Woman of the Year premiered on Broadway in 1981. The character of Sam Craig, a cartoonist (as opposed to a sportswriter as he is in the film it's based off) writes and draws the comic strip, Katz. For the segments with Katz, the Michael Sporn company created 9 minutes of animation.
Credits (according to michaelspornanimation.com)[]
Animation Directed By - Michael Sporn
Character Designed By - Tony Walton
Choreography By - Tony Charmoli
Animated By - Michael Sporn and John Canemaker
Coloring By - Steven Parton, Bridget Thorne, Patty Hoyt, Joey Epstein
Special Projections By - Bran Ferren & Ass.
Animation Photography By - F-Stop Studio/Gary Becker
News Article (19 April, 1981; The New York Times)[]
THIS CAT HAS THEATREGOERS PURRING by Richard F. Shepard
The musical at the Palace is ''Woman of the Year'' and it stars not only Lauren Bacall and Harry Guardino but also an irascible New York cat named Katz, an animated cartoon of a feline who whirls about on ingenious screens, sings, dances and talks to his creator.
The lighthearted appearance of animation on a big Broadway stage with a big Broadway cast and sets that themselves move intricately in and out of view required heavy thinking on the part of those at the helm. This creative effort is in its own way a mating of technology and romance, of mathematics and rhythm.
The six minutes of animation scattered throughout the show are depicted with more than 17,000 drawings and they represent only about half of what was originally done, what with the usual trimming and changes that are part and parcel of a Broadway musical. Michael Sporn, the 34-year old animator who put Katz into motion from the original rendering by the set designer Tony Walton, had only four people and three weeks to get ready for the show, as compared with the eight months and 75 hands usually needed to make a half-hour's worth of animation.
Katz does his stuff with Mr. Guardino, who plays Sam Craig, the cartoonist who is the object of Miss Bacall's affections. He serves not only as a sounding board and outlet for the artist but also as his other self. Katz wears a bowtie and a little hat and talks with a New York accent remarkable to out-of-towners but unexceptional to natives. His unmistakably New York-heavy voice, New Yorkly inflected, belongs to Fred Ebb, who wrote the musical's lyrics with John Kander for the book by Peter Stone. Since Mr. Ebb is heard but not seen, this cannot be called his first Broadway stage appearance, but it certainly is his premiere in his own mouth rather than through the mouths of other performers.
Katz flicks his tail on the screen and Mr. Guardino staggers in the flesh. Katz puts out a foot and Mr. Guardino trips. But Katz is no mere gimmick; what he does advances the plot, deepens the characterization and generates laughs. While Mr. Guardino and Miss Bacall are seeking ways around their romantic roadblocks, Katz and Tessie are going through the same travails.
Tessie is another cat created by the cartoonist near the show's start in the image of Tess Harding (Miss Bacall), the efficient, worldly-wise television personality who has just broadcast an attack on cartoons. As Mr. Guardino is presumably drawing Tessie at his desk, she is shown being put together in animation on a window shade that is lowered to serve as screen. The show's three other cartoon segments take place on a large black curtain in which not only the cats move but the very vignettes in which they appear move in lively fashion across the stage.
The saga of Katz from interior vision to final concrete vision started with the decision of Messrs. Stone, Ebb and Kander to convert the hero in the show from the sportswriter of the film to a cartoonist because it was not practical to depict football games and other spectacles within the confines even of a large Broadway stage.
''We wanted an allied field and hit upon cartoonist,'' said Mr. Stone. ''I realized that the cat Katz, or Katz the cat, would make a wonderful character, an alter ego to Craig, the cartoonist.''
Lawrence Kasha, one of the producers, allowed that it was difficult in retrospect to say who contributed what to the look of Katz. ''Someone said, make the coat longer,'' he said. ''I said, put a hat on him.''
