Summary:Bosko dances and sings with farm animals and deals with a pig family getting drunk on discarded booze. That and a brief scene of a duckling interrupting a dance to use the bathroom are the highlights of this short. It’s not much, but, given how much the Warner Bros cartoons were trying to be like Disney, those scenes show that this won’t last.
Part(s) Edited:Here’s something: a Bosko cartoon that hasn’t been edited on Nickelodeon to remove a character doing the Al Jolson “Mammy!” schtick. Instead, Nickelodeon cut the part where the father pig’s drunken solo is interrupted when he belches up an eaten corncob, dusts it off, flicks off a kernel, and puts it back in a trap door in his stomach. This wouldn’t be a problem, except:
a) The scene isn’t as gross as described.
b) Nickelodeon back in the late 1980s into the 1990s was all about crude and gross humor. If they weren’t, Ren and Stimpy, all variations of Double Dare, and the whole idea of dumping slime on kids and adults (which originated from the Canadian sketch show You Can’t Do That on Television) wouldn’t exist.
c) No cuts were made to the scene of the duckling squirming in desperation and whispering to his mom that he needs to use the bathroom or the piglets getting drunk and their father catching them and joining in on the drunken antics. Hypocrisy in censorship will be a running theme as this series continues.
How It Plays With the Edit:As with the “Big Man from the North” example, I have access to both the uncut and edited on Nickelodeon version for you to see how both versions play:
Edited Version:
Uncut Version:
Availability Uncut:This is a public domain cartoon (having been one since 1959) and you can easily find it online or on bargain bin home media. However, this one does have an official release by Warner Bros. You can find it on the sixth and final volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (it’s on the third disc dedicated to the early black and white shorts) or on the Blu-ray version of the Greta Garbo movie, Anna Christie. That version is an HD restored version, which is better quality than the DVD version.
Summary:Bosko and a pig traveling as hobos in a boxcar.
Part(s) Edited:As the blog title implies, this post is more-or-less a sequel to the one for “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub”, as both that cartoon and this one were edited on Nickelodeon to remove Bosko yelling, “MAMMY!” during a perilous moment (in this case, it’s during the three times he goes through a tunnel on top of a boxcar). And, as I said in the first one, for more information about how and why this would be considered offensive, look up “Al Jolson” and the 1927 film, The Jazz Singer. Surprisingly, the train pulling the hill’s “pants” down, revealing polka-dot underwear and the hill coming to life and being embarrassed over it wasn’t cut. You’d think Nickelodeon’s censors at the time would have caught that. Then again, knowing what we know now about how the kid actors were treated on most Nickelodeon shows, maybe they looked the other way.
How It Plays With the Edit:We’re still in “edits that make no difference since the cartoon is thinly-plotted anyway” territory. There might be a slight jump in the music track, but nothing too jarring.
Availability Uncut:No physical media or streaming release as of 2024, but it is a public domain cartoon, so you can easily find it online or in bargain bin DVD releases.
Summary:Bosko’s fishing trip turns into a string of scenes where he cavorts with nature.
Part(s) Edited:Another light one from the days of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon being a Nick at Night show. Bosko petting the fish until it spits in his face was cut. The Looney Tunes wiki says that there was a scene where Bosko gets bitten by the fish he pets, but I’ve scoured every uncut copy I could find and the biting scene doesn’t exist; only the spitting. If you care anything about people having access to correct information, please fix it. On top of that, there’s nothing overly-violent about spitting in someone’s face. Yes, it’s kinda rude and disgusting (especially since this premiered around the time when the Hays Code was written up as a guideline to proper movie content, but wouldn’t be fully enforced until 1934 and spitting back then was considered crude and disgusting enough to be a problem with the censors), but not violent. This is why I conclude that this was done either because Nickelodeon’s censors were really strict back in the late 1980s or it was just a cut made because the network needed that time for commercials.
How It Plays With the Edit:Since I can’t find evidence that this was edited, I like to imagine that the scene went from Bosko saying, “Ain’t that cute?” to the audience about the fish to the fish jumping out of his hands and back in the water. The cut doesn’t make or break the cartoon, since we’re still in the era of cartoons having thin plots and thinner characterization and only being a vehicle for visual gags set to music.
