Bosko's Knight-Mare (Falling Stars)

Director: Hugh Harman

Summary: Bosko dreams that he’s a Knight of the Round Table after falling asleep while reading a book on Arthurian legends.

The Channel: Nickelodeon (on the Nick @ Nite version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon)

Part(s) Edited: When Bosko first meets the Knights of the Round Table in his dream, the scenes showing the knights as popular celebrities of the day (Ed Wynn, Jimmy Durante, Mahatma Ghandi, and Oliver Hardy, with Bosko turning into Stan Laurel, Hardy hitting Laurel/Bosko and Laurel/Bosko whining over getting hit) was cut.

Opinion on the Edit: Yeah, there’s no real explanation behind his cut. Arguments can be made that the Ghandi caricature could be potentially offensive, as Mahatma Ghandi is a revered figure in Indian history, but I have a feeling that Nickelodeon left in caricatures of Ghandi in other early black and white Warner Bros shorts. Maybe there was some kind of licensing issue over the celebrity likenesses being depicted, but then all the celebrities caricatured here and in other shorts would have been cut. Since the only celebrities the Nickelodeon version allowed were the original Marx Brothers (back when Zeppo was included alongside Groucho, Harpo, and Chico), I’m going to assume that the cut was done because the scene simply ran too long and Nickelodeon needed to shorten the cartoon to make room for more shorts and, most importantly, more commercials.

How It Plays Edited: There’s an obvious skip in the audio track, but nothing too serious. That’s all I got.

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: Yeah, there’s no real legal way to see this. It was on television back when Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon aired this in the late 1980s into the early 1990s. I’m not 100% sure if Cartoon Network ever aired this, since they did air black and white Warner Bros cartoons, but most of them were the one-shot musicals. As of 2024, it hasn’t been released on DVD, Blu-ray, or streaming (either as part of a WB short collection or as a special feature to a film). Since it’s under copyright, most video websites will take it down -- operative word being “most”. While YouTube may only have it available as part of a review or to show how Nickelodeon edited it, DailyMotion has it uncut, as does Archive.org.