All of this group effort eventually fell on Mr. Walton's table and he drew Katz, an unmoving Katz, to taste. ''I did some animation in Jules Feiffer's 'Passionella,' '' he said. ''In this one, Katz was written in the script and given to me. There was some discussion as to using the cat as a four-frame newspaper cartoon between the scenes or as animation and animation was chosen. We deliberately wanted it as a more primitive animation, less slick than a movie cartoon because we didn't want a movie creature. I had the easy part, I drew Tessie and Katz and we called in Michael Sporn for the hard part, the animation.''
Bran Ferren, of Associates and Ferren, was also summoned. Mr. Ferren is a specialist in special effects, which is something more special than other effects. He had heightened illusion and raised tensions with his contributions to such works as the film ''Altered States,'' and, on Broadway, ''Frankenstein'' and ''Evita,'' but not with this sort of technique. Katz and Tessie are projected four times during the show.
''The problem in theater is that projection technology is not up to being put in theaters,'' Mr. Ferren explained. ''First of all there was the problem of projecting a 30-foot-high image from a projector only 16 feet behind the screen. Usually, you would need a 40-footspace to do this. I think it is the first time, too, that there has been a stage dance between a live figure onstage and an animated figure on screen.''
Mr. Kasha noted that the idea derived from the film ''Anchors Aweigh,'' in which Gene Kelly dances with an animated mouse, but stage and screen are as different as mice and cats.
Mr. Ferren said a new type of projection system was devised with special hand-made lenses to do the job. He spoke about the necessity of distorting the picture at point of origin to get an undistorted picture at point of viewing, but that's another seminar.
''The projector backstage weighs 2,000 pounds and moves, motorized, on tracks,'' he said. ''It travels eight feet and tilts, changing the lens and focus. This opens up uncharted areas in theater. Remember, we don't want a replacement for scenery. We don't want, basically, to be showing movies.''
Another problem, a big one, was to coordinate the sound of the orchestra and the actors and the voice of Katz. Two sound tracks are played at each performance. One carries Katz's voice and the other consists of two-click alerts that cue Donald Pippin, the conductor. Mr. Ebb said that Robert Moore, the show's director, conceived of using the lyricist's voice for Katz. Mr. Ebb recorded the song ''What Else Is New?'', the one in which he does a duet with Mr. Guardino.
Mr. Stone said, ''The hardest thing was for Harry Guardino to realize that the animation was going to roll whatever he did and that there could be no holding back. He's secure in it now and knows where the jokes are. Harry is out of theater and the Actors Studio and he is masterful.''
For Michael Sporn, to whom fell the nitty-gritty of animation, the job with ''Woman of the Year'' was a new experience in a career that has been rich in commercials and educational films and other work designed exclusively for screens. He and a crew of four did it in his East 32d Street studio, starting with pencil drawings by John Canemaker and involving the people backstage.
''We had lengthy discussions,'' he recalled. ''Tony Charmoli, who staged the musical numbers, and Robin Moore, Don Pippin, Kander and Ebb all acted out the motions that Katz should be going through. It was like a private show with top people just for me. I tried to keep Katz moving. I didn't want the audience to get bored.
''There were special problems with the mixing of live theater and animation. In 'So What Else Is New?' Katz's tail flicks at the line 'zapped again' and Harry shows that he was zapped by the tail. At the line, 'being tripped, not to trip again,' Katz puts his foot out and Harry trips. I didn't think it would work with the big foot on screen and the actor some distance away, but it did.
And that is the story of Katz playing the Palace. One note of warning: if anyone ponders this technology while watching him romp on the screen, he is not doing his job, which is to appear as effortless and spontaneous as what we call feline grace. Katz is a New York Jewish cat, but when the chips are down he is still a cat.
Video[]
This is the only known footage of the animation. It is poor quality, but you can see movment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgvQuDB5cUU
Whereabouts[]
The official script said on Page 3: A print of the animated film used in the original Broadway production of WOMAN OF THE YEAR is available, in either 16 or 35 mm, from Michael Sporn Animation, Inc., 99-34 67th Road, Forest Hills, NY 11375, (212) 730-1314. Because Michael has since passed away, it's not certain whether it exists anymore. I suggest someone asks his widow, Heidi Stallings, about it.