Availability Uncut:No official release as of 2024, but this is a public domain short, so your best bet is either on online video sites or bargain bin videotapes and DVDs that have compilations of old cartoons (and maybe a forgotten short film or live-action movie) that aren’t under copyright. Here’s the whole cartoon below for those who don’t want to go on YouTube:
There's also a redrawn colorized version of this short that exists, but, as far as I can tell, I never saw it on television. Here's a video showing the differences between the black and white and redrawn-colorized version:
Summary:Bosko is a Canadian Mountie whose sergeant assigns him the task to catch a wanted criminal, dead or alive. Like most cartoon shorts of the time at Warner Bros., expect a lot of music numbers and gags that eat up a lot of clock to cover for a thin plot.
Part(s) Edited:The version that aired on Nickelodeon’s Looney Tunes on Nick (the Nick at Nite version where it was mostly black and white shorts) cut the scene of the outlaw getting stuck in the saloon doors, Bosko grabbing the outlaw’s knife, and plunging it into his rear end. Despite this, Bosko popping out of the spittoon and firing a machine gun into the bad guy’s butt wasn’t cut. Did the Nickelodeon censors feel that the knife in the butt was more of a threat to be imitated? It did look like it could be easily done and knives are more accessible than guns, even though I live in America, where the gun/knife accessibility ratio is 50/50 or more, depending on the state laws and any precedent from previous court cases.
How It Plays With the Edit:Why should I tell you how it plays out when I can show you? Here’s how it plays out uncut (start point at 6:33):
And here’s a clip from the censored version:
Availability Uncut:So far, the only physical media that has this short are the DVD release of the 1931 gangster film, Smart Money, starring James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson and volume three of the Warner Gangster Collection DVD set. It’s not on any Warner cartoon collections (at least, not as of this writing), either in physical media or on streaming, nor has it aired on television since its days on Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon (it may have made an appearance on Cartoon Network’s Late Night Black and White, but I haven’t seen it there. Someone else can correct me on this). However, all is not lost. This cartoon has been in the public domain since 1958 and can easily be found on YouTube or whatever video website you prefer.
Summary: Bosko is a construction worker who impresses Honey by making music from everything in sight, including a decapitated mouse, a typewriter, and a goat filled with hot air. I don't know how best to describe it. The early Warner Bros. shorts were weird in their lack of a coherent plot and characterization.
Part(s) Edited: Nickelodeon strikes again with their edits. This time, they cut Bosko decapitating the Mickey Mouse-looking mouse (and the mouse trying to get its head back) as Bosko tosses the mouse back and forth on the saw. It's not as gruesome as it sounds (mostly because it's played for laughs and musicality), but I do kind of understand why Nickelodeon would consider it inappropriate for kids/family TV, especially back in the late 1980s, early 1990s when censorship was a bit more strict on the violence/dangerous behavior front. Thanks to OpenShot Video Editor, I did a recreation of how I think the edit played out on Nickelodeon.
Please note: I was too young to remember when Nickelodeon aired Bosko cartoons on Nick at Nite (but I do remember when they aired Daffy/Speedy cartoons on their daytime version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon), so this isn't 100% actual evidence.
How It Plays With the Edit: Besides a mild jump in the audio (and the fact that the early Warner Bros. cartoons didn't have much in the way of a story or plot), the edit doesn't make or break the cartoon. Get used to this type of evaluation. It will be semi-frequent.
Availability Uncut: Bad news: it's not on any official Warner Bros. DVD or Blu-ray release as of this writing, nor is it on any streaming service, such as HBO Max (or Max, as it's now known), Warner Media RIDE, or even Boomerang (whose streaming service has more classic cartoons than the actual channel). The good news: this short is public domain, so YouTube and other video sites should have it uncut and uncensored (and maybe, just maybe, you can find the edited-on-Nickelodeon version since there are people out there who want to upload the stuff they recorded on their VCRs back when that was common). Here's the full short on YouTube (the quality isn't the best, but it is uncut and uncensored).
