Bosko

Bosko is an  animated  cartoon  character created by  animators  Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko is the first recurring character in  Leon Schlesinger's cartoon series, and is also the star of over three dozen  Looney Tunes  shorts released by  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros. Warner Bros.] He was voiced by  Carman Maxwell and  Johnny Murray during the 1920s and 1930s, and once by  Don Messick during the 1990s.

Creation and first film
In 1927, Harman and Ising were still working for the   Walt Disney Studios  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">on a series of live-action/animated short subjects now known as the <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Alice Comedies<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. Hugh Harman created Bosko in 1927 to capitalize on the new " talkie<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">" craze that was sweeping the <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  motion picture<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">industry. Harman began thinking about making a sound cartoon with Bosko in 1927, before he even left Walt Disney. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_Barrier_1999.2C_p._155_2-0" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[2] <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Hugh Harman made drawings of the new character and registered it with the <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  copyright<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">office on 3 January 1928. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_Barrier_1999.2C_p._155_2-1" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[2] <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">The character was registered as a " Negro<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">boy" under the name of Bosko. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_Barrier_1999.2C_p._155_2-2" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[2]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">After leaving Walt Disney in the spring of 1928, Harman and Ising went to work for Charles Mintz on Universal's second-season Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. April 1929 found them moving on again, leaving Universal to market their new cartoon character. In May 1929, they produced a short pilot cartoon, similar to Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell cartoons, Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid that showcased their ability to animate soundtrack-synchronized speech and dancing. The short, plotless cartoon opens with live action footage of Ising at a drafting table. After he draws Bosko on the page, the character springs to life, talks, sings, and dances. Ising returns Bosko to the inkwell, and the short ends. The short is a landmark in animation history as being the first to include synchronized speech. This cartoon set Harman and Ising "apart from early Disney sound cartoons because it emphasized not music but dialogue."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_Barrier_1999.2C_p._155_2-3" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[2] The short was marketed to various people by Harman and Ising until Leon Schlesinger offered them a contract to produce a series of cartoons for the Warner Bros. It would not be seen by a wide audience until 71 years later, in 2000, as part of Cartoon Network's special Toonheads: The Lost Cartoons, a compilation special of rare material from the Warner Bros/Turner archives.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">In his book, Of Mice and Magic, Leonard Maltin states that this early version of Bosko was in fact a cartoonized version of a young black boy... he spoke in a Southern Negro dialect... in subsequent films this characterization was eschewed, or perhaps forgotten. This could be called sloppiness on the part of Harman and Ising, but it also indicates the uncertain nature of the character itself.

Bosko and Looney Tunes
<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Schlesinger saw the Harman-Ising test film and signed the animators to produce cartoons at their studio for him to sell to <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros. Warner Bros.]<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Bosko became the star vehicle for the studio's new <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Looney Tunes<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">cartoon series. Bosko wore long pants and a derby hat, and he had a girlfriend named Honey and a dog named Bruno. He was also sometimes accompanied by an orphan cat named Wilbur and an often antagonistic goat, particularly in early cartoons.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Although Harman and Ising based Bosko's looks on Felix the Cat, Bosko got his personality from the blackface characters of theminstrel and vaudeville shows popular in the 1930s. In keeping with the stereotypes of the minstrel shows, Bosko is a natural at singing, dancing, and playing any instrument he encounters. In fact, Bosko has the ability to play virtually anything as an instrument, be it a wooden bridge-turned-xylophone or a Dachshund-turned-accordion. In early cartoons, Bosko (voiced by Carman Maxwell) even speaks in an exaggerated version of black speech (However, this was only in the first cartoon. All later cartoons would give him afalsetto voice). Despite the parallels between Bosko and the blackface performers, Ising in later years would deny that the character was ever supposed to be a black caricature, and rather claim he was supposed to be "an inkspot kind of thing."

