Cats on Film: The Golden Age (Purrt 2)

CatCon alum Dr. Paul Koudounaris is a historian, author, and photographer who has been regaling CatCon audiences with tales of cat hiss-tory for years. He’ll be back as a judge at the Furrocious Fashion Face Off Saturday June 29th. Here, he takes a look back at some of the very first feline stars of the silver screen.

To catch up on Cats on Film, check out Purrt 1, Hollywood’s Conundrum!

Despite the success of Pepper and the other talented cats that had appeared on the silver screen in the first half of the twentieth century, one thing still eluded Hollywood’s felines: a starring role in a full feature length film. The skeptics were still not fully convinced: they acknowledged tat some cats might be able to act, but they were only fit for minor parts, and a feline certainly couldn’t carry a film. But that finally changed in 1950 when history’s most famed acting cat appeared on the scene.

Paramount Studios had taken on a project that most of Hollywood considered ill-advised. It was a film called Rhubarb, the quirky story of a street cat who inherits a major league baseball team when its eccentric owner dies. The film had been cast with an impressive roster, including Ray Milland, who had won an Oscar in 1945. And Arthur Lubin, who had directed the Abbott and Costello films as well as Phantom of the Opera, had signed on as director. But there was one very big problem–the studio couldn’t find a cat for the lead role.

It’s not that they didn’t have a cat through a lack of effort. Quite the contrary, they had tried every animal trainer in Hollywood. But none of the felines brought in to audition were right for the part. They were perfectly fine cats, but the role called for a street cat, and none of the pampered, well-trained, well-bred animals, being brought to the studio were convincing as a genuine sour puss. With the project nearly on the chopping block, they placed an ad in the local papers to let the public know that they were seeking a rough, mean, street cat for a role in feature film.

Out in Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley, Agnes Murray looked at her newspaper and then looked towards a bush in her front yard, where an orange tomcat had taken up residence. He was a big mean stray, and as obstinate as the sun is bright. Towards Agnes he was at least civil, but he would gladly take a chunk out of the hand of anyone else who tried to touch him. “That orange cat really sounds like the type they’re looking for,” was her inescapable thought.

She managed to maneuver him into a box and drive him down to Hollywood (no doubt it must have been a rough ride) and presented him to the executives at Paramount. He one tough street cat, all right–and he was exactly what the producers were looking for. The result? The stray from under a bush in Sherman Oaks was awarded the biggest movie contract ever given to a cat in Hollywood.

The cat was dubbed Orangey, and to prep for the role of Rhubarb he was turned over to Frank Inn, a legend among Hollywood animal trainers who would later also train the pig from the sitcom Green Acres and Higgins, the dog who starred in Benji. Inn looked and dressed like a pirate and had a magic way with animals, but even so Orangey was his match. At first Inn detested the cat, who so managed to cover his arms in scratches that he wasn’t sure if they would ever heal.

And it wasn’t just Inn that Orangey took his anger out on–he would hiss at producers, attack his human costars, and cause production delays when he ran off set and hid. Ah but it’s Hollywood after all, and there are many human actors who behave no less dramatically . . . it’s what appears on film that matters, and Orangey couldn’t be faulted there, because it turned out he was a natural. Just like Pepper before him, he had the “it” factor when the cameras were rolling.

Rhubarb was a flop at the box office, but it was no fault of the cat. Orangey was the best thing about it, and Hollywood had taken note. The cat could act, and was rewarded with a PATSY Award in 1952–these were the animal equivalents of the Oscars, and were given out at a lavish ceremony hosted by Ronald Reagan at the Pantages Theater. This was history in the making, not only a future president giving an acting trophy to street cat, but the first feline to ever win one, all the previous having gone to horses and dogs. Orangey, the stray cat from under a bush in Sherman Oaks, had done it. He had broken the glass ceiling, the first cat ever to star in a full length feature, and winning an award as the best animal actor in Hollywood in the process.