For those who either weren't born between the years 1988 and 1999 (or too young to remember those years), there was a time when Nickelodeon was one of many American free-broadcast and pay-TV channels that aired the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons.
Nickelodeon's way of airing them was different. When it started out in 1988, the cartoons aired on Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon's block for old TV shows (around that time, it would have been programs from the 1950s to the 1970s that were in the Paramount library). The selection was slim: black-and-white shorts made before 1943 (specifically, the Bosko and Buddy cartoons, with some one-shot musical shorts), redrawn-colorized versions of the 1930s-1940s Porky Pig cartoons, and the post-1964 cartoons (most of which were the ones where Daffy Duck is paired with Speedy Gonzales, the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons made without Chuck Jones' involvement, and the desperate attempts at creating new characters [Cool Cat, Chimp N. Zee, Bunny and Claude, etc] before Warner Bros. animation studio shut down completely in 1969) were all that aired.
When Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon moved to daytime hours, the line-up was changed to get rid of the Bosko, Buddy, and one-shot musical black and white cartoons, changed some of the redrawn-colorized cartoons to computer-colorized, and added some Warner Bros. shorts that would otherwise not be available on network television: the Speedy Gonzales cartoons made between 1954 and 1963 when he was paired with Sylvester or a one-shot character, the Pepe Le Pew cartoons made after 1949's "For Scent-imental Reasons", the post-1948 Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, and a lot of shorts (with one-shot or lower-tier characters) considered "forgotten", "underrated", and "hidden gems" by the more hardcore of Looney Tunes cartoons fans. Yes, the more popular shorts were included, but weren't aired often (possibly because they were needed on other, less niche networks).
In contrast to network television of the time, Nickelodeon didn't edit for slapstick violence, suggestive humor, tobacco smoking, alcohol drinking, or use of dynamite or bombs. Nickelodeon's cuts were for profanity (a rarity, but it has happened), any activity considered dangerous and easy for young and impressionable viewers to copy, comically violent gags that were too violent by the network's standards, suicide played for comedy, ingesting pills or dangerous chemicals, outdated racial caricatures of African-Americans, East Asians, and (sometimes) Native Americans/American Indians, and references to World War II involving Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan and the Japanese (the more innocuous WWII references to things like buying war bonds, rationing food, and recycling scrap metal were left intact).
Other cuts done to the cartoons were to shave off some time for more commercials, and, in the case of a lot of redrawn-colorized cartoons, edits done to cover up the fact that the artwork was terrible and there was no way in Hell that the Korean animators were able to re-create the lively and over-the-top animation done by Bob Clampett (and, on occasion, Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Norm McCabe, and Chuck Jones, but most of the redrawn-colorized cartoons were originally black and white cartoons directed by Bob Clampett).
As you'll see, compared with other channels, Nickelodeon's cuts made more of an effort to make the edits for content as seamless as possible. There were more successes than failures and some attempts proved that whoever edited the classic cartoons for content at Nickelodeon at least had a sense of humor. However, that's just my opinion and you (the reader) might not feel the same way.
Summary:Bosko and his similar-looking girlfriend, Honey (remember, these were made back when Mickey and Minnie Mouse were popular and other cartoon studios tried to imitate that success) go on a car ride that goes comically wrong. Oh, and the first part has a lot of comedy set to the short’s title song. That, too, was common in the early days of Warner Bros. Cartoons.
Part(s) Edited:Yes, even the very first Warner Bros. cartoon was censored when aired on American television. But Nickelodeon’s edit was fairly light. All they cut was Bosko yelling, “MAMMY!” as his car chases him down a hill with Honey in it. For more information about how and why this would be considered offensive, look up “Al Jolson” and the 1927 film, The Jazz Singer.
How It Plays With the Edit: Since this is an early Warner Bros. cartoon where the plot and characters are thin and the shorts only existed as a kind of early version of the music video, there's no need to worry about any jokes being ruined or plot holes. However, according the the old Censored Cartoons Page, Bosko shouting "MAMMY!" was muted rather than cut, so having Bosko shout with no sound coming out may turn that scene into a non sequitur. I did a crude compare/contrast video just to show how I think the edit played out.
