Cats (1998 film) Cats (1998 film) Cats is a 1998 direct-to-video musical film based on the stage musical "Cats" by Andrew Lloyd Webber, itself based on the novel "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" by T. S. Eliot. Lloyd Webber himself personally oversaw orchestration for the film and called on Gillian Lynne, the original show's choreographer, to personally train the cast for the film. Trevor Nunn, the original director, did not serve as the director of this production. Andrew Lloyd Webber and others on the production team for the film wanted to keep the feeling that viewers watching the film could still get
T. S. Eliot one of the most moving poems Eliot wrote, and perhaps the "most perfect", though it was not well received by everyone. The poem's groundwork of orthodox Christianity discomfited many of the more secular "literati". In 1939, Eliot published a book of light verse, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" ("Old Possum" was Ezra Pound's nickname for him). This first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954, the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra in a work titled "Practical Cats". After Eliot's death, the book was adapted as the basis