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">From his first Looney Tunes outing, Sinkin' in the Bathtub, Bosko would star in 39 musical films (one of which was not released). His cartoons are notable for their generally weak plots and their abundance of music, singing, and dancing (though there were exceptions, such as Bosko the Doughboy, in 1931). These were the early days of sound cartoons, and audiences were enthralled simply to see characters talking and moving in step with the music. In terms of animation, the shorts are on-par with Disney's shorts of the same period. Harman and Ising were allowed production costs of up to $6000 per cartoon.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[4]  During the same period, Disney was spending around $10,000 per cartoon.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_Barrier_1999.2C_p._158_5-0" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[5]  The smaller budgets forced Harman and Ising to recycle footage much more often than Disney did. In terms of music and sound recording, however, Harman and Ising had one up on Disney as the Warner Bros. provided access to a large musical library with all the popular tunes of the day, lavish orchestras (e.g. Abe Lyman) and sound recording equipment and staff free of charge whereas Disney had to pay for all this himself.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_Barrier_1999.2C_p._158_5-1" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[5]  Disney also had another handicap, he had no access to a music library and was forced to rely, for the most part, on public domain music. In addition, Harman and Ising did not have to worry over details concerning the distribution of their cartoons as the Warner Bros. handled all this.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_Barrier_1999.2C_p._158_5-2" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[5]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Vaudeville was the major entertainment of the time, and the cartoons of the era are better understood when compared to it rather than to animation of later decades. Though they might seem boring and rudimentary by today's standards, Bosko's films were quite popular in their day and he rivaled Mickey Mouse in popularity in the early 1930s, although the Disney cartoons would eventually surge ahead in popularity on the basis of stronger plot and character development.

Bosko at MGM
<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">In 1933, Harman and Ising broke with Warner Bros. over budget disputes with Schlesinger. Having learned from Walt Disney's experiences with  Oswald the Lucky Rabbit<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">, they had carefully kept all rights to the Bosko character, and they took him with them. The two found work with  MGM<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> where they launched the  Happy Harmonies<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> cartoon series. At first, Bosko appeared in his original design and some of the old animation from the  Looney Tunes<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> series was even reused in those  Happy Harmonies<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> that features Bosko. After only two cartoons, the character was redesigned into an identifiable black boy with an overactive imagination. This redesigned Bosko, whom many consider to be a different character altogether, in spite of having the same name, only starred in a handful of cartoons before Harman and Ising discontinued the character.

Bosko on television
<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Bosko made a surprise cameo in a 1990 episode of the <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  television<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">series <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Tiny Toon Adventures<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">called " Fields of Honey<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">," in which <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Babs Bunny<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">, after being told by the Acme Looniversity's mysterious vaultkeeper about Honey (voiced by <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  B. J. Ward<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">), is led by a mysterious voice to build a theater that shows nothing but cartoons of Bosko's girlfriend, Honey. Babs does so, and the resulting audience laughter rejuvenates the ailing Honey and reveals the voice, as well as the vaultkeeper to be none other than Bosko (voiced by <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Don Messick<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">) himself. Curiously, the cartoon depicts Bosko and Honey as dog-like <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  funny animals<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">similar to the lead characters of the later TV show  Animaniacs<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">, presumably so as not to offend viewers with the original black-face characterizations. <sup class="Template-Fact" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1em;white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed] <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Another reason may be that this episode served as a "bridge" between <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Tiny Toons<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">and <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Animaniacs<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. In an even briefer cameo, Bosko is seen in a portrait in the 1996 movie <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Space Jam<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">, this time in his original form. He also appears in his original form in the Animaniacs cartoon, "The Girl with the Googily Goop," in which he is seen parking his car.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Today, the majority of the cartoons are available on VHS and DVD in the Uncensored Bosko series from Bosko Video. In 2003, Warner Home Video officially released the initial pilot film Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid as an extra on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1 DVD box set. Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 (released in 2005) also includes the first Looney Tunes short, Sinkin' in the Bathtub (which originally introduced Bosko and Honey to audiences in 1930) as an extra. Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6(released in 2008) includes several Bosko films on a disc officially devoted to Bosko and other early 1930s characters.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">At present, all the Bosko cartoons still under copyright are owned by Warner Bros., as are the original film elements of those cartoons that have fallen into the public domain. The WB cartoons are under direct ownership of the studio itself, while WB also handles distribution for the MGM cartoons, owned by corporate sibling Turner Entertainment. Time Warner has also acquired rights to the character himself, allowing his appearances in the 1990s to happen.