Sinkin' in the Bathtub
Tags: psychedelic, humor

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with Bosko, a cheerful Negro boy, whistling in his bathtub as the shower fills it with water. The song, appropriately, is "Singin' in the Bathtub." He plucks his toes and his nose to make musical sounds. He even plays the streams of water as if they were harp strings. The bathtub gets into the act, by rising on its feet and dancing around the bathroom, waving a bath towel and throwing sheets of toilet paper into the air as if they were flower petals.Bosko takes his pants off a nail, drops them on the floor and then pulls a hair on his head to lift the pants onto his body. He redirects the stream of water from the shower head to spray outside the window and then rides the stream out of his house.The music-happy boy pulls a huge harmonica out of his pants, plays for a bit and then whistles for his car, which he believes is in his garage. Instead, the anthropomorphic car exits from the outhouse, with its trunk door still open, revealing its bare behind. Bosko cranks the car, which twists it like taffy. The car untwists, spinning Bosko around. Bosko leaps into the car and takes off.The car chugs along as Bosko plays his harmonica. When the car reaches a field of tulips, it "tiptoes" with its back wheels as Bosko picks the flowers and stores them in his car horn. The background music is "Tip-Toe thru' the Tulips with Me."Bosko arrives at the home of his sweetheart Honey. She is also in her bathtub, singing "Singin' in the Bathtub." Bosko calls to her. She cries "Ooh!" in embarrassment and pulls down the shade. She pulls her underthings from the clothesline and then appears in an open window. "Hello, Bosko!" she calls down from the second floor.Bosko blows once on his horn, which blows out the tulips, allowing him to catch them and hold them behind his back. "Guess what I got for you, Honey!" A goat walks up behind him, smells the flowers and eats them, leaving only the stems. Bosko is shocked and then sad. He drops the stems on the walkway, and weeps."Don't cry, Bosko!" soothes Honey. "Ah still loves ya!" Bosko's mood immediately brightens, and he makes loving gestures toward his sweetie. The goat, unimpressed, blows a raspberry at Bosko and begins to walk away. Bosko kicks the goat, which sends its rear end flying in the air, up and over the goat's head. The goat walks under its back legs to get itself straightened out, bleats back at Bosko and walks off.Bosko takes his car horn and a piece of his engine, makes a saxophone out of it and dances up to Honey's house on her walkway, which sounds like a xylophone each time he steps on a plank. Honey dislikes the music and throws her bathwater over her balcony, which falls into Bosko's instrument. Bosko keeps playing as bubbles emerge from the saxophone. Honey is happy now, and dances around on the bubbles in mid-air. She jumps back on her balcony and swivels her hips until her skirt falls off. She pulls a beribboned hair on her head, which lifts her skirt back over her midsection. Then she dances on the bubbles as they pop, as she gently drops down to earth.Bosko, happier than ever, dances and slides on her walkway, which still makes the sound of a xylophone. Honey does the same, and then both jump into Bosko's car and take off.While in the car, the two lovebirds share three lip-smacking kisses before they encounter a cud-chewing cow on the road. The cow is distinguished by a pair of eyeglasses, a cowbell and an unusually large udder. Bosko honks at the car to move out of the way, but the haughty animal merely opens two of her teeth like moving panels and spits out a large glob of cud as if it were tobacco juice. This splashes onto the car and flattens it. Bosko angrily pulls the car back into shape. He pushes the cow's body down under her legs, which stick up like tent poles, and drives over her. The cow, shocked at this outrage, uses her back leg to twist her tail like a crank, which pulls her midsection back up where it should be. She walks off, throwing her head in the air and then throwing her behind in the same direction. This sends her enormous udder flying and hitting her on the back.Bosko and Honey laugh at the cow, but don't look where they're going. They hit a boulder, which sends Bosko flying out of the car and hitting the ground, causing him to break up into several tiny Boskos. His tiny selves reassemble themselves into one self, and then he catches up with the car, which suddenly poops out and flattens at the prospect of climbing a steep hill. Bosko kicks and pushes the car up the hill, but when he gets it over, he loses control of it, as it speeds down the hillside with poor Honey alone, crying "Help! Oo! Ee! Ow! Ee!" and so on.Bosko races behind and grabs the tailpipe, which pulls like an elastic band. He keeps holding on even while hitting various-size boulders, which again sound like the notes of a xylophone. He holds on even while being pulled over small trees. Finally he is tossed up and over the car, briefly flattening like a pancake in front of it, before returning to his proper shape and finding that the out-of-control car is chasing him. Bosko trips over a boulder and continues down the hill, sliding along on his chin.Now he's running again, and seems to appeal to the audience when he faces the camera and cries "Mammy!," which recalls the signature song of the blackface performer, Al Jolson. Bosko, and then the car with Honey, sail through a house along the hillside. When they emerge, the car is gone, and Honey is now riding in an out-of-control bathtub on wheels, which chases Bosko off the hill and onto a tall landmass shaped like an enormous tree trunk. It also has a long, winding road leading downward. The bathtub car chases Bosko to the edge of a cliff. He's forced to jump off; and as he does so, his screaming mouth fills the camera. The bathtub-car flies off the cliff, too, and Honey's screaming mouth also fills our view.Bosko falls until a tree branch just above a pond catches him. The bathtub with Honey falls into the pond. A splash of water rises up and forms itself into a hand that grabs Bosko and sets him in the bathtub. Bosko and Honey are thrilled to find themselves together and safe at last. Bosko pulls two cattails growing out of the pond and uses them to play the lily pads like a xylophone. Bosko and Honey hug each other as ducks surround them and quack with approval.

