| Goopy Geer | |
|---|---|
| Looney Tunes character | |
 Goopy Geer playing thepiano in hisself-titled debut. | |
| First appearance | Goopy Geer(1932) |
| Last appearance | Two-Tone Town (1992) |
| Created by | Rudolf Ising |
| Voiced by | Johnny Murray (1932)[1] Robert Morse (1992) |
| In-universe information | |
| Species | Dog |
| Gender | Male |
Goopy Geer is ananimated cartoon character created in 1932 for theMerrie Melodies series of cartoons fromWarner Bros. He is a singing, dancing,piano-playingdog who is considered to be "the firstMerrie Melodies star",[2] although he only starred in three cartoons.
The character is a tall, lanky anthropomorphicdog with scruffy whiskers and long, expressive ears. He was "a wisecracking entertainer -- 'part comedian, part musician and part dancer' -- inspired by vaudeville showmen of [the 1930s]."[3]
Goopy's character was based on a familiar archetype of entertainment, as Hank Sartin says inReading the Rabbit:
In the course of "The Queen Was in the Parlor", Goopy Geer does imitations ofAmos 'n' Andy andWalter Winchell, as well as doing slapstick comedy and battling a villain. The gags emphasize sound, and not just slapstick, as part of Goopy's interest as a performer. This amazing range of performance skills links him and other cartoon entertainers to vaudeville performers, who often made a living out of displaying multiple talents. For audiences, Geer was recognizably a descendant of vaudevillians likeW.C. Fields and[Ed] Wynn.[4]
In all of his animated appearances, Goopy is depicted as light colored, but in an early promotional drawing for his first cartoon, he had black fur.
Goopy Geer was the last attempt byanimatorRudolf Ising to feature a recurring character in theMerrie Melodies series of films. Like most other earlysound-era cartoon characters, Ising's Goopy has little personality of his own. Instead, he sings and dances his way through a musical world in perfect syncopation. Ising only featured the character in three cartoons.[2]
In the first, "Goopy Geer" (April 16, 1932), he plays a popularpianist entertaining at anightclub. In Ising's other two Goopy films, both in 1932, he cast the dog first as ahillbilly in "Moonlight for Two" (June 11, 1932), then as acourt jester in "The Queen Was in the Parlor" (July 9, 1932).[5] All of these cartoons also feature Goopy's unnamed girlfriend who debuted without her gangly consort in the earlierMerrie Melodie "Freddy the Freshman" (February 20, 1932).
A month after Goopy Geer's first cartoon had been released,Walt Disney released a cartoon called "Mickey's Revue" with a character namedDippy Dawg, whose overall appearance was very similar to that of Goopy Geer; due to the close proximity of the two cartoons' releases, there is little chance that either character was intended to be a copy of the other. Dippy Dawg would eventually be renamed to "Goofy".[6]
Goopy made a cameo in theBosko cartoon "Bosko in Dutch" (January 14, 1933), but after Ising left Warner Bros. that same year, Goopy and other recurringMerrie Melodies characters were retired,[7] to be later replaced by such recurring characters asSniffles the Mouse,Inki and the Mynah Bird, the Curious Puppies, and, on two occasions,Porky Pig (a character who was more prevalent in the black and whiteLooney Tunes).
Goopy Geer had a small role in the 1990sanimated seriesTiny Toon Adventures episode "Two-Tone Town" voiced byRobert Morse. Goopy, reprising his role as the happy-go-lucky pianist from his first cartoon, meetsthe series' stars when they visit the "black-and-white" part of town.[6] His appearance in this cartoon is updated somewhat and seems to be based on early promotional drawings where his fur is black rather than his actual cartoon appearances.
