Looney Tunes in the Thirties: Difference between revisions

==== This is Part One of the [[Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Filmography]]. This page covers all of the cartoons from [[The Golden Age of Animation|1929 to 1939.]] A total of 271 shorts were released during this time. ====

The [[Looney Tunes]] series was started when [[Harman and Ising|Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising]], fresh out of the former-[[Disney]] operated Universal Cartoon Studio, attempted to sell their new character, [[Bosko the Talk Ink Kid]] to Leon Schlesinger. Their main selling factor was being the earliest cartoonists to synchronize dialogue with animation--while synchronized sound cartoons were already on the rise thanks to [[Steamboat Willie]], Harman and Ising's experiment with lip-synch earned them Leon's distribution for their cartoon studio.

'''''Looney Tunes''''' debuted in 1930 with ''[[Sinkin' in Thethe Bathtub]]'', acting as a competitor to [[Walt Disney]]'s hit [[Mickey Mouse]] and [[Silly Symphonies]] cartoons, relying on Bosko and friends as recurring characters and thus allowing it to rely on low budgets. '''''Merrie Melodies''''' debuted in 1931 with ''[[Lady, Play Your Mandolin]]'', being a series of [[Animated Music Video|Animated Music Videos]] made to promote the Warner Bros. music catalogue, and relied more on oneshot stories and characters due to its higher budgets, at least until the late 1930's. Looney Tunes would remain the lower budget series throughout the decade, while Merrie Melodies would eventually upgrade to color in 1934--something Looney Tunes would not have until 1942.

The earliest Looney Tunes are very interesting to watch, if just from a historical standpoint. Unlike the rich main cast and one-shot characters that the franchise would be known and beloved for, Harman and Ising's characters tended to be [[Flat Character|uncertain, non-descript characters]]; Bosko was a generic [[The Everyman|everyman]] character who made instruments out of anything he touched, Honey was a run-of-the-mill cutesy pie girl ala [[Minnie Mouse]], Bruno the dog was a [[Pluto the Pup]] clone, and so forth. These early cartoons also had an art style that was shamelessly deriative of Disney's rubberhose art style--which itself was simplified descendant of [[Otto Messmer]]'s art style--but what set Harman And Ising's shorts apart from Disney at first was just how un-Disney like they were. [[Mickey Mousing]] aside, these early cartoons had very bawdy, raunchy humor that Disney was already moving on from on grounds of taste--crude humor like [[Funny Animal|funny animals ]] [[Lady, Play Your Mandolin|having a beer party]], Honey being licked in the butt by Bruno the Dog in "Bosko's Holiday", Honey pulling in lingerie while taking a bath while Bosko is watching in "[[Sinkin' in the Bathtub]]", a palm tree with [[Gainaxing]] [[Non-Mammal Mammaries|coconuts for breasts]] in "Congo Jazz", etc. They were also unabashadely cartoony, with lots of broad slapstick that Disney initially cherished, but was quickly becoming more restrained in. These early Looney Tunes also featured a self-contained world of funny animal characters, with human characters infrequently appearing--quite different from the Looney Tunes we remember today, which clearly take place on an alternate earth.

163 character driven shorts were made, while 108 of them were oneshots.

* [[Sinkin' in Thethe Bathtub]] (1930): First officially released [[Looney Tunes]] short.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kPhP3ZNw6A[Sinkin' in the Bathtub/Source|Sinkin' in the Bathtub]] (LT) 4-19-1930: The first Looney Tunes short to ever be released in theaters.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R78jw_Sk7hs Smile, Darn Ya, Smile] (MM) 9-05-1931: Second appearance of Foxy.

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