Does anyone (besides us geeks at Cartoon Research) really miss or even care about Conrad the Cat?
After all, he only appeared in three cartoons, all in 1942, and in two of them he was a mere co-star. Chuck Jones created the character, then abandoned him after that trifecta. A doughy yellow cat specializing in physical comedy, viewers remember Conrad as a knockoff of Disney’s Goofy, especially when Pinto Colvig voiced him in Conrad the Sailor. (Side note: Ink and Paint veteran Martha Sigall related that the I&P department thought that Conrad was a caricature of Jones himself).
Conrad, however, can be seen as a transitional figure in Chuck Jones’ development as a Warner animator and director. From the bones of Conrad would arise a snappier and more cosmopolitan Jones, one capable of perhaps more nuance than any of his contemporaries. Let’s examine this thesis.
Chuck Jones became a Warner director in 1938. His first cartoon, starring an unnamed kitten in The Night Watchman, featured a cute character that very much resembled his next “star’ Sniffles the mouse, whom Jones created and first directed in 1939 (Naughty but Mice). Siffles was childlike and super-cute. His gabby voice, provided by Margaret Hill-Talbot (later by Marjorie Tarlton), reinforced this take on the character. Sniffles went on to headline a dozen cartoons between 1939 and 1946, showing little evolution.
During those years, Jones was obsessed with laborious drawings and layouts, lighting effects, and showed a strong predilection for Disney-flavored action. Conflict tended to be character-versus-object (or self), a far cry from the later interplay between Bugs and Daffy, for example.
Jones’ cartoons tended to be gentle, with visual references to Disney’s Silly Symphony period. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 1940 cartoon Tom Thumb in Trouble. His characters were adorable and mild, and until Jones found a more individual voice, they seemed most anchored in Pluto Pup. The Jones unit at this time had some outstanding talent: animators Robert Cannon, Ken Harris, Robert McKimson, Ben Washam, and background artist Paul Julian. Yet the best this group could achieve was shorts that recalled Disney but could not be confused with its output.
By the time Conrad Cat appeared in The Bird Came C.O.D. (1942), there were signs of Jones transitioning to a different comic style. Although Conrad strongly recalled Goofy (minimal vocals by Mel Blanc), especially when wrestling with a palm tree, there are glimpses of Jones’ future work; in one scene, while watering the tree, Conrad mugs to the camera. After smacking into a door for the second time, he gives the audience a frustrated side glance. After finally getting the plant through the door, more fourth-wall facial expressions are seen.
Skip ahead to Conrad’s encounter with the bird(s) in a magician’s hat. The bird (a visual predecessor to Henery Hawk) treats Conrad with far more violence than could be imagined in a Sniffles cartoon. Notably, the bird recalls Jones’ Minah Bird (first appearing in 1939) in that he marches to a distinct musical theme. Jones is clearly using comedy differently in this short.
In his final two cartoons, both in 1942, Conrad was a co-star, paired with two of Warner’s biggest stars. Such pairings are likely as good as they could be for the goofy yellow cat, since he was far too weak to be a stand-alone character. In Porky’s Café, Conrad is a short-order cook who still manages to show glimpses of Jones’ future work; there are more gags and more telling reaction shots from Conrad. Jones was to become a master of expressing emotion through the twitch of an eye or a tiny movement of the mouth. These precursors can be glimpsed in the scene where Conrad attempts to beckon a recalcitrant pancake.
Conrad’s final cartoon was Conrad the Sailor, in which Daffy Duck harassed the poor cat in a total mismatch. Not only was Conrad constantly defeated by Daffy (who was far more like Bob Clampett’s duck than the egotist Jones would later fashion him into). As related earlier, Conrad’s voice was unfortunately provided by Pinto Colvig, the longtime portrayer of Disney’s Goofy, with no tweaking of the Goofy vocalization. Fairly or not, Colvig’s dialogue and singing reinforced the observation that Jones had not quite abandoned his Disneyesque tendencies.
As stated, while Conrad was not a character that could ever be featured independently, Conrad did offer occasional glimpses of Chuck Jones’ evolving style. Conrad was better built for comedy than Sniffles was, and he worked far better in gag situations than, say, the childlike Porky Pig in Old Glory (1939) or Tom Thumb. Conrad at least suggested an adult figure, and that represented a step forward.
Later, with writers such as Michael Maltese and a more developed sense of how to underplay a gag, Jones would blossom into one of Warners most sophisticated directors. If Jones reshaped the personalities of the studio’s stars during his heyday, it still started with a single step. Conrad the Cat may not stir many fond memories, but his three cartoons during 1942 just might have been that step.
