by L A Vocelle
The Austrian-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), mentioned earlier, was a family friend and eventually the lover of Balthus’s mother Baladine. Rilke encouraged the publication of the short book in 1921 even writing the preface. Rilke was an important creative influence in Balthus’ life, sometimes even acting as a surrogate father after Balthus’ mother and father had separated. Balthus’s love of cats continued throughout his life as mirrored in his art. The epitome of this love is seen in the full length self-portrait of Balthus standing next to a big tabby cat which leans lovingly against his leg. The painting is called: H.M. The King of Cats Painted by Himself, completed in 1935 when he was 27 years old. Later on, he would paint The Cat of La Méditerranée (1949), again a self-portrait, but this time he is the happy cat with a rainbow of fish on his plate. However, perhaps more controversial are his languorously seductive paintings of young adolescent girls and cats which would span two decades beginning in the 1930s. In these paintings, young girls are erotically posed with a seemingly disinterested cat somewhere on the canvas. Sacred and profane are balanced with the cat being representative of the artist himself. Many of these paintings were of his neighbor in Paris, Thérèse Blanchard (1925-1950).
Figure 9.7. Women and Cats, Félix Vallotton, 1897-1898, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
The Argentine artist Leonor Fini (1907-1996) moved in the same circles as Picasso, Max Ernst, and the photographer Henri Cartier Bresson and was later even associated with Andy Warhol, all of whom valued the cat’s presence in their art. Fini was a true cat lover. Not only did she paint cats, but she also kept as many as 23, mostly Persians, as her pets. Like any cat lover, she let them sleep with her and share her meals, generously allowing them to walk over the dining room table in search of tasty tidbits. Her guests never dared complain. A friend recalled, “…the cats would come all around her; on the easel, on the bed, on the palate” whenever she painted. Some of her works were even identified by the stray cat hairs attached to the paint or the odd cat scratched canvas. Whenever she traveled to the Loire Valley for the summer, her cats accompanied her in their own car. A good friend of Brigitte Bardot, Fini was active in the French SPA and contributed some of her works to draw attention to the plight of strays. Fini owned over 50 cats during her lifetime and became distraught whenever one would get sick, and never got used to losing one. She is known to have said, “In every way cats are the most perfect creatures on the face of the earth, except that their lives are too short.”
Perhaps the most prolific Japanese-French cat painter of the period was Leonard Tsugouharu Foujita (1886-1968). Born in Tokyo, Japan, Tsugouharu† Foujita (1886-1968), became a well-known painter and print maker who adeptly blended traditional Japanese art with European Modernism. He is best known for his paintings of cats and nudes. In Japanese his name means “field of Wisteria and Peace”. Foujita was a cat-loving eccentric. His hairstyle resembled that of a skull cap, and he wore earrings, dressed in tunics and had a tattoo around his wrist.
After graduating high school, Foujita began to study western art and graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1910. Following his interest in western art, three years later he arrived in Paris knowing no one. Soon, however, he met the great artists Picasso, Modigliani and Matisse and even took dance lessons from Isadora Duncan. Man Ray’s lover, Kiki, even posed for him for Reclining Nude with Toile de Jouy which became quite a success, selling for 8,000 francs in 1922. He shared an interest in cats with Jean Cocteau, and they attended cat shows together. Foujita firmly equated women with cats; in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal in 1930 he stated, “Ladies who would be alluring to men should surround themselves with cats….I never look at men, only at women—they have, each one, such marvelous possibilities of beauty. But unfortunately most of them have not developed these possibilities because they have not learned the lessons cats can teach.” He went on to say, “The good and bad qualities of cats closely resemble the attributes of women... Cats never give anything away. They are out for what they can get. They have tigerish passions when aroused. They have grace, beauty of movement, intriguing languor. Cats are never in a hurry, never angular. They move softly, gently, insinuatingly…Clever women live with cats. They study the animal’s movements, habits and emotional reactions—” (Women, 1930 p. 19). Foujita known for his paintings of nudes and cats was one of the few artists to be financially successful so early in his career. By 1925, he had received state honors from both Belgium and France.
