Top 50 Cartoons: 43, 42

43. The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville is the 10th animated cartoon short subject in the Woody Woodpecker series. Released theatrically on April 22, 1944, the film was produced by Walter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures.

The Barber of Seville was the first cartoon to feature a more streamlined character design for Woody Woodpecker, courtesy of veteran animator Emery Hawkins and art director Art Heinemann. In prior shorts, Woody had had a more grotesque appearance, including buck teeth, a receding chin, and thick stubby legs. Heinemann removed these features, and restructured Woody's body to conform to the modern animation standards in use for characters such as those appearing in Disney and Warner Bros cartoons.




42. The Cat Concerto

The Cat Concerto is a 1946 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 29th Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor in 1946 and released to theatres on April 26, 1947 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision by Scott Bradley, and animation by Kenneth Muse, Ed Barge and Irven Spence. It won the 1946 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. In 1994 it was voted #42 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. The short won the duo their fourth consecutive Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.






A fun fact about this cartton is:
The same year MGM produced The Cat Concerto, Warner Bros. released a very similar Bugs Bunny cartoon called Rhapsody Rabbit, directed by I. Freleng, with Bugs against an unnamed mouse. Both shorts used near identical gags, and they even used the same piece by Liszt.

Both MGM and Warner Bros. accused each other of plagiarism, after both films were shown during the 1947 Academy Awards ceremony. Technicolor was accused of sending a print of either cartoon to the competing studio, who then allegedly plagiarized their rival's work. This controversy was the subject of an episode on the Cartoon Network documentary show ToonHeads.

You can see it here, embed is disabled by request:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy6IZp-_oMA