Sinkin' in the Bathtub (1930)
Channel: The Cinema Cellar
Date: 14/08/2023

'Sinkin' in the Bathtub is the first Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon short as well as the first of the Looney Tunes series. The short debuted in April 1930 (most likely April 19), at the Warner Bros. Theater in Hollywood. The cartoon features Bosko, and the title is a pun on the 1929 song Singin' in the Bathtub. The film was erroneously copyrighted under the same title as the 1929 song.

The name of the Looney Tunes series bears an obvious debt to the Walt Disney Animation Studios' Silly Symphony series, which began in 1929. Steve Schneider writes that this "immediately reveals Harman and Ising's belief that the only way to compete—or even to survive—in the cartoon trade was to cleave to the Disney version."

Made in 1930, this short marked the theatrical debut of Bosko the "Talk-Ink Kid" whom Harman and Ising had created to show to Warner Brothers. Bosko became their first star character, surpassed only much later by Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. Notably, this is the only publicly released Bosko short to feature Bosko's original blackface dialect provided by animator Carman Maxwell; the character would later adopt a more falsetto voice (played by sound effects man Bernard B. Brown and, later on, singer Johnny Murray) for later films. Bosko's girlfriend Honey was voiced by Rochelle Hudson.

The short was produced, directed, supervised and co-animated by Harman and Ising, with animation by a very young Friz Freleng and his friends. Leon Schlesinger was credited as an associate producer, and the title card also gave credit to the Western Electric apparatus used to create the film.

Frank Marsales served as music director, arranging the tunes to be played by drummer-bandleader Abe Lyman and his orchestra of Brunswick Records musicians. All of the songs were recently popular numbers in the Warner Bros. catalog, which added a cross-promotional aspect. Beyond the title song which is heard at the beginning and the end, tunes included "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", "Lady Luck" from the 1929 film The Show of Shows, "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", and "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine".

Production
This cartoon was first theatrically released with the lost Warner Bros./Vitaphone Technicolor film Song of the Flame.

This is the first publicly released non-Disney cartoon to have a pre-recorded soundtrack (in addition, Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid had a pre-synched track.)

Some of the animation by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising was lifted from some of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons they made a couple of years earlier.

In popular culture
A clip of the cartoon was seen on a 1990 episode of Pee-wee's Playhouse.

Home media
The short was released on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 box set.

Directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising (both uncredited)
Story by Isadore Freleng (uncredited)
Produced by Hugh Harman
Rudolf Ising
Associate producer:
Leon Schlesinger
Starring Carman Maxwell
Rochelle Hudson (both uncredited)
Music by Musical Score and Direction by:
Frank Marsales
Animation by Isadore Freleng
Uncredited animators:
Rollin Hamilton
Norm Blackborn
Carman Maxwell
Paul J. Smith
Ben Clopton
Hugh Harman
Rudolf Ising
Painted and traced by:
Robert McKimson (uncredited)
Layouts by Isadore Freleng (uncredited)
Color process Black and white
Production
company 
Harman-Ising Productions
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date 
April 19, 1930
Running time 8 minutes
Language English'