case, as part of the Warner Night at the Movies extra suite on the Adventures of Robin Hood 1938), it provides decent, if somehow museum-like entertainment, and contributes to the viewer feeling like back in 1938 (the included newsreel reports that Hitler has annected Austria). Colors look a bit faded, humor is not worth mentioning, but the swing music was pleasant to me.And that Kitty girl moved nicely lasciviously, though Betty Boop was better at that :^)
slymusic "Katnip Kollege" is a delightful Warner Bros. musical cartoon. The plot involves a swingology class at Katnip Kollege, where all the "young cats" go to study one of my favorite subjects: how to swing! Every student in the class does a fine job of singing, clapping, dancing, and playing instruments to a tireless swinging jazz groove! That is, every student except one bespectacled cat named Johnny, who is so terrible at swinging that his classmates ridicule him, and his professor declares him to be a dunce. At the end of the school day, as all the other cats swing their way into the night, Johnny stays after school and listens to the ticking of a clock, which ultimately kicks off a tempo for him, and he finally understands how to swing! Showing off his newly-acquired skill, Johnny becomes the star of the evening as he wins the respect of his classmates and the affections of a spunky gal named Ms. Kitty Bright.My favorite moments from "Katnip Kollege" include the following. During the opening shot of the classroom before the professor arrives, Johnny quite humorously stands out from the rest of his classmates as he cannot even clap his hands in time to the beat. The professor has a Bing Crosby-type voice as he swings his rhymed speech while calling on different students to give their swinging recitations. And how could I not mention the wonderful jazz music that fills this entire cartoon? In closing, here is one final interesting observation that relates to "Katnip Kollege." Dave Brubeck, one of my favorite jazz pianists/composers, wrote a tune in 1955 titled "The Duke" as a homage to one of the greatest composers/bandleaders/pianists of the 20th Century: Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington. Decades later, when an interviewer asked Brubeck how he actually went about writing the tune, Brubeck replied, "Just think of windshield wipers." As Brubeck was driving his car on a rainy day, the motion of the wipers ultimately kicked off a tempo for him!
Robert Reynolds This is a cute, rather charming musical short patterned after things like Along Flirtation Walk and Varsity Show. The lead character, Johnny, might as well have "Dick Powell" stenciled on his forehead and the professor reminds me of Kay Kyser. The music is infectious and entertaining, even if the plot is as thin as a piece of gauze. Come to think of it, the plots of those old musicals this is patterned after are pretty much just as thin and this is much shorter than those were!Warner Brothers made a fair number of these musical cartoons, because the animation department had access to the entire musical catalog for the studio and the studio big-wigs saw the shorts as a way to remind people of Warner Brothers features and music (sheet music was popular and the sheet music for songs made a pretty for all involved in the loop-composers, film studio, etc.) by keeping songs fresh in the public's memory. This is on Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 2 and is well worth seeing. Recommended.