Bosko
Looney Tunes character
Bosko, as drawn by Hugh Harman in 1928.
First appearance	Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid (1929)
Last appearance	Fields of Honey (Tiny Toon Adventures, 1990)
Created by	Hugh Harman Rudolf Ising
Voiced by	Carman Maxwell (1929–1930) Bernard B. Brown (1930–1932)[1] Johnny Murray (1931–1935) Philip Hurlic (1936–1938)[1] Eugene Jackson (1937)[1] Don Messick (1990)
In-universe information
Species	Human Dog-like character (Tiny Toon Adventures)
Significantother	Honey
Nationality	American

Bosko is ananimatedcartoon character created byanimatorsHugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko was the first recurring character inLeon Schlesinger'scartoon series and was the star of 39Looney Tunesshorts released byWarner Bros.^[2] He was voiced byCarman Maxwell,Bernard B. Brown,Johnny Murray, andPhilip Hurlic during the 1920s and 1930s and once byDon Messick during the 1990s.^[3] The character would briefly appear in shorts released byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer prior to his retirement; the rights to the character and theLooney Tunes-era films are owned byTurner Entertainment Co. through separate acquisitions; the latter have fallen into thepublic domain due to their copyrights not being renewed after rights disputes.

In 1927, Harman and Ising worked for theWalt Disney Studios on a series of live-action/animated short subjects known as theAlice Comedies. The two animators created Bosko in 1928 to capitalize on the recent success oftalkies in themotion picture industry. They began thinking about making a sound cartoon with Bosko in 1928 even prior to their departure fromWalt Disney.^[4] Hugh Harman made drawings of the new character and registered it with theU.S. Copyright Office on January 3, 1928.^[4] The character was registered as a "Negro boy" under the name of Bosko.^[4]

After leaving Walt Disney in early 1928, Harman and Ising went to work forCharles Mintz onUniversal's second-seasonOswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. In April 1929 they left Universal to market their new cartoon character. In May 1929, they produced a short pilot cartoon, similar to Max Fleischer'sOut of the Inkwell cartoons, titledBosko, the Talk-Ink Kid that showcased their ability to animatesoundtrack-synchronized speech and dancing. The short, plotless cartoon opens withlive action footage of Ising at a drafting table. After he draws Bosko on the page, the character springs to life, talks, sings, dances, and plays the piano. Ising returns Bosko to the inkwell, and the short ends.Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid was a landmark in animation history for being the first cartoon to predominantly feature synchronized speech, though Fleischer Studios'Song Car-Tune "My Old Kentucky Home" was the first cartoon to contain animated dialogue a few years earlier. This cartoon set Harman and Ising "apart from early Disney sound cartoons because it emphasized not music but dialogue."^[4] 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 Warner Bros. It would not be seen by a wide audience until seventy years later, in 2000, as part ofCartoon Network's specialToonheads: The Lost Cartoons, a compilation special of rare 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 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.^[5]

Schlesinger saw the Harman-Ising test film and signed the animators to produce cartoons at their studio for him to sell toWarner Bros. Bosko became the star vehicle for the studio's newLooney 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 Honey's humanized cat ward named Wilber and an often antagonistic goat, particularly in early cartoons.

The role of Bosko was to serve as a cartoony version ofAl Jolson inThe Jazz Singer (1927). According to Ising, he was initially supposed to be an "inkspot sort of thing". He was not conceived as either a human or an animal, though behaving like a little boy.^[6] According toLeonard Maltin, Bosko was a cartoonized version of a young black boy who spoke a Southern dialect ofAfrican American Vernacular English. He cites as an example a phrase fromBosko's Holiday, said with an intermittent drawl: "I sho'done likes picnics."^[6] Bosko had a stock exclamatory reaction indicating his pleasure "Mmmm! Dat sho' is fine!" which became something of a catch phrase.^[7] In the laterLooney Tunes shorts in which Bosko appeared, his accent was gone, instead using afalsetto voice. Consequently, his race became more ambiguous.^[8]

According to Terry Lindvall and Ben Fraser, Bosko and Honey "were the most balanced portrayals of blacks in cartoons to that point", comparing their portrayal to that of human versions ofMickey andMinnie Mouse.^[6] According toTom Bertino, Harman and Ising never called attention to Bosko's racial status, and stayed clear of negative stereotypes involving dice and watermelon while presenting him as a likable protagonist.^[6] An exception to this was inCongo Jazz (1930), where Bosko was seen with a monkey and gorilla with similar facial expressions as a racially insensitive joke.^[6]

FollowingSinkin' in the Bathtub, Bosko would go on to star in 39 animated short subjects. His cartoons are notable for their focus on music over plot (though there were exceptions, such asBosko the Doughboy, in 1931). Harman and Ising were allowed production costs of up to $6000 per cartoon.^[9] During the same period, Disney was spending around $10,000 per cartoon.^[10] The smaller budgets forced Harman and Ising to recycle footage much more often than Disney did. However, Harman and Ising had the distinct advantage of free access to Warner Bros. large musical library, lavish orchestras (likeAbe Lyman's), and sound recording equipment, allowing the films to capitalize on popular music at the time.^[10] Disney, on the other hand, had no access to a music library and was forced to rely, for the most part, on public domain music.^[10]

