Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Bosko's Parlor Pranks (MGM, 1934)

Here's a Harman and Ising rarity featuring our old friend, Bosko. This was actually their first cartoon for MGM after leaving Warner Bros./Leon Schlesinger. This was also only one of two cartoons where Bosko retained the same design as in Harman & Ising's WB cartoons. What makes this cartoon interesting is that it is a pure cheater cartoon! Nearly every bit of footage is recycled from old WB Bosko cartoons. It feels like watching Bosko's "greatest hits" reel (in color!)... see if you can ID where H&I lifted the footage in 1934's "Bosko's Parlor Pranks":

3 comments:

Matthew Hunter said...

I notice a lot of reused animation right off the bat...mostly Robert McKimson's excellent tap-dance and piano-playing stuff from the last handful of WB Boskos, "Bosko's Picture Show" and "Bosko in Person" in particular.

J Lee said...

The other thing to note is the voice work on the reused animation is a lot like what happened 30 years later with the redone voice work by Mel Blanc on "Devil's Feud Cake" -- it's a lot stiffer than the voice work done in the original cartoons. The voices themselves also are more 'realistic' -- no falsettos here -- which kind of foreshadows the change H&I would make the characters' designs a short time later.

Yowp said...

Was something edited, or was that brief title card at the end with Bosko and Bruno as the MGM lion a mistake?

Did MGM need a cartoon right away, so this cut-and-paste job was put together?

Watching Bosko's slide-step is OK for one cartoon but it must have been used here from four different cartoons.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...