CATS IN FILM
From canvases, the cat first entered the new dynamic art form of silent films to eventually share the screen with such stars as Rudolph Valentino, Lillian Gish, Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin. A Maltese cat named Pepper (figure 9.8) became the first feline film star. Born under a sound stage at Keystone Studios in 1912, Pepper was discovered by Mack Sennett who introduced her to the silver screen in 1913 in A Little Hero. In that film she was paired with her lifelong partner Teddy the Dog. Pepper appeared in 17 films throughout her career, and in one of her more demanding roles she played checkers with the comedian Ben Turpin. The cross eyed Turpin and Pepper appeared together in Are Waitresses Safe? (1917), Whose Little Wife are You (1918), When Love is Blind (1919), Trying to Get Along (1919) and The Quack Doctor (1920). The cat also frequently appeared with Marie Prevost in His Hidden Purpose (1918), Never Too Old (1919), When Love is Blind (1919), and The Dentist (1919). Sennett thought highly of Pepper, insuring her for a record $5,000.00. Pepper remained at the studio for 16 years until her death in 1928.
Figure 9.8. Pepper, Photographed before 1920
The cat we have all come to know as Felix first made his appearance as Master Tom in Feline Follies. Released just after WWI in 1919, and directed by Otto Messmer, the 4-minute short features the original Felix the Cat, here called Master Tom. Our hero cat is lured away from his duties of protecting his house from mice by the seductive charms of Miss Kitty (figure 9.9). While he is away, the mice take over and destroy the house. The house owner comes home to find the place a mess and blames Master Tom and throws him out. Master Tom goes to find his love, Miss Kitty, but she is surrounded by so many other male cats that he flees and decides to commit suicide by breathing in gas. In subsequent films, Master Tom becomes Felix the Cat, and in the 1920-29 Arabiantics Felix whisks away on a magic carpet and lands in Arabia where he trades the carpet for a bag of jewels. An evil Arab unleashes an army of mice to take the bag. After beating up an Arab guard, Felix finds the hooka-smoking Arab who had stolen his jewels for his many wives. The mice again defeat Felix and throw him out of the house. The devious Felix then schemes to play music for the Arab’s wives to dance to and while they are dancing, all the jewels fall from their bodies into Felix’s bag. Felix’s cunning wins the day. In the short, Eats are West a hungry Felix steals Mammy’s flap jacks and flies away using the flap jacks as a make shift plane. Mammy shakes her fist at him in her anger. Felix then parachutes down to steal food from a pony express rider. A fight ensues with Felix defeating them all. Then he goes on to have a fight with some Indians and completely destroys the cigar store Indian. In Felix the Cat Ducks His Duty all the mice declare war, and he is forced to enlist to aid his cat brethren. Wearing a WWI helmet at the front, Felix tries to desert but is forced again to stay and fight. He faces gassing by the mice with old cheese and then he is sentenced to be shot. However, the clever Felix escapes and tries to get married but returns to the front because of the constant nagging of his wife.
The ingenious Felix entered the psyches of a whole generation as a courageous feline who would never give up. So pervasive was the Felix persona that even the great aviator Charles Lindbergh chose a Felix doll to be his lucky mascot on his historic 1927 transatlantic flight. The children that had grown up watching Felix cartoons would eventually fight in WWII. Bomber pilots proudly adorned their planes with images of the undefeatable Felix, while his image appeared on battalion and regimental insignia (figure 9.10). Felix th
e Cat had become a cultural icon representing the clever overcoming of all odds. Because of Felix’s iconic notoriety, NBC television used his image, a Felix doll rotating on a record, for its first test broadcast in 1929.
