Vimacone By the late 1930s, the Schlesinger studio had phased out plugging popular tunes in favor of broad comedy. This short was probably one of the last of its kind to feature popular tunes as opposed to aiming for comedy.Like most musical cartoons, the featured songs were lifted from recent WB features. Let That Be A Lesson To You came from HOLLYWOOD HOTEL (1937), As Easy As Rolling Off A Log is briefly heard in OVER THE GOAL (1937). The trumpet solo is directly taken from the latter films soundtrack. Johnnie Davis, who sang and performed a trumpet solo in the aforementioned films, does the voice of the bespectacled cat. His meek design is in contrast to Davis' actual handsome appearance. The college setting of OVER THE GOAL was probably an inspiration. Maybel Todd, who sang a part in the Let That Be A Lesson To You number in HOLLYWOOD HOTEL, voices Kitty Bright.For a Cal Dalton short, this is a very handsome effort. A good quintessential late 1930s WB short with catchy jazz numbers. Be sure to check out the films where the musical numbers originated. Although I have yet to hear a full recording of As Easy As Rolling Off A Log.

bugssponge I usually try to avoid the 30s cartoons but some of them are real good, especially this swing one. The plot is Johnny a cat who can't swing is embarrassed by his college classmates. He sits in the classroom thinking of how to swing. When he hears a rhythm to a clock, he joins in the swing and sings a song, the girl named Kitty dances with him and they fall and Kitty kisses him. Songs like "As easy as rolling off a log", "you're an education", and "we're working our way through college" are heard. The Blue Ribbon is available on golden collection volume 3, and platinum collection volume 2, with the original 1937-38 ending cue. EXCELLENT! Definitely recommended, one of a kind film! 10/10 MERRIE MELODIES!

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!)

Michael_Elliott Katnip Kollege (1938) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Fast-paced and very fun animated film takes place at Katnip Kollege, a swinging college to teach cats how to swing. The class is "Swingology" and one student gets made fun of because he doesn't know how to swing it but he plans on changing that before the big dance that night. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but there's no question that this is one of the more entertaining shorts from this era. The animation itself is certainly nothing too flashy as the cat designs are quite simple but this actually helps the film in a strange way. Another thing that really helps are the two music numbers because they're quite catchy and fun to listen to. It also doesn't hurt that the sex kitten appears to have been fashioned after Clara Bow, which was pretty interesting and especially since Bow hadn't made a movie in several years by this point in time. Fans of animation are certainly going to want to check this one out as well as those who just enjoy that swing/jazz music.