Reconstruction of pre-Oscar release title sequence for "The Cat Concerto"
The basic layout came from the layout sketch that Cartoon Network showed a few decades ago, which more recently has been auctioned by HA and scanned in high definition.
Mine was a quick and dirty job as the background was re-rendered with, and I'm gonna get a lot of heat for this, AI tools. I promise if I could do this properly I would draw all of the backgrounds by myself, or commission someone to do this for me.
The other texts are either hand-drawn by me or photoshopped from "Hound Hunters" screenshot, and they're early sketches that don't really represent what I thought the final product would be. What matters is the idea of doing so.
It was clear that MGM released "The Cat Concerto" in SOME capacity in late 1946 in order to get qualified for the Oscars. When the short was properly released in 1947, they already had the Oscar accolate in the title cards (Copyright synopsis document shown on Cartoon Research and a later 16mm print discovered by cartoon98100 prove this. This was updated in March 1947.)
Now if you see the sketch itself, you'll know that they originally had the title as "The Cat**'s** Concerto", and had used a more casual font for it. However in my mind they might have changed the title and its lettering because the style would match the short's classy atmosphere better, so I drew the new title text referencing the reissue's font style. If I do it more properly I'll likely apply the same glowing effect as was used in both releases of this short.
Notice that the credit for Scott Bradley is "Music Direction" rather than just "Music" as seen on the current 1954 reissue titles. This makes sense as Bradley didn't compose much of original music for this short but did enough arrangement to make "24 Preludes, Op. 28: XXIV. Prelude in D Minor" and "Hungarian Rhapsody No.2" work with the cartoon's plot.