Review: Primitive, But Still Entertaining As Well As Historical.
As others have pointed out, this is the first official Looney Tunes cartoon to be released, so it certainly has historical merit.
I like it because it has the odd, early '30s cartoon humor.
It's hard to explain but because it's so dated, it has its own flavor to it, as Betty Boop did around this time.
Is it almost primitive-looking in spots?
Of course, but it was made at the beginning of sound being heard on screen and, well, it's over 75 years old so that's what you get.
Frankly, in an innocent basic way, the cartoons of this period offer something different.It's still innovative in that you see some great sights that only animation can give you, like Bosco switching the shower to aim out the window, then surfing on the spray out the window, then pulling out a giant harmonica - that's bigger than he is - out of his pants!
Outrageous!I don't believe I laughed out loud once during the eight-minute cartoon, but I enjoyed every minute of watching "Bosco" and his girlfriend and thought there were a lot of "cute" things in here.
It got a little repetitive near the end but overall had enough sight gags to still call the whole thing "entertaining." That's not a bad way to start off the famous "Looney Tunes.".
I hate (and I really mean HATE, which is odd of me) to say that this cartoon is slightly racist..
In this Looney Tunes short, the first Looney Tunes short ever made (the first proper one anyway), the main characters, Bosko and Honey, are black people.
This makes watching the cartoon very sad, because Bosko and Honey are portrayed more as animals than people (otherwise it would not be a big deal at all).
You grow to love them, but I cannot come over the fact that I am watching cartoon PEOPLE rather than cartoon ANIMALS.
Even though I am seethingly against racism, I cannot help but love this cartoon (like a few other racist Looney Tunes shorts, but not in the same way).Anyhow, in this very odd (for today's standards) cartoon, there are two characters called Bosko and Honey.
They are both black people, Bosko is a person who manages to make an instrument out of everything and Honey is his sweet sweetheart.
They both go out together and find themselves in some quite turbulent adventures, but everything becomes all right in the end and shows that (not avoiding the cliché) love always finds a way.
:-)I loved this short because I found Bosko and Honey such cute characters, I liked the "oddness" of the episode and I enjoyed the old type of slapstick involved (which ran through both Looney Tunes and Walt Disney's cartoons at the same time, in very similar ways).I recommend "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" to people who can understand the racism of this episode and not let it spoil the short, and to cartoon historians.
It is worth it for every Looney Tunes fan to watch just for the fact that this was the first Looney Tunes cartoon (which was a series that ran until 1969).
Enjoy "Sinkin' in the Bathtub"!
:-)8 and a half out of ten..
In this first Looney Tunes offering, we meet Bosco.
I don't know if he is intended to be a monkey or a black person.
I hope it's the former.
He takes a really interesting bath (quite creative) and heads off in his car to meet his girlfriend.
Things don't go so well, as obstacles along the way keep them from having comfortable date.
For starters, he brings her tulips but a goat eats them when he isn't looking.
All in all, decent animation and music..
Interesting from a historical standpoint and a decent cartoon on its own.
Like Bosko's debut/pilot cartoon 'Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid', 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' is interesting historically, with it being the first official Looney Tunes cartoon.
It is also fascinating to see Loone Tunes in their early days before the creation of more compelling characters and funnier and more creative cartoons.Again like 'Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid', 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' is an decent cartoon on its own, not bad but not much to get excited about.
The story is paper thin and has its slow stretches, including an overly-sentimental moment with Bosko grieving over flowers, also getting a little repetitive towards the end.
