ABSTRACT
On their surfaces, the animated film musicals Gay Purr-ee (UPA, 1962) and The Aristocats (Disney, 1970) share numerous similarities. Both musicals deploy all-star voice casts, and both feature romantic adventure narratives about anthropomorphic cats in Paris during the belle époque. Yet beyond these correspondences the two films betray radically different approaches to the unique expressive potential of the animated musical. Gay Purr-ee and The Aristocats thus serve as productive case studies for examining the rich representational possibilities available to this form. The chapter considers the visual, musical and dramatic profiles of the two films, arguing that while The Aristocats largely adheres to the Walt Disney Studio’s traditional verisimilitude, UPA’s film embraces a far more fractured system of aesthetics. The essay also examines the roles of the films’ headline stars, Maurice Chevalier and Judy Garland, thus extending the study of animated film musical aesthetics to performers.
