UPA should have been a winner, an animation studio to persist to this day. Instead, it became a fairly obscure part of animation history, remembered at best for its Mr. Magoo shorts. In addition to shorts and informational films, they produced two features, 1001 Arabian Nights (1959) and Gay Purr-ee (1962).
The former was crippled by the way Mr. Magoo was shoehorned into the film at the insistence of the distributor. I had been struggling to find a copy of the latter, which has now been lovingly restored by Warner Archive.
I am grateful to have the opportunity to see this film, especially in such a pristine remastering. Simply put, it looks astonishing. Alas, there wasn’t much I enjoyed about the feature itself.
Starting with the positives I found in this, it successfully channels a fascination many outside of France had for the country at the time. It portrays a Paris near the turn of the century that is all champagne and salons, as filtered through a prism of light.
To be more precise, it is the hypnotic allure of a large diamond that entices Mewsette (Judy Garland) to flee by train the country for the city of lights. Robert Goulet plays the likable rouge Jaune-Tom, who has long been smitten with her and who travels nearly 1000 kilometers on foot to find her. His wisecracking best friend, Robespierre (Red Buttons), tags along. Keep in mind, all these characters are cats.
Once in the city, she immediately gets swept up in a scheme by the devious Meowrice (Paul Frees), where she will be groomed for sale to a wealthy feline in the states. That’s right—sexual slavery in a children’s film. Schooling Garland in the ways of behaving like a lady (well, lady cat) will be Hermione Gingold. You may not recognize the name, but you will definitely recall having heard the voice before in a great many other films.
This is an odd movie and it never fully gelled for me. The plot is too slight to warrant a runtime of close to 90 minutes. Even a subplot like Goulet and Buttons ending up on a boat to Alaska resolves without much intrigue or conflict. Everything seems to just be biding its time until the villain receives his comeuppance.
Really, this is just a framing device for the songs, the great many songs. Alas, these are largely unmemorable tunes. There are two exceptions, one of which is an ode to Mewsette that is a deadly earworm. The other is a shockingly enjoyable number performed by Frees and a quartet of henchmen…er, henchcats. That song even puts the “Siamese Cat” song from Lady and the Tramp to shame.
The allure of Judy Garland escapes me, though I realize the appeal of this movie for most will be her voice acting and singing. And she really sings the shit out of these songs, belting them out to the rafters even when this isn’t on a stage. It’s a style of music and singing I simply don’t care for.
Mostly, I was interested in the art and animation. Something that is odd is how the backgrounds are so stylized, while the characters all appear to be out of one of Chuck Jones’s later efforts. Go figure, Jones and his wife scripted this, and he is widely believed to have directed while giving the credit to somebody else.
I know the world of the movie doesn’t bare close scrutiny, but there’s something I couldn’t get past, and that is the cats are obsessed with money. Meowrice is scheming to get a large sum of money from a cat in the states. The song he and his gang do is all about the “Money Cat”, whatever that is. Even Goulet and Buttons manage to get back from Alaska when Goulet accidentally strikes gold.
Gay Purr-ee is a strange animal. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did, but I found it too slight and the songs to be largely unremarkable. And who was audience for this, which is supposed to be a children’s film? Is it the same market Christopher Guest’s character in Waiting for Guffman imagines exists for his My Dinner with Andre action figures? I try not to quote other people’s reviews, but Newsweek may have been onto something in their declaration this is best suited for “the fey four-year-old of recherché taste.”
Dir: Abe Levitow
Starring Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, Red Buttons
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray