Shrunken Cinema/Termite Terrace/Rhapsody Rabbit
From Eccentric Flower
Rhapsody Rabbit
1946
Summary: Bugs attempts to play Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody #2" despite interference from a curious mouse.
Director: Friz Freleng
Writer: Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce
Featuring: Bugs Bunny.
Onreel
0:16 Sound cue: One bar of "Merrily We Roll Along" (actually, from this one bar it might as well be "Mary Had A Little Lamb"), followed by what Wikipedia describes as "a segment of the 'lively' portion of Wagner's 'Siegfried' funeral march." I hadn't realized Wagner had any lively portions.
1:14 Freleng would later reuse the coughing-audience-member gag in a Pink Panther short. This gag has been cut from some television airings of this cartoon.
2:44 "Franz Liszt? Never heard of him. Wrong number." This is your cue that the relatively gagless portion of the film is about to end.
2:58 The "Figaro" bit is actually part of "Largo al factotum" from "The Barber of Seville." (See Rabbit of Seville.)
4:40 The animation of piano-playing in most of the "boogie woogie" bit is actually reasonably close to what the characters would actually have to do to play it.
4:56 The mouse plays "Chopsticks" under the piano lid, followed by "Taps" after the stick of dynamite.
6:55 Some of the written notations on the incomprehensible sheet music: "Spaghetti," "Dow Jonesissimo," "Slow Polka," "Signal Ahead," "Hurry Here," "Goulashio," and "Tutti Fruitti." Someone has been playing tic-tac-toe in the margins, and one set of notes extends so high above the staff that it has a flag on top.
7:26 Bugs is seen to silently mouth some gripe or profanity after playing the final three notes.
Offreel
There are many cases when "Hungarian Rhapsody #2" appears as a sound cue in these cartoons (see the scoreboard), but this is definitely the Warner cartoon where we hear the largest amount of it.
The actual piano performance in this film is by Jakob Gimpel. He also recorded piano music for the Tom and Jerry cartoon "Johann Mouse."
The Great 1947 Liszt Controversy
This short was in contention for "Best Animated Short Film" in the 1947 Academy Awards. So was a Tom and Jerry cartoon called "The Cat Concerto." The problem was, the two films bore a very strong resemblance to each other. In "The Cat Concerto," Tom is the pianist and Jerry the interfering mouse. Not only is the same piece of music used in both films, but there are several cases where the same gags appear in each and both films have a similar structure. After the Academy Awards, Warner Bros. and MGM each accused the other of plagiarism. Various theories were tossed around (Technicolor had accidentally or deliberately sent a print of the wrong short to the wrong studio; a friend/rival of Gimpel's mischievously suggested to MGM that they make a similar film with himself as pianist; and so forth and so on). Nothing was ever proven.
Some of the same gags naturally suggest themselves, but the question is whether both studios choosing to make essentially the same cartoon in the same year pushes the bounds of coincidence.
"The Cat Concerto" won the Academy Award and also was named one of the "fifty greatest cartoons" in a vote of 1000 animation professionals in 1994 (although "Rhapsody Rabbit" is listed in the back of that book as a near-miss). Having seen both many times, I can't say that either is more or less brilliant than the other. I give a slight edge to "Rhapsody Rabbit" because I don't care much for Tom and Jerry in general, but I also think that many of the "inside the piano" gags in "Cat Concerto" are better. I like the performance style of the piano work better in "Rhapsody Rabbit," but I also admit that nearly all of the first three minutes is a straight, gag-free performance, which is no way to run a cartoon.
In short, see them both for yourself and be your own judge. You can't lose.
