Directors: Harry Bailey
Release Date: July 14, 1933
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Rough on Rats’ is one of the more extraordinary films to come out of the Van Beuren studio.
No other contemporary studio tried as hard as Van Beuren to emulate Disney’s Silly Symphonies. ‘Rough on Rats’ is rather unique in that it even anticipates a Silly Symphony: its subject of three mischievous kittens makes it the direct ancestor of Disney’s Academy Award winning ‘Three Orphan Kittens‘ (1935), and Fleischer’s ‘We Did It‘ (1936).
In this film we watch three kittens wandering through an abandoned grocery store. Then the black kitten gets kidnapped by an outrageously large mean rat. This leads to a battle sequence, reminiscent of the Silly Symphonies ‘The Spider and the Fly‘ (1931), ‘The Bird Store‘ (1932) and ‘Bugs in Love‘ (1932). During this battle the kittens throw almost everything in sight at the vicious creature.
‘Rough on Rats’ is ripe with ambition, and pretty entertaining. Especially Gene Rodemich’s score is enjoyable throughout. Unfortunately, the animation varies between excellent to downright poor, and the designs are erratic, varying greatly between scenes. These shortcomings haunted the Van Beuren studios since its beginning, and it’s depressing to note that by 1933 the animators were still not able to tackle them. Doubtless this was influential to the studio’s lack of success. For example, the ideas in ‘Rough on Rats’ are more interesting than those in most of Warner Bros.’ or Ub Iwerks’s contemporary output, but as the execution is not on par with the ambition, the result is close to failure. And yet one cannot blame the studio trying. Anyhow, it was to Disney-alumnus Burt Gillett to teach the Van Beuren animators the Disney solutions to their problems…
‘Rough on Rats’was the last of the Aesop’s Fables (not including the Cubby the Bear cartoons, which appeared under the same flag). Apparently their outdated 1920’s title card and uninspired series name had the better of them. Nevertheless, one year later they would get a follow-up in the ‘Color Classics’, Van Beuren’s venture into color.
Watch ‘Rough on Rats’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Rough on Rats’ is available on the DVD ‘Uncensored Animation from the Van Beuren Studio’
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April 17, 2026 at 02:10
Black Cow
It should be noted that the series was not canceled due to its lack of popularity. Harvey Deneroff revealed in his book “Popeye the Union Man” that the studio’s principal directors had attempted to form a union in 1933; the motivation for this was the abrupt dismissal of studio director John Foster after more than 11 years on the job because he had come into conflict with RKO’s commercial director, Hiram “Bunny” Brown Jr., regarding the production of the studio’s cartoons. Since Hiram Brown was the son of RKO’s principal shareholder, the directors at Van Beuren Studios rightly felt threatened and hoped that unionization would protect them from potential unfair dismissal. Unfortunately, one of the studio’s directors, George Stallings, reported his colleagues’ union activities to RKO executives, who then pressured Van Beuren to fire everyone involved, including the two lead directors of the Aesop’s Fables series, Harry Bailey and Mannie Davis—which was the real reason the series was canceled. As a reward for his snitching, Stallings was appointed studio director in place of Gene Rodemich (the music director, who had replaced John Foster as head of the studio). This wave of mass layoffs was undoubtedly the biggest mistake Van Beuren ever made, as none of the subsequent cartoons produced by Stallings were anything but extremely mediocre and lacked the creativity and charm of the VB cartoons produced during the Foster and Rodemich eras.
April 22, 2026 at 09:41
Gijs Grob
Thanks for sharing! One learns every day.
May 6, 2022 at 04:41
Quasi Dona
I don’t understand Van Beuren’s logic: he suppressed an ambitious and original series to replace it with a completely uninteresting plagiarism of Silly Symphony, it’s very frustrating !
May 7, 2022 at 16:32
Gijs Grob
I know what you mean, but I don’t think his films were doing well, and everybody in the industry noticed that Walt Disney was way ahead of them, so everybody started to copy the Mouse studio, including Fleischer, Columbia, and thus Van Beuren.