Bosko and Honey while cute do lack personality somewhat outside of being stereotypes.However, the animation is not bad at all, not exactly refined but fluid and crisp enough with some nice detail.
The music is suitably bubbly and lush, with clever use of pre-existing material.There are some amusing moments, especially with the car, the sound is not as static as before, the cartoon is very cute without being too much and it is hard not to feel cheerful or smile at least while watching.In summary, decent but not great, worth seeing for historical interest.
7/10 Bethany Cox. An odd beginning.
Sinkin' in the Bathtub (1930) was the first of the Looney Tunes series.
It stars Bosko, a relatively unknown cartoon character later to be eclipsed by characters such as Porky, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny.This short is derivative of the contemporary Mickey Mouse series, which was at the height of its popularity in the early 1930s.
Gags such as the cow shaking its utter in disgust or the goat which accompanies Bosko to his girlfriend's home are directly taken from Disney works going as far back as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in the late silent era.That being said, Sinkin' in the Bathtub is a cute but not essential short.
A better introduction to Bosko would be Bosko's Picture Show (1933), which is funnier and very pre-code in its sensibilities..
A charming start to a truly great story.
As an animation nut, the truly significant moments in animation history always make my heart swell and my pulse race.
'Gertie the Dinosaur' genuinely makes me tear up.
So it was perhaps inevitable that I would enjoy Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising's 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' since it is the first ever Looney Tune(not counting the short pilot film 'Bosko The Talk Ink Kid').
Animated by the great Friz Freleng, 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' is surprisingly enjoyable on its own merits.
It quickly establishes a bawdier atmosphere than previous cartoons (completely naked characters, a dance involving toilet paper, a shot of a bra and a cow with an enormous, pendulous udder) which would come to characterise Warner Bros.
animation.
It also establishes a sense of enormous inventiveness instantly when lead character Bosko plays his shower like a harp.
The subsequent story is thin on plot (Bosko visits his girlfriend Honey and they go for a drive encountering some very mild danger) but there are plenty of funny moments, my favourite being Bosko's anthropomorphic car unexpectedly emerging for a distant shed instead of the garage.
If the short ever tends towards the dull, there's always the sense of "I'm watching the first ever Looney Tune" to get you through the weak patches, Surprisingly, these are few and far between (Bosko crying after a goat eats his flowers is a little saccharine but otherwise there's little that comes to mine) and while there was still a long way to go before the recognised Warner style was achieved, 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' is a charming start to a truly great story.
Bosko's climactic intonation of the soon to be iconic phrase 'That's All Folks' will surely floor any animation fanatic..
The first official Looney Tunes release and a rather good (if a bit odd) short.
This is the first official Looney Tunes short (there was a demonstration short, called Bosko the Talk-ink Kid, that served as a pilot and got the ball rolling and is actually a more interesting short than this one is, in some respects) and it has the first recurring character, Bosko.
As characters go, Bosko is average-not the best, but not the worst either.
The main problem with Bosko shorts is the sameness of them.
They have some very amusing and occasionally clever bits, but a lot of the gags are repeated ad tedium.
I want to talk about some of the things happening in the short, so there may be spoilers below: Almost anything can be a musical instrument in a Bosko short (and often is).
The short begins with Bosko in the bathtub, with Bosko humming the song, "Singing In the Bathtub" and playing various "musical" instruments and eventually dancing, where the bathtub also starts dancing as well.
Bosko gets dressed and goes to his garage to get his car, which is in the out-house.
He drives over to his girlfriend Honey's place and she too is humming the same song in her bathtub.
I'm curious to know just how much sheet music for "Singing In the Bathtub" was sold after this short came out.
But I digress.After turning various items (including steps) into musical instruments, they go off in Bosko's car.
After a misadventure or two, Bosko falls out of the car and breaks into several tiny versions of himself (a gag they would often repeat in later shorts with Bosko and other characters) eventually "pulling himself together" and chasing after the car.
In the end, everyone goes off a mountain cliff and Bosko and Honey wind up "Singing In the Bathtub" again-a lake!
This is on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 3 and is well worth seeing.
The Collection itself is highly recommended..
Though this is the first Looney Tune ever .
. it's clear that the die has been cast to proclaim Warner Bros.' new animated shorts division as America's Extreme Early Warning System, particularly for its upcoming 21st Century Calamities, Catastrophes, Cataclysms, and Apocalypti.
You can look at almost any snippet of SINKIN' IN THE BATHTUB and seem to hear a Morgan Freeman-like voice narrating from the Heavens, "Welcome to Trump World." From the cow spitting a giant glob of black chew at Bosko and Honey while blocking the progress of their touring car in the highway (obviously symbolizing the Environmental Rapist White House Resident-Elect Donald J.
