The name of the Looney Tunes series bears an obvious debt to the Walt Disney Animation Studios' Silly Symphony series, which began in 1929.[7] Steve Schneider writes that this "immediately reveals Harman and Ising's belief that the only way to compete—or even to survive—in the cartoon trade was to cleave to the Disney version."[8]
Made in 1930, this short marked the theatrical debut of Bosko the "Talk-Ink Kid" whom Harman and Ising had created to show to Warner Bros. Bosko became their first star character, surpassed only much later by Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. Notably, this is the only publicly released Bosko short to feature Bosko's original blackface dialect provided by animator Carman Maxwell; the character would later adopt a more falsetto voice (played by sound effects man Bernard B. Brown and, later on, singer Johnny Murray) for later films. Bosko's girlfriend Honey was voiced by Rochelle Hudson.[4]
The short was produced, directed, supervised and co-animated by Harman and Ising, with animation by a very young Friz Freleng and his friends. Leon Schlesinger was credited as an associate producer, and the title card also gave credit to the Western Electric apparatus used to create the film.
The film opens with Bosko taking a bath while whistling "Singin' in the Bathtub". A series of gags allows him to play the shower spray like a harp, pull up his pants by tugging his hair, and give the limelight to the bathtub itself, which stands on its hind feet to perform a dance. (There is a clear shot of a toilet during this scene, and the bathtub tears off sheets of toilet paper during its dance, permissible only in the pre-Hays Code days.)
Once he finds his car, which had left the garage to use the outhouse, Bosko goes to visit his girlfriend Honey, who is showering in front of an open window. "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" plays in the background. A goat eats the flowers he brought, so he serenades her to get her to come out. A saxophone full of bubbles (caused when she dumps a bathtub full of soapy water into Bosko's saxophone due to his butchering of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips") provide a floating cascade of steps for her as she alights from the balcony. "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" accompanies this action.
Their country drive presents grave perils for Bosko, with the first obstacle being a stubborn grazing cow. After the cow is pushed out of the way, the indignant cow walks away to the tune of Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance Marches". The drive continues as the car is at first resistant to go up a steep hill, then speeds out of control while Bosko collides into various objects that create the sounds of ascending and descending C majorscales. (Bosko exclaims "mammy" in the original version during this portion of the film.) The sequence ends with the car plunging over a cliff into a lake. Always able to adapt, Bosko continues their date as a boating trip and plays the last refrain (a reprise of "Singin' in the Bathtub") using lilypads as a marimba.
The cartoon ends with Bosko saying the now-classic line "That's all Folks!"
This is the first publicly released non-Disney cartoon to have a pre-recorded soundtrack (in addition, Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid had a pre-synched track.)
Some of the animation by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising was lifted from some of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons they made a couple of years earlier.
Release
The short originally had a special premiere alongside the lost film Song of the Flame at the Warner Bros. Theater in Hollywood on April 19, 1930.[3] Both would be released in theaters in the United States on May 25, 1930.[10]
In popular culture
A clip of the cartoon was seen on Pee-wee's Playhouse in the 1990 episode "Accidental Playhouse."
^Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 1. ISBN0-8050-0894-2.
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