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
Come to think of it, when I saw Conrad in his cartoon titled after the character, I actually forgot he was a cat. I remembered him as a dog, as stated here similar to Walt Disney’s goof. However, there was something about the character I liked as long as he remained just a person reacting to what was going on on the screen or suffering under another character like Daffy or that strange, minor bird type character. I usually like cats that remain cats like the silent Sylvester, the cat in “scaredy-cat“, when he was paired with porky pig as porky’s pet. It’s a shame that Conrad never really came back, although I did confuse him at one point with one of Jones, other cats. Of course I’m talking about Claude cat in cartoons like “the hypochondri-cat“, but I guess he doesn’t count.
Like his colleagues at Termite Terrace, and perhaps even more so than the others, Jones idolised the silent film comedians of his youth and was profoundly influenced by them. It seems to me that Conrad’s mannerisms — the silly walk, the mugging, the finger-twiddling and eyebrow-raising — owe more to the conventions of silent film comedy than they do to Walt Disney. Still, you make a good point. It never occurred to me that, for example, the dinosaur in “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur” might be “anchored in Pluto Pup,” but now that you mention it, it seems so obvious that I wonder how I ever missed it.
The Ink & Paint ladies might have been right in surmising that the blond, lanky Conrad was a self-caricature of Jones. “I never had to leave home to develop any character,” he wrote in CHUCK AMUCK. “All I had to do was reach down inside my own self and there lurking was the essence of Daffy Duck, the Coyote, or Elmer, or the Martian. It was simply a matter of bringing it to the surface.” Conrad may have just been closer to the surface than most of the others.
Conrad may be one of Jones’s least memorable recurring characters, but I find him a lot easier to take than Sniffles.
Conrad —> Claude
Egghead —> Fudd
Sure, why not? Evolution happens with a big dose of random coincidence.
That would include Jones. It only took him 3 Claude-toons to wind up with a fast-moving, gag-loaded, laff-inducing Merrie Melody in Conrad The Sailor. And a path forward for the emerging director.
Conrad played his part.
Funny, but I would’ve thought Conrad was more a prototype of Robert McKimson’s own original character Pete Puma, or at least, I believe, McKimson must have taken some inspiration from Jones’ character, with consideration to Conrad’s proportions against the other LT characters. Granted, the slighly pointed ears do make him resemble an ordinary housecat. Still, who can say for sure if McKimson didn’t have Conrad in the back of his mind when he created Pete?
Did Conrad ever show up in Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries or other latter-day Warners work?
Unfortunately, he didn’t. I honestly think that Conrad is the least, if not one of them, memorable character created by Chuck Jones.
He’s not even granted the dignity of fanservice cameos in modern Looney Tunes stuff. Evan Cool Cat, Ham and Rex, and the Minah Bird achieved this dubious honor
Actually, I do believe he did get a split-second cameo among the incidental LT characters at the end of Back In Action. It’s one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments. (Iirc, he’s somewhere in the background of that scene.)
Actually, Conrad the Cat was inspired by the comedian Ben Blue. Ben’s shtick was to appear a hapless, clumsy idiot, who constantly titled at the windmills of every day objects. Find some of the Taxi Boys comedies he was in, and you will see how he handled himself. He was completely clumsy on his feet, but did his falls and scrambles in an artful way, as did Conrad. In the Bird Came C.O.D., Conrad’s struggles with the potted plants are almost exactly what Ben Blue would have done in the same situation.
I actually never minded Claude, and would not had a problem with more appearances. Although I liked him best in The Bird Came C.O.D. which is a great pantomime showcase (glad that made it to blu-ray). That irritated bird, which also appeared in Stage Fright, never made sense to me as a comic device.
Previously, a similar bird character made one appearance in Jones’ “Stage Fright” (1940), somehow I wonder if these birds gave Jones inspirations to create Henery Hawk.
I’ve always liked Conrad the Cat. I agree that his inspiration was Goofy but a bit more pleasant and intelligent. I believe it was Chuck Jones’ job to direct Disney style cartoons in this period because he did it well. As the studio changed because of Bugs Bunny’s popularity, Jones adapted to the funnier style, but it wasn’t his first interest. I would have liked Conrad to have been developed in further appearances. He was a decent foil for Daffy.
All these years I just assumed Conrad was a dog.
Is it just me or does Conrad look something out of a Dr. Seuss cartoon, except cleaner?
No really big surprise there, as the studio was producing their own adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ “Horton Hatches The Egg” around the same time that Jones had created the character, as he and Bob Clampett often shared the services of a few of Termite Terrace’s in-house artists.