In 1933, Harman and Ising terminated their contract with Warner Bros. over budget disputes with Schlesinger. Having learned from Walt Disney's experiences withOswald the Lucky Rabbit, they made sure they retained all rights to Bosko and related characters, taking him with them at the time of their departure. The two found work withMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer where they launched theHappy Harmonies series. At first, Bosko appeared in his original design in two-stripTechnicolor and some of the old animation from theLooney Tunes series was even reused in theHappy Harmonies that featured Bosko. However, after only two cartoons, the character was redesigned into an identifiable black boy, similar in appearance toInki andLil' Eightball, with an overactive imagination. This redesigned Bosko, whom many consider to be a different character altogether despite the shared name, only starred in seven negatively-received three-strip Technicolor cartoons before Harman and Ising discontinued the character.^[11] The career of the character ended for good when MGM fired Harman and Ising due tocost overruns in the films they produced. They were replaced byFred Quimby, who later hired Harman and Ising back, though Bosko did not make any appearances in subsequent MGM subjects they produced.^[12]

Bosko cartoons were packaged with other Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, to be broadcast in various television markets in the 1950s. For instance, "Skipper Frank" (Frank Herman), showed Bosko, along withBuddy, on "Cartoon Carousel" his hour-long afterschool cartoon program onKTLA-TV (Channel 5) in Los Angeles.^[13] Bosko cartoons were also later aired onNickelodeon as part of the network's Looney Tunes program beginning in 1988 and ending in 1992, when the network pulled all black-and-white shorts out of rotation to make room for more recent color cartoons featuring more popular Looney Tunes characters.

Bosko appeared in a 1990 episode of the television seriesTiny Toon Adventures titled "Fields of Honey". In a parody of the then-current filmField of Dreams, a mysterious voice leadsBabs Bunny to build a theater that shows nothing but cartoons of Bosko's girlfriend Honey, after being told about Honey (voiced byB. J. Ward) by the Acme Looniversity's mysterious vaultkeeper (voiced byDon Messick). Babs does so, and the resulting audience laughter rejuvenates the aged and ailing Honey. The laughter also rejuvenates the vaultkeeper, who is revealed to be none other than Bosko himself as well as the source of the voice. The cartoon depicts Bosko and Honey as dog-liketalking animals similar to the lead characters of the later television seriesAnimaniacs, presumably so as not to offend viewers with the original black-face characterizations.

The character is also seen in a portrait in the 1996 filmSpace Jam, this time in his original form. He also appears in his original form in theAnimaniacs cartoon "The Girl with the Googily Goop", in which he is seen parking his car. Five episodes ofFuturama featured scenes from threeLooney Tunes (pre-1934) Bosko cartoons in the opening sequence:Bosko Shipwrecked!,Box Car Blues, andCongo Jazz. The opening to theFuturama episode "Bendless Love" featured a scene from theHappy Harmonies cartoonLittle Ol' Bosko in Bagdad in black-and-white.

The majority of the cartoons are available onVHS andDVD in theUncensored Bosko series from Bosko Video. In 2003, Warner Home Video officially released the initial pilot filmBosko, the Talk-Ink Kid, as an extra on theLooney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1 DVD box set.Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 (released in 2005) also includes the firstLooney 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 six Bosko cartoons, most of which are on a disc officially devoted to Bosko and other early 1930s characters. TheLooney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2Blu-ray set (released in 2012) includes the aforementionedBosko, the Talk-Ink Kid andSinkin' in the Bathtub as extras on a disc of bonus material.

All the Bosko cartoons subject to copyright remain owned by Warner Bros., but the majority of Bosko cartoons have fallen into thepublic domain. Warner Bros. also owns theHappy Harmonies cartoons starring Bosko throughTurner Entertainment Co., asTed Turner bought the pre-May 1986 MGM library.^[14]

• Cohen, Karl F. (2004),"Racism and Resistance: Stereotypes in Animation",Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America, McFarland & Company,ISBN 978-0786420322
• Lindvall, Terry; Fraser, Ben (1998),"Darker Shades of Animation: African-American Images in the Warner Bros. Cartoon", in Sandler, Kevin S. (ed.),Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation, Rutgers University Press,ISBN 978-0813525389

• Barrier, Michael (1999):Hollywood Cartoons. Oxford University Press.
• Maltin, Leonard (1987):Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Penguin Books.
• Schneider, Steve (1999):That's All Folks!: The Art of Warner Bros. Animation. Barnes and Noble Books.
• Beck, Jerry and Friedwald, Will (1989):Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Company.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toBosko.

Wikiquote has quotations related toBosko.

• Bosko at Toonzone.net
• Bosko atDon Markstein's Toonopedia.Archived from the original on February 22, 2018.

• Looney Tunes characters
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon characters
• Fictional musicians
• African-American characters in films
• Male characters in animation
• Film characters introduced in 1929
• Warner Bros. cartoon characters
• Bosko films
• Animated characters introduced in 1929
• Characters created by Rudolf Ising

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