16. Bosko Shipwrecked! (1931)

After two Merrie Melodies cartoons in a row, we return with Bosko again and this time the cartoon is only directed by Hugh Harman. There appears to be a pattern that goes on since then; Hugh Harman directs the remaining Looney Tunes cartoons until 1933, and Rudolf Ising directs the remaining Merrie Melodies until 1933, before they both left for MGM, they still produced both Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Any way, here is the cartoon Bosko Shipwrecked.

Warner cartoon no. 15.
Release date: September 19, 1931.
Series: Looney Tunes.
Directed by: Hugh Harman.
Producers: Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and Leon Schlesinger (associate).
Cast unknown.
Animation: Rollin Hamilton and Larry Martin.
Musical Score: Frank Marsales.

The cartoon starts off with a storm, with huge waves and thunderbolts through the screen, and even the massive waves wipe off the screen credits on the screen with the picture. It starts with a ship that is involved in danger, the ship goes through very choppy oceans, and there are huge waves, and then the waves gets smaller and the ship slides down.

The scenes cuts to Bosko who is steering the ship, and he is having some troubles in trying to control the ship, while there is a lookout on a  crow's nest, at one point the lookout is nearly blown off the ship, and he hangs on to the ship, and then the wind is  so powerful that his dungarees nearly blow off and we see his pants. Bosko is trying to catch up with the wheel and continue to steer the ship, and then his whole body turns and turns around the wheel, and he bounces off, and is pushed back at the waves from on the port and starboard sides of the ship, and then gets hit by the wheels in his crotch, and screams. The waves fill up the entire scream.

The next morning, it appears that Bosko was been washed up into an unknown desert island, and he is sleeping on the beach, he was shipwrecked. There are two monkeys from a tree, and they go down and investigate on what creature is that sleeping down there. The monkeys steal Bosko's hat, and the female monkey puts it on, and the male monkey tries to grab it, but she smacks his palm, and the boy monkey complains, and climb back up a tree and he blows a raspberry at her.

The two monkeys are dancing up in a tree with Bosko's hat on, and they are shaking the branch. They don't realize that there is an egg in a nest that falls off, due to the reaction of the shaking going on by the two monkeys. The egg falls off and lands in Bosko's face, Bosko wipes off the yolk in his face and wakes up and says "Where am I?"

Meanwhile there is an annoying parrot that continuously laughs at Bosko because an egg landed in Bosko's face, and then the parrot repeatedly shouts "Yolk on you!" at Bosko. The parrot continues to annoy Bosko with all the laughter that IS annoying. As the parrot is still laughing hysterically, he falls off the branch of a tree and lands into a funny shaped log and all of its feathers fall out, and the parrot is naked. The parrot puts back on the feathers, like putting on a jacket and then walks off.

That was in fact a rather random piece that turned up in this cartoon.

 Bosko laughs at the bird, in an attitude like "Serves him right", and after that; Bosko sees a silhouette lion that roars at Bosko. Bosko's in trouble as there is a lion that's going to eat him, and he runs off scared. There is a chase sequence between Bosko and the lion, and it seems in the shots that the lion is just very close to Bosko, but just never grabs him on time. There is some excellent animation going on where the lion turns around to chase Bosko (as Bosko turned around) and it's done during a close-up, and that's some good staging there. The shot of the lion chasing Bosko (in the framegrabs) was briefly used in the opening credits with a cartoon showing in a Futurama episode called Anthology of Interest I.

Bosko jumps onto a pile of stones while jumping through a pond, and the "stone" turns out to be a crocodile's head and he's about to eat Bosko, but he hangs in a limb from a tree, and the lion is about to make a jump, and the crocodile bites the lion with his huge mouth, with his tail sticking out. Bosko ties the lion's tail onto the branch of a tree with the crocodile hanging on. Bosko jumps out of the tree and lands onto a piece of land to see where he's going, and then he see s a rowing boat and he rows along, and then he sees a rock that leads him to land, and in order to jump safely (so he doesn't trip over while jumping over), he gets out an anchor and throws it at a "rock" that turns out to be a hippo screaming and the hippo screaming drags the anchor and Bosko to head back to land, and the hippo falls into a hole and leaves Bosko flying and curling and ends up in a village.

There is a lot of those type of gags when there is an object (a stone, rock) and it looks alike and then it's revealed to be an animal (crocodile, hippo).

Bosko lands onto a boiling pot and he screams, in which a tribe from one of the huts hear him scream and then a whole group of villagers around Bosko and they all want to eat him. Even a skeleton pops out of the cauldron and says, "Come in, the water's fine",  then laughs; and pops back into the cauldron. The villagers aren't very stereotyped looking (black looking) and appear to be some type of "inked creatures", however it's certainly better than watching Jingle Jitters a 1938 cartoon directed by Friz Freleng.

 

The village leader orders his bodyguard to bring Bosko to see him sitting in his throne, and then orders to "Boil him", and all the other tribes agree to boil him, cook him and eat him alive.Bosko remarks, "Oh yeah", and he brings out one of his guns and it turns out to be novelty, with a cork popping out. All the other tribes start to chase after Bosko.

The tribes start to chase after him, and Bosko goes back into the lake where he sees, what looks like a "rowing boat", and Bosko can't get it moving. As soon as the tribes are at the area where Bosko was, the rowing boat closed, into what appears to be a rhino's mouth closing and in threat to the other tribes, and then swims off. Bosko opens up a door from the rhino, and then he takes out the rhino's front horn, and he plays it like an instrument and - that's all folks!

This cartoon is not very interesting to watch when reviewing it actually. There wasn't really too much to say here, no specific gags involved, or anything bizarre happened. It was just a bland cartoon, with many of the gags where it shows a stone that reveals identity to an animal living in the water. What I have learnt is that since Merrie Melodies started, Harman and Ising separated in directing, with Ising directing Merrie Melodies and Hugh directing Looney Tunes with Bosko.

I'd also like to say that I'd like to thanks those who contributed to the site Toonzone - Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies: The Early Years where it has a lot of framegrabs and synopsis in all the Harman-Ising cartoons from 1930-1933, but it doesn't have any more on the later Looney Tunes cartoons, it's still worth looking at - and it prevents me from finding the character are actually saying, even when I can't understand a word.