Bosko in Person

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Bosko in Person
Directed by
Robert Clampett
Produced byHugh Harman
Rudolf Ising
Leon Schlesinger
StarringJohnny Murray
Rochelle Hudson
Rudolf Ising
Ken Darby (uncredited)[1]
Music byFrank Marsales
Animation byRollin Hamilton
Bob McKimson (both as "Drawn by")
Color processBlack-and-white
Production
company
Distributed byWarner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date
February 11, 1933
Running time
7 min.
LanguageEnglish

Bosko in Person is an American

Hugh Harman;[4] its score is by Frank Marsales. The film features Bosko and Honey in a vaudeville-act. This is the second cartoon directed by Friz Freleng
.

Summary

The title card is a curtain; it parts, revealing an

piano, playing, scatting, occasionally snapping his fingers; then enters Honey. In time with the music, they greet each other. Bosko leaps from his stool and the couple dance. As the number ends, Honey intones, "Gee, Bosko, you're swell." Our hero steps over and, bathed in the spotlight
, his sweetheart having departed for the moment, sings an ode to Honey and their mutual love. As this yields to further dancing and scatting, Honey re-enters and the two complete the number to an unseen audience's applause. They run off stage, hand-in-hand, and Bosko stumbles cheerfully back on an instant later. Returning to his instrument, he repeats the melody from the opening, supplementing the theme twice by casting off his right glove, which tumbles leftward along the keys and then hurries back on its fingers (as if on foot) the first time to its master's hand and the second to Bosko's right knee, where it stands, endowed with a face and a voice of its own.

"Well, what can you do?" Bosko asks. "I don't know," replies the glove. Bosko thrice enjoins the glove to demonstrate its talents and thrice it refuses. "Now," undauntedly says Bosko, "say 'Mary Had a Little Lamb.'" Giggling with modesty, and at Bosko's repeated request, the glove obliges; it gives another bashful laugh before returning to Bosko's hand. The pianist plays "Shave and a Haircut'," and, descending from his stool again, tap dances in the same rhythm. Seeming-nervously, he begins another tap dance and, tipping his hat, taps stage left; graceful at first, our hero loses his balance after a moment and falls. The audience roars with laughter. Picking himself up, Bosko dusts off his hat, and, donning it again, feigns a limp stage right before hopping on one foot and turning then to skip a bit leftward. He repeats the tap dance-routine from before and falls just as before. Enter Honey from the right, skipping: in a raspy voice she scats "Was That the Human Thing to Do?" She exits and returns a moment later in outsize shoes: donning a long, blond wig and extending her chin, she states, "I think I go home now," in a probable homage to Greta Garbo. As she marches sultrily off, Bosko marches in time behind her, straw hat in hand, chin firmly in the air: he waits a moment for the audience's applause for Honey before he begins his Maurice Chevalier-impression. In time with the film's theme music, he sings, "Just whistle and blow your blues away."

Ridding himself of the straw hat, he hurries toward the piano, pulls a

American flag
and Bosko proceeds to his exit.

The face on the drum

It has been suggested that the man depicted on the drum is Ted Lewis, whom Bosko certainly imitates in his act; although this is possible, the face also bears a passing resemblance to that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. That the figure is Roosevelt is strengthened by the fact of that president's recent inauguration (on March 4 of the year the cartoon was released) and the figure's holding a glass of beer, signaling the pending repeal of Prohibition, a measure favored by the president.

Home media

The short was released on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6, disc three.

References

  1. ISBN 979-8-88771-010-5
    .
  2. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2
    .
  3. ^ Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: a History of American Animated Cartoons. Von Hoffmann Press, Inc., 1980. p. 405
  4. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7
    . Retrieved June 6, 2020.

External links
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