am certain that such scenes would give serious offense to many people in all parts of the world." Authorities also requested that Schlesinger remove the halo from one of the black characters. The letter does not specify to what exactly Breen objected, but musicologist Daniel Goldmark speculates that it was the idea of Heaven being run by blacks and the cartoon's implication that Heaven holds a place for "gamblers, dancers, drinkers, and, above all else, jazz fans", making it "even more threatening to white viewers." Schlesinger managed to quell the censors by making alterations, such as cutting the phrase "De Lawd". The short debuted in theatres on May 22, 1937. Tin Pan Alley Cats, a 1943 cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, was inspired in part by Clean Pastures and has a similar theme of redemption. Because of the racial stereotypes used against black people throughout the short, it prompted United Artists to withhold it from syndication within the United States in 1968. As such, the short was placed into the so-called Censored Eleven, a group of eleven Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts withheld from television distribution in the United States since 1968 due to heavy stereotyping of black people. The Green Pastures, on the other hand, is still in distribution. References Further reading Cohen, Karl F. (2004). Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. . Goldmark, Daniel (2005). Tunes for 'Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon. Berkeley: University of California Press. . Lindvall, Terry, and Ben Fraser (1998). "Darker Shades of Animation: African-American Images in Warner Bros. Cartoons". Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation. Rutgers University Press. . , Mark (September 23, 1995). "Turner to Merge into Time Warner; a $7.5 Billion Deal", The New York Times. Accessed July 4, 2008. Maltin, Leonard (1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, Revised and Updated Edition. Plume. . Nericcio, William Anthony (2007). Tex{t}-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America. Austin: University of Texas Press. . Straight Dope Science Advisory Board (February 5, 2002). "Did Bugs Bunny appear in a racist cartoon during World War II?" The Straight Dope. Accessed June 21, 2007. Weisenfeld, Judith (2007). Hollywood Be They Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929–1949. Berkeley: University of California Press. . External links Clean Pastures on the Internet Archive Clean Pastures on the