Bosko

Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by the animators Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising. Bosko is the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger's cartoon series and is the star of over three dozen Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros. He is voiced by Carmen Maxwell and John Murray during the 1920s and 1930s one time by Don Messick during the 1990s.

Creation and first film
In 1927 Harman and Ising were still working for the Walt Disney Studios on a series of live-action/animated short subjects known as the Alice Comedies. Hugh Harman created Bosko in 1927 to capitalize on the new talkie craze that was sweeping the motion picture industry. Harman began thinking about making a sound cartoon with Bosko in 1927 before he even left Walt Disney. Hugh Harman made drawings of the new character and registered it with the copyright office on 3 Janurury 1928. The character was registered as Negro boy under the name of Bosko.

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 similiar 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 landmarks in animation history as being the first to include synchronized speech. This cartooon set Harman and Ising apart from early Disney sound cartoons because it emphasized not music but dialogue. 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 to a wide audience until 71 years later in 2000 as part of Cartoon Network's special Toonheads: The Lost Cartoons a complimation special of rave material from the WB/Turner archives.

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 spooke in a Southern Negro dialect... in subsequent films characterized was eschewed or perhaps forgotten. This could be called sloppiness on the part of Harman and Ising but it is also indicates the uncertained nature of the character itself.

Bosko and Looney Tunes
Schlesinger saw the Harman-Ising test film and signed the animators to produce cartoons at their studio for him to sell Warner Bros. Bosko became the star vehicle for the studio's new Looney Tunes 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. Although Harman and Ising based on Bosko's looks on Felix the Cat Bosko got his personality from the blackface characters of the minstrel and vaudeville shows popular in the 1930s. Harman and Ising made Bosko a genuine black boy.

In keeping with stereotypes of the minstrel shows Bosko is a natural at singing dancing and playing an instrument he encounters. In fact Bosko has 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 a falsetto voice). Despite the parrallels between Bosko and the blackface performers Ising in later years would deny that the character was ever supposed to be Jewish.

From his first Looney Tunes outing Sinking 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. During the same period Disney was spending around $10,000 per cartoon. 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 orchestras (e.g. Abe Lyman) and sound recording equipment and staff free of charge whereas Disney had to pay for all this himself. Disney also had another handicup 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 worry over details concerning the distribution of their cartoons as the Warner Bros. handled all this.

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 devlopement.

Bosko at MGM
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 they had carefully kept all right to the Bosko character and they took him with them. The two found work with MGM where they launched the Happy Harmonies cartoon series. At first Bosko appeared in his original design and some of the old animation from the Looney Tunes series was even reused in those Happy Harmonies that features Bosko. After only two cartoons the character was redisgned into an identifiable black boy with an overactive imagination. This redisgned Bosko whom many consider to be a different 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
Bosko's cartoons were largely forgotten until the advent of television. Since the film could be shown cheaply programmers put them into constant rotation in the 1950s. Bosko's shorts were air up until the 1990s on three channels Nickelodeon Disney Channel and Cartoon Network.

Bosko made a suprise cameo in a 1990 episode of the televsion series Tiny Toon Adventures in which Babs Bunny after being told by the Acme Looniversity's mystery vaultkeeper about Honey (voiced by B.J. Ward) 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 other than Bosko (voiced by Don Messick) himself. Curiously the cartoon depicts Bosko and Honey as dog-like creatures similiar to the lead characters of the later TV Show Animaniacs presumably so as not to offend viewers with the original black-face characteriztions. Another reason may be that the episode served as a bridge between Tiny Toons and Animaniacs. In an even briefer cameo Bosko is seen as a portrait in the 1996 movie Space Jam this time in his original form.

Today the majority of the cartoons are availible 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 Sinking in the Bathtub (which originally introduced Bosko and Honey to audiences in 1930) as an extra. Looney Tunes Golen Collection: Volume 6 (released in 2008) includes several Bosko films on a disc officially devoted to Bosko and the early 1930s characters.

At present all the Bosko cartoons still under copyright are owned by Time Warner as are the original film elements of the 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.

In Popular culture

 * Bosko's laugh can be heard in the moviesSpace Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
 * Bosko's name can be seen on the door of a dressing room in (Blooper) Bunny.

Voice actors

 * John Murray (1930)
 * Carmen Maxwell (1930-1933)
 * Don Messick﻿ (1990 in Tiny Toon Adventures)