In queasy acceptance of the fact that the most noxious week in American history has now officially begun, I’ve decided to post the most noxious musical numbers ever filmed. What better way to kick things off than with this stinker from ‘The Goldwyn Follies’ (1938) featuring the wildly unfunny Ritz Brothers, a truckload of cats and a humiliated Adolph Menjou. The song, the wittily titled ‘Here Pussy Pussy Pussy Pussy Pussy Pussy Pussy’, is the perfect anthem for pro-animal abuse actvists. Menjou’s unfortunate presence makes one almost feel sorry for a man whose unforgivable behavior ten years later during the HUAC witch hunt rendered him a pariah. Just the thought of how the animals seen in this clip were manhandled on set in order to corral them into place is nauseating. But the real tragedy of this movie is in its off-stage scenario; it’s the last film on which George Gershwin worked before his untimely death in 1937. Two of his loveliest songs, ‘Our Love Is Here To Stay’ and ‘Love Walked In’, are caught in the crosshairs of a film which took its rightful place in the 1978 book ‘The Fifty Worst Films Of All Time (and How They Got That Way)’. Oddly, the American Film Institute nominated ‘The Goldwyn Follies’ for the 2006 list of ‘AFI’s Greatest Movie Musicals’. I assume this was because somebody heard the Gershwin score playing on the TV in the other room and didn’t see any of the actual movie. It couldn’t be because of a surprise glut of write-in votes from The Ritz Brothers’ unexpectedly large fan base. Or could it?