The Robber Kitten

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The Robber Kitten
The Robber Kitten.png
Directed by David Hand
Story by Bill Cottrell
Produced by Walt Disney
StarringShirley Reed [1]
Billy Bletcher
Clarence Nash
Elvia Allman [2]
Music by Frank Churchill
Animation byBob Wickersham
Marvin Woodward
Hardie Gramatky
Hamilton Luske
Bill Roberts
Color process Technicolor
Production
company
Distributed by United Artists Pictures
Release date
  • April 20, 1935 (1935-04-20)
Running time
7:48
LanguageEnglish

The Robber Kitten is a 1935 Walt Disney Silly Symphonies cartoon, directed by David Hand. [3] The short is based on a story of the same name written by Robert Michael Ballantyne with the pseudonym Comus. [4]

Contents

Plot

A kitten named Ambrose is dreaming about running away and becoming a robber. Calling himself "Butch" at the beginning of the cartoon, he is seen play–acting a stagecoach robbery, which is interrupted by his mother calling for him to take a bath. Not wanting to take a bath in the first place, Ambrose runs away and becomes a robber, first stealing a bag of cookies. His first target turns out to be an actual robber: Dirty Bill the bulldog. Dirty Bill asks Ambrose if he has pulled off any robberies lately, and Ambrose tells him, "Just this morning, I held up a stagecoach." Then Dirty Bill asks Ambrose where his loot is, so Ambrose shows Dirty Bill the bag of cookies. Imagining that the bag is full of gold, Dirty Bill demands it and threatens Ambrose. Scared, Ambrose runs home and jumps into his bathtub, acting as if nothing else has happened.

Comic adaptation

The cartoon short was adapted in a Silly Symphony comic strip sequence by Ted Osborne and Al Taliaferro, which ran from February 24 to April 21, 1935. The storyline was titled "The Adventures of Ambrose the Robber Kitten". [5] It was also translated and published in Austria (1938), Australia, Belgium (1952), Brazil (1979), Finland (1935), France (1935), Germany (2003), United Kingdom (1936), Italy (1935), Spain (1935), and Yugoslavia (1936).

Voice cast

Home media

The short was released on December 4, 2001, on Walt Disney Treasures: Silly Symphonies - The Historic Musical Animated Classics . [6] [3]

It was also released on the Walt Disney Animation Collection: Classic Short Films Volume 5: Wind in the Willows DVD in 2009.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "Walt Disney's "The Robber Kitten" (1935)". cartoonresearch.com. Retrieved 19 December 2020.
  2. 1 2 Scott, Keith (3 October 2022). Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2. BearManor Media. p. 517.
  3. 1 2 3 Merritt, Russell; Kaufman, J. B. (2016). Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series (2nd ed.). Glendale, CA: Disney Editions. pp. 158–159. ISBN   978-1-4847-5132-9.
  4. ↑ "Walt Disney's "The Robber Kitten" (1935) |". cartoonresearch.com. Retrieved 2024-12-13.
  5. ↑ Duvall, Earl; Taliaferro, Al; Osborne, Ted; De Maris, Merrill (2016). Silly Symphonies: The Complete Disney Classics, vol 1. San Diego: IDW Publishing. ISBN   978-1631405587.
  6. ↑ "Silly Symphonies: The Historic Musical Animated Classics DVD Review". DVD Dizzy. Retrieved 20 February 2021.


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