Figure 9.9. Felix the Cat, 1919, from Feline Follies
Figure 9.9. Felix the Cat, 1919, from Feline Follies
Early films, sometimes based on 19th century novels, featured vicious felines that were latent killers. Edgar Allan Poe’s Black Cat, which was discussed in the last chapter, became a popular horror film starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the 1934 version. The 1965 film The Tomb of Ligeia, based on another of Poe’s short stories, revolves around the main character, Ligeia’s, desire to be immortal. At the beginning of the film, a black cat jumps on Ligeia’s coffin and Ligeia opens her eyes, a foreshadowing of her soul going into the cat. Shortly thereafter, the cat leaps to Ligeia’s gravestone and looks down. Verden, Ligeia’s husband, later falls in love with Lady Rowena. Ligeia, in the cat body, is jealous of Lady Rowena, and tries to frighten and even kill her. Meanwhile, references to ancient Egypt abound, as a pharaoh’s head and statues of Bast appear as background props. In the end, the black cat, the vessel for Ligiea’s soul, and Ligiea herself are both consumed by fire. The theme of cats as mysteriously evil beings bound to women, based on Egyptian and Greek goddesses, is amazingly still evident centuries later.
In the 1942 film Cat People, the duality of woman and cat plays a central role. Based on the 1930 short story, The Bagheeta, written by Val Lewton and starring Simone Simon, the film tells the story of Irena, a Serbian, who believes that she is the descendant of a line of people who can turn into cats when emotionally provoked. Because of her jealousy, Irena turns into a black panther in order to kill her husband’s colleague and new love, Alice. At the beginning of the film, a statue of King John of Serbia with a cat impaled upon his sword foreshadows the ending of the film when the main character commits suicide by allowing herself to be attacked and killed by a black panther caged at the zoo. Her demise is brought about when her psychologist tries to molest her, and she turns into a vicious cat and kills him. With nowhere to turn, after changing back into her human form, she allows the caged panther to kill her.
In a somewhat similar vein, the 1957 British film Cat Girl is based on the same premise of a woman being able to turn into a cat. The main character, Leonora, is unhappily married and suffers from the family curse, that of turning into a leopard. After taking revenge on her cheating husband by tearing him to shreds as her leopard alter ego, she comes to a tragic end when she, as the cat, is struck by a car and dies. Both films end with the deaths of the women and cats. Their power and savagery must be extinguished.
Released in the same year as Cat Girl, Alfred Hitchcock’s Miss Paisley’s Cat features Stanley, the stray cat, who gives Miss Paisley the courage to stand up against a vulgar world and commit murder on his behalf. Originally written in 1953 by Roy Vickers, the story revolves around a lonely spinster’s love for a stray cat, Stanley. Stanley, the ugly cat, teaches Miss Paisley how to stand up against others by defeating the vicious attack of a dog. And from Stanley, she finds the courage to stand up against her brutish neighbor.
In the 1961 film Shadow of the Cat, Tabitha the loyal cat whose mistress has been brutally killed plots her cat’s revenge on the murderers. Both Miss Paisley’s Cat and Shadow of the Cat portray the animals as loyal companions willing to give their love, support and even their lives to aid their mistresses as their devoted familiars.
Not all films, of course, depicted the cat as a loyal companion. The 1972 low budget Mexican film, Night of a 1000 Cats, also known as Blood Feast, features a serial killer Hugo Stiglitz who feeds the bodies of his victims to caged cats in some sort of demonic ritual. However, justice prevails at the end of the film when the cats escape their cages and devour Stiglitz himself. The film has been rated the worst feline horror film and includes questionable behavior towards the cats especially when Stiglitz grabs a white cat by its neck and hurls it over a fence.
On the other hand, a revival of the Victorian belief in the cat’s importance to motherhood and the raising of children gave rise to a number of children’s films starring adorable cats and kittens that melted the hearts of both young and old. The 1964 Walt Disney movie The Three Lives of Thomasina, tells the story of a Scottish girl whose cat dies at the hands of her widowed veterinarian father. The relationship between father and daughter is repaired when Thomasina returns to life with the help of a beautiful, kind witch who heals animals.
Aristocats (1970) was the last film to be approved by Walt Disney before his death, and was also the last film in which Maurice Chevalier would sing before he too died in 1972. The animated film takes place in 1910 Paris and tells the story of Duchess and her three kittens. Owned by a rich socialite, Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, the cat family enjoys a very comfortable life. The aging Madame decides to leave all her possessions to her cats, and the butler becomes jealous and seeks to remove the cats from the villa so that he can become the beneficiary of her will. After being dumped in the countryside and left to fend for themselves, they come across a clever stray tomcat Thomas O’Malley who helps them return home and live happily ever after.