Availability Uncut: It's been in the public domain since 1958, so you can find it on YouTube and similar video sites if you want to see it there. For those who love physical media, this short can be found on The Uncensored Bosko DVD (volume 1), the third volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set as a special feature, volume two of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Blu-ray (on disc three), and on several public domain VHS tapes (for those who still have VCRs) and DVDs, particularly Inside Termite Terrace volume two (VHS), Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising's Uncensored Cartoons Collection volume one (DVD), and Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising's Uncensored Cartoons.
Summary: In what is considered the pitch pilot to the Warner Bros. cartoons (and one of the earliest examples of incorporating lip sync to sound in animation as well as one of the earliest examples of mixing live-action with animation), an animator (Rudolf Ising) draws a cartoon human on a sheet of paper, who springs to life in front of his eyes. The cartoon character (voiced by Carmen “Max” Maxwell) introduces himself as Bosko and shows off his many talents before Ising puts him back in the inkwell.
Part(s) Edited: You’d think a cartoon this short and only seen by Leon Schlesinger as part of a pitch to see what kind of animated shorts an executive would want for his studio wouldn’t be subjected to cuts, would you?
Well, it was.
While it might seem that the edits were done for time reasons (as there were a lot of works to cover within the hour [with commercials] and spending time on this would have eaten a lot of clock), I feel that some of Bosko’s dialogue was cut so it wouldn’t sound so stereotypically black, though kudos to Cartoon Network for not overdubbing Bosko’s original voice like they did with Mammy Two-Shoes from the Tom and Jerry shorts.
When Cartoon Network aired this as part of a special episode of ToonHeads about lost, rare, and obscure works from Warner Bros (mostly animated, though there were some live-action pieces and a couple that were hybrid), they cut Ising taking a drag from his cigarette (though they left in him stubbing out his cigarette in an off-screen ashtray), the cartoon started when Ising actually draws Bosko instead of when Ising is wracking his brain trying to come up with something, Ising actually drawing Bosko was sped up, Bosko’s line, “Well, here I is and I sure feels good”, along with some of Bosko’s dialogue with Ising was cut (the ToonHeads version goes from Ising drawing Bosko to Ising immediately asking Bosko what can he do), Bosko’s line, “Okay, boss. Watch dis here,” after Ising tells Bosko to show him what he can do, and pretty much everything after Bosko does a a stereotypical Yiddish dance while doing an a capella of “Khosn Kale Mazel Tov”. Cartoon Network’s version goes from the Yiddish dance to Bosko belting out a long note next to a piano that just magically appeared (it was from one of the many scenes that got cut) until Ising sucks him back in the fountain pen and puts him in the inkwell, which was also sped up slightly.
How It Plays With the Edit(s): For the casual viewers, the edits weren’t too obvious. This short didn’t have a plot, so you don’t have to worry about losing any story beats, and considering that a lot of films from the early days of movies have lost footage, you’d be excused in thinking that “Bosko The Talk-Ink Kid” either had scenes lost to time or actually was that short, since pitch pilots are supposed to be rudimentary outlines of what a series is going to be like. I’m pretty sure anyone out there trying to create a new animated or live-action series, whether you’re just starting out or have been in the game for years, will agree with me on this. If not, the comment section is there to correct me. Just be respectful.
Availability Uncut: The short is public domain, so you don’t have to worry about legality when it comes to finding it online. If you’re into collecting physical media, it’s not really available on an official home media release, unless you count the Inside Termite Terrace VHS from 1988 or the Uncensored Bosko DVD that came out in 2000. YouTube has it uncut. As for the “edited for time (and possibly content)” version that Cartoon Network aired on ToonHeads, that’s, if you can believe it, readily available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, volume one, or the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection, volume two.
For comparison reasons (and for those who don’t have a DVD player, a Blu-ray player, or a VCR/VHS player), I will provide video clips, but you (the reader) have to support any and all official releases of these cartoons (this will be a given for all future posts):
