Celebrating its 60th anniversary, Gay Purr-ee tells the story of Mewsette, a farm cat who ventures from Provence to seek a more glamorous life in Paris. When the movie was released, it was advertised as a new type of entertainment, a fully animated feature musical with real stars like Judy Garland providing the characters’ voices— a novel concept at the time.
Now 94 and a true animation industry veteran, Bob Singer was brought on as one of the film’s layout men. While the legendary Chuck Jones and his wife, Dorothy, collaborated on the story, Singer shares that “there was no script. Jones wrote [out] this whole feature as a storyboard—with pictures and dialogue underneath the pictures.” Singer says that when his team received the storyboards, they had to make changes as they went along. “We had to… reboard it for ourselves with dialogue and sound effects and all that to make it go into a production board.”
“The film was made very quickly, in just a few months,” Singer says. “Usually, an animated feature takes a lot longer than that.” To speed up the process many layout men were hired, and each was given small segments to work on. The challenge for Singer was adapting his style to that of the movie. “One of the best of the layout men was named Vic Haboush. He did a lot of wonderful backgrounds and styling on the show.” As the Art Director, Haboush’s look set the tone and led the way for others working on the film.
Of the different segments he worked on, Singer remembers the scenes where Mewsette escapes her evil captor and runs through the streets of Paris. Where did he find inspiration for creating Paris of the 1890s? Since this was pre-Internet days, he took himself off to the Brand Library in Glendale, using its large motion picture image archive for reference. He looked at French films set in that period so that his depictions would be as authentic as possible.
Working on the film was a joy, says Singer. One day, Judy Garland arrived at the studio, and there was great excitement. “She walked into my room, and I was introduced to her,” he says. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t do anything but smile.” He says it was a thrill to meet her and adds that everyone truly loved working on the film. They were all proud of the final product and especially what they had been able to accomplish in such a short time.