And it turned out that was just his overture. Orangey would go on to become Hollywood’s favorite cat for the next decade. Inn continued to train him (yes, they eventually made peace with one another), and admitted that he had lost count of the cat’s roles somewhere around 200. They included spots in popular TV series, and big and small budget films. Basically, if you see an orange cat in a show or film from the 50s or early 60s, it’s him, he was the go-to cat. And the capper on his career wouldn’t even come until the very end, when in 1961 he starred alongside Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s–a role for which a by then elderly cat won a second PATSY Award, once again making history.

Orangey in the process opened the doors for other talented cats. A Siamese named Cy A. Meese became the second cat to win a PATSY, in 1959, for his work as a witches familiar named Pyewacket, starring alongside Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in Bell, Book, and Candle. Cy had in fact been trained to act on Broadway and had played in Bell, Book, and Candle when it was a stage play, receiving rave notices, and the film wasn’t given the green light until his services had been secured. And unlike Orangey, he was just as suave off camera as on. Jimmy Stewart was said to have grown jealous over the attention the cat was constantly getting from the crew, and Kim Novak was so enamored of him that she begged to be allowed to adopt him (declined: he had his own career to worry about, and no time to settle down).  

Six years later a another feline box office hero would arrive and outdo all that had come before. A Siamese named Syn had been turned over to an animal shelter in Ontario, California, by an owner who no longer wanted him. Sad and sickly, he was locked up in dingy cage until an animal trainer passing through noticed him. Despite the cat’s dire straits there was something special about him. The trainer adopted him and taught him a few tricks–the cat was a fast learner, so he was taught a few more, and then more after that. Disney had put out a casting call for a feline actor, and despite Syn’s inexperience the trainer brought the cat to an audition and he was given a minor role in Incredible Journey . . . and proved himself so good that the once unwanted Seal Point Siamese was then offered the lead role in That Darn Cat!

Syn went from shelter to celebrity when the feline spy flick opened at number one in its first week. His photo was suddenly plastered across the pages of America’s newspapers, sitting on the shoulders of costar Hayley Mills, and his off screen doings were reported in the gossip columns (no, he didn’t get into any big trouble–the studio kept him on a short leash, so to speak). Syn was the country’s new feline sweetheart and That Darn Cat! continued to fill seats and finished the year as Hollywood’s fifth leading box office draw. “Only” number five? Well, there was just a little bit of competition in 1965. A few films you just may have heard of were released that year, the likes of Sound of Music, Thunderball, and Dr. Zhivago. So to put it another way, That Darn Cat! outperformed all other animal films that had come before it, and sold nearly 30 million tickets in America alone.

That Darn Cat! was the climax to Hollywood’s golden age of cat films. Unfortunately it was also the coda, although it was no fault of the cats, who had clearly proven themselves. Hollywood itself had changed, and the days of the animal superstar were coming to a close. Instead of single animal leads, Hollywood started moving towards ensembles. In fact, already by the time of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and That Darn Cat! there would be several felines on set, all of which looked similar to the animal star. Some would be on hand to jump, or run, or perform various other tricks or roles the main cat might not be inclined to. Detractors have ever since held this against the feline leads–they’ll point out that there were or several feline extras in Bell, Book, and Candle, or note with condescension that “there were actually a bunch of different cats in Breakfast at Tiffany’s”–as if human actors don’t have fill ins and stunt doubles as well???

But Hollywood knew who the real stars were, and if you want to know as well take a trip down to the Burbank Animal Shelter. With the passing of the age of the big animal stars the PATSY Awards were discontinued, and that left a storage problem. The paw prints of all the winners had been preserved in concrete, much like the hand and foot prints of the famous actors outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. But what to do with them now? The shelter in Burbank took them and set them into their own pavement to create a walk of fame, and it is there that history is now preserved. The imprints of Orangey, Cy, and many others line the path, allowing visitors a chance to walk down memory lane, and do so along the paws of greatness.