Rump has named as America's new "Protector" of Mother Nature) to the automobile itself that turns into a runaway bathtub at the drop of a hat (representing Conspiracy Theory Promoter Michael Flynn, Rump's man to be in charge of National Security), 2017 portends to be so Topsy Turvy that it's likely to be the last to begin under our current U.S. Constitution.
When it's YOUR turn to sink below the swampy surface for the third and final time, don't be surprised to hear a Looney Tunes refrain echoing in your doomed brain, screaming "We tried to tell you so!".
Too much style over substance for my liking.
"Sinkin' in the Bathtub" is a black-and-white cartoon from the very early days of Warner Bros.
and Schlesinger Studios.
It runs for 8 minutes almost, a bit longer than they usually do, and features Bosko, a cartoon character who is almost forgotten today, but was somewhat popular back over 85 years ago and existed in several other cartoons too.
Unfortunately, this film here is an example of style over substance.
Story is basically non-existent and follows in the path of the animation and the little tricks the makers used here.
As a consequence, it is all about the wit and metaphors that were referenced in here, but it is not enough to make this video about Bosko and his girlfriend Honey a rewarding watch.
Also Mel Blanc is not on board yet, but then again voice-acting is almost non-existent in here and audibly it is all about the (failry forgettable) music.
Long way to go for Warner Bros.
till their peak.
Not recommended..
A great start!.
"Sinkin' in the Bathtub" is a very important landmark in the history of theatrical animated cartoons: it just happens to be the very first Looney Tune!
Starring Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid (created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising), this rather sprightly musical cartoon is full of cheer and optimism, and it was made during the Great Depression, when the United States most definitely needed a good cheering up.
In "Sinkin' in the Bathtub," which was animated by Friz Freleng (soon to become a director), Bosko joyously anticipates a road trip with his girlfriend, unaware that various perils await them!
My favorite scenes from this wonderful cartoon include the following (but don't read any further until after you have actually seen this film).
The opening scene has Bosko whistling "Singing in the Bathtub" and playing a few "instruments" while taking a bath; the bathtub itself becomes quite animated as it dances while we hear a brief snippet of Felix Mendelssohn's "Spring Song." Before Bosko drives to his girlfriend's house, he plays a short harmonica solo, which ends with "Shave and a Haircut." Bosko attempts to serenade his girl with a saxophone (made from parts of his vehicle), but she disapproves and dumps a tub of soapy water into the saxophone's bell; Bosko's tune changes to "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" as the girl wiggles her torso and hops onto each floating bubble.
Right after that, Bosko and his girl happily tap dance on a series of wooden xylophone bars that lead toward the girl's house.
And as Bosko struggles with all his might to control his vehicle as it rapidly charges down a steep hill, he gets smacked in the head (and groin) with rocks and trees.Bosko never did become a big star in the Warner Bros.
cartoons, and he may have secretly been jealous of all the recognition Mickey Mouse was receiving at the Walt Disney studio.
In fact, the Warner Bros.
cartoon studio had to wait several years before any star characters would emerge, but that didn't really matter.
"Sinkin' in the Bathtub" got the series off to a great start, eventually resulting in several decades worth of classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons!.
Sinkin' in the Bathtub is entertaining enough for first Looney Tune cartoon.
Sinkin' in the Bathtub is the first official Looney Tunes short independently produced by Leon Schlesinger in association with Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising for distribution by Warner Bros.
After Bosko has taken a bath while singing, the tub also does some dancing.
Bosko then gets his car who simply walks to him before they leave.
As he tries to serenade Honey in another apartment, the cow behind him eats his flowers making Bosko cry.
Honey tells Bosko she still loves him as she comes downstairs.
As they drive off, they encounter a horse who won't leave the road so they lower him below his legs and run over him!
They then come to a mountain road that goes around as Bosko falls off then splits into little versions of himself when he lands behind the car at the bottom.
Car then falls over a cliff where Bosko lands on a branch and Honey on a rowboat which takes Bosko as they play "Singing in the Bathtub" once again on some lily-pads with some frogs joining in.
After that ending we fade to the Harmon-Ising sign with Bosko in front of it saying for the first time, "That's All Folks!" with a dog licking him.
Since this is a pre-Code cartoon, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see some nudity of both Bosko and Honey (though no private parts were shown on their tops or bottoms).
Frank Marsales' music keeps things going and Friz Freling's animation runs smoothly.
A far cry from what we get on later Looney Tunes but as a start it's entertaining enough.
Worth seeing for animation buffs especially of all things Warner Bros.