Arturo Toscanini | Dr. Grob's Animation Review

Director: Gene Deitch
Release Date: December 1962
Stars: Tom & Jerry
Rating: ★
Review:

‘Carmen Get It’ opens with a busy New York street scene. From here Tom chases Jerry into the Metropolitian opera house, where a performance of Georges Bizet’s opera ‘Carmen’ is about to start.

The rest of the cartoon takes place within the opera setting, during the playing of the Carmen overture, and a little bit of the opera itself. Unfortunately, the whole cartoon is terribly tiresome and unfunny, making ‘Carmen Get It’ probably the worst of all concert cartoons. This is a sad irony, because Tom & Jerry are also responsible for one of the all time best: ‘The Cat Concerto‘ (1947).

Particularly annoying is the conductor, who is clearly modeled after Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), but so badly designed and so awfully animated he gets on one’s nerves. Steven Konichek’s music, meanwhile, tries to get an American flavor by mixing ‘Yankee Doodle’, ‘Dixie’ and ‘There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’ into the music. The latter tune was most probably still under copyright at the time, but I wonder if anyone noticed.

‘Carmen get it’ was the last of the Gene Deitch Tom & Jerries, a poor and unfunny series of cartoons, which during their short existence never came even within a reasonable distance of the quality of the original ones by Hanna and Barbera. Gene Deitch had outlasted its welcome within one year and moved over to produce cartoons for Paramount, directing a.o. Popeye and Krazy Cat cartoons.

Tom & Jerry were already revived once again the next year, by Chuck Jones, whose Tom & Jerry cartoons were to be a great improvement on Gene Deitch’s ones, albeit nowhere near the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons…

Watch an excerpt from ‘Carmen Get It’ yourself and tell me what you think: