April 19th, 1930, what would become the greatest series of short films, and the greatest series of cartoons would enjoy it's first cartoon's first theatrical release. The series would be Looney Tunes, and the cartoon would be "Sinkin' in the Bathtub".
This film was made before the familiar characters of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, and so on, would be created. The staring character for this cartoon was Bosko. One of the most groundbreaking things about Bosko was the use of synchronized dialog. While sound cartoons had existed before this, none of them, not even Disney, had been able to accomplish with synchronized dialog, what these Bosko cartoon had accomplished.
The Creators of Bosko were Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising. Both had worked with Walt Disney, mainly on the Alice Comedies, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. After they left Walt, they constantly wanted to compete with Disney on his own terms. While these two men were great pioneers of animation, and great talents in their own right, this led them to spend much of there time trying to be as much like Disney as possible. Because of this Bosko, despite being a really likable character, was mostly a Mickey Mouse imitator, and a thinly disguised one at that. On top of that jokes were often reused from Oswald cartoons, they themselves had worked on, such as the joke of a big Bosko breaking into a bunch of little Boskos (used in this film). However despite a lack of originality in this cartoon (Besides the synchronized dialog), this film is a very fun and enjoyable cartoon, even to early Disney fans who might recognize most of this from other cartoons. This is because it is done with such talent it kind of doesn't matter how original or not it is.
This film also has animation by Friz Freling and Robert Mckimson, who later become two of the series' most prolific directors (Robert Mckimson would in fact direct "Injun Trouble" from 1969, which would be the last Looney Tunes cartoon).
So here is "Sinkin' in the Bathtub"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laBh-e1r-Yc
-Michael J. Ruhland
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