In the 1951 film Rhubarb, a millionaire baseball team owner takes a liking to a dog-chasing cat† who is named Rhubarb after the slang term for an on field fight or argument. The eccentric owner then dies and leaves the team to the cat. His daughter files a lawsuit against the cat’s inheritance, and the team protests the insult of being owned by a cat. Soon the cat is kidnapped and held for ransom, but cleverly escapes and runs to the ballpark where it inspires the team to win and captures the hearts of all.
Another Disney film, That Darn Cat (1965), tells the story of DC (Darn Cat)† a beautiful recalcitrant Siamese who just happens to come upon a hostage in a bank robbery while looking for food. The desperate woman scratches a partial message for help on the cat’s collar. From there, the FBI try following DC to find the woman. The film focuses on the antics of a typically self-obsessed, hungry cat. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, “The feline that plays the informant, as the F.B.I. puts it, is superb. Clark Gable at the peak of his performing never played a tom cat more winningly. This elegant, blue-eyed creature is a paragon of suavity and grace”, and concluded, “...it's an entertaining picture. Even a king might profitably look at That Darn Cat.” Syn Cat, the cat actor, won a Patsy award for his performance.
Depicted primarily as metaphors for women, cats acted as trusted familiars and/or as sweet companions to young girls. However, soon men, too, began to be cast with cats in films. In the 1974 road film Harry and Tonto, a cat is the co-star and companion to an aging man who sets off on his last journey. Art Carney noted that prior to his work in Harry and Tonto, he “never liked cats” but said he wound up getting along well with the cat† in the film.
The rough and indisputably masculine Rooster Cogburn, played by John Wayne in the original True Grit (1969), even had an orange tabby cat named General Sterling Price whom he introduces to Mattie Ross as his nephew.
In the TV series Early Edition (1996-2000), again it is a friendly orange tabby cat played by three cats, Panther, Pella and Carl, who act as Gary’s familiars.
Cats sometimes served as the companions of maniacal deviants and gangsters such as the character Ernst Stravo Blofeld in the James Bond films, who was always accompanied by his nameless white Persian. The Austin Powers satirical spinoff doesn’t forget the cat either, and features a hairless Sphynx as Mr. Bigglesworth, a complete opposite to the white fluffy Persian.
Marlon Brando as The Godfather affectionately holds and strokes his cat while he is making an offer that cannot be refused. The cool superiority of man and cat typifies the power of the mobster. Brando, a well-known cat lover, had found the stray cat on the set just before shooting started on The Godfather. When Brando held the cat in his arms, it purred so loudly that Brando and the other actor’s lines had to be dubb
ed.
CATS AND MUSIC
As poetry moved to music, so did the cat. Early on cats exerted their influence on music. Songs such as the 1891 Johnny Doolan’s Cat sung by Burl Ives, and The Cat Came Back (1893) by Harry S. Miller recount how it is impossible to get rid of a cat. Both eventually became children’s songs. Has Anyone seen our Cat—1897(figure 9.11) became another popular ditty bemoaning the loss of a cat. Aaron Copeland’s composition, Cat and Mouse (1921) is based on the fable written by Jean Le Fontaine, The Old Cat and the Young Mouse.
Black cats historically considered demonic and evil were now hip and cool in the music of the 20th century. Jethro Tull recounts the loss of his cat in this 1967 song, Old Black Cat.
Figure 9.11. Has Anyone Seen our Cat, Sheet Music, 1897
OLD BLACK CAT
by Jethro Tull Band 1967
My old black cat passed away this morning
He never knew what a hard day was.
Woke up late and danced on tin roofs.
If questioned “Why?”—answered, “Just because.”
He never spoke much, preferring silence:
eight lost lives was all he had.
Occasionally sneaked some Sunday dinner.
He wasn’t good and he wasn’t bad.
My old black cat wasn’t much of a looker.
You could pass him by – just a quiet shadow.
Got pushed around by all the other little guys.
Didn’t seem to mind much – just the way life goes.
Padded about in furry slippers.
