By the late 1930s, the Schlesinger studio had phased out plugging popular tunes in favor of broad comedy. This short was probably one of the last of its kind to feature popular tunes as opposed to aiming for comedy.Like most musical cartoons, the featured songs were lifted from recent WB features. Let That Be A Lesson To You came from HOLLYWOOD HOTEL (1937), As Easy As Rolling Off A Log is briefly heard in OVER THE GOAL (1937). The trumpet solo is directly taken from the latter films soundtrack. Johnnie Davis, who sang and performed a trumpet solo in the aforementioned films, does the voice of the bespectacled cat. His meek design is in contrast to Davis' actual handsome appearance. The college setting of OVER THE GOAL was probably an inspiration. Maybel Todd, who sang a part in the Let That Be A Lesson To You number in HOLLYWOOD HOTEL, voices Kitty Bright.For a Cal Dalton short, this is a very handsome effort. A good quintessential late 1930s WB short with catchy jazz numbers. Be sure to check out the films where the musical numbers originated. Although I have yet to hear a full recording of As Easy As Rolling Off A Log.

Katnip Kollege (1938) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Fast-paced and very fun animated film takes place at Katnip Kollege, a swinging college to teach cats how to swing. The class is "Swingology" and one student gets made fun of because he doesn't know how to swing it but he plans on changing that before the big dance that night. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but there's no question that this is one of the more entertaining shorts from this era. The animation itself is certainly nothing too flashy as the cat designs are quite simple but this actually helps the film in a strange way. Another thing that really helps are the two music numbers because they're quite catchy and fun to listen to. It also doesn't hurt that the sex kitten appears to have been fashioned after Clara Bow, which was pretty interesting and especially since Bow hadn't made a movie in several years by this point in time. Fans of animation are certainly going to want to check this one out as well as those who just enjoy that swing/jazz music.

Another musical short that is more cute than humorous is this short about some swinging cats singing in music class. One cat just doesn't get it and is ridiculed unmercifully because of it. Of course he gets it together by the end, but it still made me feel sorry for him when he lacked rhythm. This short wasn't as good as "I Love to Singa" (which was over praised to begin with) But it's cute enough to at least watch one time, perhaps even twice (but not in a row) and the tunes doesn't seem to make one openly cringe. This animated short can be seen on Disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2.My Grade: C-

This is a cute, rather charming musical short patterned after things like Along Flirtation Walk and Varsity Show. The lead character, Johnny, might as well have "Dick Powell" stenciled on his forehead and the professor reminds me of Kay Kyser. The music is infectious and entertaining, even if the plot is as thin as a piece of gauze. Come to think of it, the plots of those old musicals this is patterned after are pretty much just as thin and this is much shorter than those were!Warner Brothers made a fair number of these musical cartoons, because the animation department had access to the entire musical catalog for the studio and the studio big-wigs saw the shorts as a way to remind people of Warner Brothers features and music (sheet music was popular and the sheet music for songs made a pretty for all involved in the loop-composers, film studio, etc.) by keeping songs fresh in the public's memory. This is on Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 2 and is well worth seeing. Recommended.