Tin Pan Alley Cats is a 1943 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies directed by Bob Clampett. A follow-up to Clampett's successful Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, released earlier in 1943, Tin Pan Alley Cats focuses upon contemporary themes of African-American culture, jazz music, and World War II, and features a caricature of jazz musician Fats Waller as an anthropomorphic cat. The short's centerpiece is a fantasy sequence derived from Clampett's black and white Looney Tunes short Porky in Wackyland (1938). Like Coal Black, Tin Pan Alley Cats focuses heavily on stereotypical gags, character designs, and situations involving African-Americans. As such, the film and other Warner Bros. cartoons with similar themes have been withheld from television distribution since 1968, and are collectively known as the Censored Eleven. Plot The cartoon opens with a cat who resembles a Fats Waller caricature going out for a night on the town. He is about to go into a club when a street preacher warns him that he will be tempted with "wine, women and song" if he goes in. This, however, only excites the cat ("Wine women an' song? What's de motor wid dat?") who immediately runs in. At first, he enjoys the club, but he becomes so immersed in the music that he is carried "out-of-this-world" to a manic fantasy realm filled with surreal imagery (including caricatures of Adolf Hitler, Hideki Tojo and Joseph Stalin). This world frightens him so much that, when he wakes up, he gives up his partying ways and joins the Salvation Army-style religious music group singing outside, much to their surprise. Production In part because of budget limitations and wartime shortages, several sequences borrow animation and audio recordings from earlier Schlesinger cartoons. From Friz Freleng's "products come to life" Merrie Melodies short, September In The Rain (1937), the recorded performance of "Nagasaki" is re-used completely intact, and the "Fats Waller" cat, "Louis Armstrong" trumpeter, jitterbugging woman and the trio of singing bartenders are re-purposed for this cartoon. Gags from the "out-of-this-world" sequence feature color-redrawn versions of characters and visuals (along with re-recorded audio segments) from Clampett's Porky in Wackyland. Segments specifically created for the nightmare sequence (such as the "Rubber (musical) Band" made up of rubber bands) would resurface in Friz Freleng's 1949 color remake of Porky In Wackyland, Dough for the Do-Do. Reception Motion Picture Herald (July 17, 1943): "The trumpet notes of a night club musician