I Love to Singa (Gogo Dancer)

Director: Fred “Tex” Avery

Summary: Another early Tex Avery cartoon that doesn’t feel in-character for him, but, unlike “Page Miss Glory,” Tex probably didn’t hate this one as much. This one is the story of an owl family that prides itself in classical music and opera, but are left reeling when one of their children is a jazz singer (back then, jazz was seen with the same disdain as rap and hiphop in the 1980s and 1990s: if you were white and into that, you were a disgrace to your family or a race traitor/poseur). When forcing the jazz singing son (named Owl Jolson) to sing opera doesn’t work, Owl gets thrown out and decides to make it on his own as a jazz singer. His first gig: a radio amateur hour, where anyone who doesn’t win over Jack Bunny (a very common pun name on comedian Jack Benny) gets rejected and ejected from the studio.

And if this short still isn’t familiar to you, the sound clip of Owl Jolson singing the title song was used on the very first episode of Comedy Central’s South Park ("Cartman Gets an Anal Probe") when Cartman is controlled by the anal probe and the cows use alien tech to make Officer Barbrady sing.

The Channel: TNT (on The Rudy and Gogo World Famous Cartoon Show)

Part(s) Edited: Two scenes were cut for time (as there wasn’t anything offensive about the two scenes cut):

1) After Owl Jolson is hatched and shocks his parents with his rendition of “I Love to Singa,” Fritz Owl decides that the best way to “cure” Owl’s jazz singing is to force him to sing “To Cilia,” which doesn’t work, as Owl keeps interjecting, “I Love to Singa” in between verses.

2) When Owl Jolson runs away from home, he happens upon Jack Bunny’s Amateur (spelled “Amatuer”) Radio Show, where contestants keep getting gonged and put through the trap door for bad performances.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: The way I edited it on the video is probably not how it played out on The Rudy and Gogo World Famous Cartoon Show, but it’s one of those edits that Nickelodeon used to be able to do when it aired Looney Tunes cartoons: tried to salvage the cartoon and had a sense of humor about editing the shorts. If you remember Rudy and Gogo and how “I Love to Singa” was cut, then, by all means, describe it in the comments or email me. For now, enjoy the video:

Availability Uncut: This one is popular enough to be released on home media. I'm not going to list them all (a full list can be found here), but I am going to list the DVD and Blu-ray titles that have this short uncut, uncensored, and with original titles restored (if you've ever seen it on television, it was probably the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodie version):

• Looney Tunes Golden Collection, volume 2 (on disc 2)
• Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection, volume 2 (also disc 2, which would be the last disc on that collection, since Spotlight Collections were the scaled-back version of the Golden Collection).
• The 2005 DVD release of the 1927 movie The Jazz Singer (which I don't recommend, not because of the blackface on the cover being potentially offensive, but because the version shown is the 1995 Turner dub that might not have the original titles to it). The 2013 Blu-ray release of the same movie does have the original titles to "I Love to Singa," so I do recommend that for the completionist Looney Tunes fan.
• Looney Tunes Collection All-Stars volume 3 (this is only available in Australia)
• The DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray versions of the 2006 animated movie, Happy Feet. (I know I shouldn't have included HD-DVD, since it pretty much lived and died in the mid-2000s because Blu-ray kicked its ass, but there are probably people out there who still have HD-DVD players for some reason).
• The DVD and Blu-ray versions of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection (volume 1, disc 2)
• The Best of Warner Bros. 50 Cartoon Collection DVD
• The Looney Tunes Parodies Collection DVD (most recent as of 2025; it was released five years ago).

Is It Available on Streaming and/or Digital Download?: For digital download, it’s on iTunes Video. For streaming, it’s on Tubi (as of 2025). Strangely, HBO Max (both when it started out as “HBO Max” and when it was “Max” and both the United States feed and the Latin American/Brazil feed) didn’t carry this one, and I personally don’t know why.

You Don't Know What You're Doin' (Suffering From Car Exhaust-ion)

 

Director: Rudolf Ising

Summary: In this, the debut cartoon of Bosko clone, Piggy, our title character takes his date, Fluffy, out for a night at the orchestra playing the title song. The date goes pear-shaped when Piggy mocks the orchestra for not knowing what they’re doing and gets a contact high from some heckling drunks.

The Channel(s): The edited version I found was from a channel called QTV, which could either be a channel in Scotland, The Gambia, or Pakistan. I’m going to go for Scotland or possibly The Gambia, because I can’t imagine a Pakistani channel airing this due to the sequence with the drunks (Pakistan is a Muslim country and alcohol anything is considered taboo to their religion).

Part(s) Edited: Light edit this time around: the part where Piggy’s scooter farts his exhaust in the snooty usher’s general direction and the usher finding himself in blackface and doing the Al Jolson “Mammy!” plea to the camera cuts off before the usher finds himself in blackface, going from that scene to the curtain that reads, “Asbestos” and the band playing as Piggy and Fluffy come in.

How It Plays With the Edit: The edit is fairly obvious…for those who’ve seen the uncut version before. If you haven’t or aren’t familiar with the recurring gags in the earlier Warner Bros shorts, you probably wouldn’t know the scene was there. As always, here is a video comparison:

(original version)

(redrawn, colorized censored version)

Availability Uncut: While it has been in the public domain since 1959 and can easy be found on online video sites, “You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’” has had two official releases. It was first released in 1992 on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc (second volume. It’s on side one of the disc called “Musical Madness,” which is an apt description of the short). Its most recent release was in 2008, on the sixth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD, on the third disc dedicated to the early black and white shorts.

Correction: The most recent sighting of “You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’!” on home media is actually as a special feature on the third volume of Warner Archive’s “Forbidden Hollywood” DVD collection, celebrating the racy and scandalous films (by early 1930s standards, though some of it could still hold up) made before the Hays Code cracked down on salacious content in mid-1934. The third volume features such films as Other Men’s Women, The Purchase Price, Frisco Jenny, Midnight Mary, Heroes for Sale, and Wild Boys of the Road. The pre-Hays Code era really knew how to title a movie.

The Big Man From the North (Born Under a Backside)

 

Director: Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising

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.

Hold Anything (Head of Mouse-hold)

Director: Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising

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).

Sinkin' in the Bathtub (Throw Mammy from the Car)

EDIT (2024): This introduction was back when I was going to group the edits by channel, not in chronological order. While the introduction doesn't apply to the direction I want to take the blog, I'm leaving it as is, because to do so would deny that the introduction never existed. On top of that, we have a generation of people who don't remember when Nickelodeon aired the Looney Tunes cartoons. It's a good history lesson, if nothing else.

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 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.

...And now, on with the show!

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Director: Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising

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.

Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid (Crashing Pilots)

Director(s): Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising

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's sake (and for those who don’t have a DVD player, a Blu-ray player, or a VCR/VHS player), I will provide a link to the compare/contrast video I made myself, but you (the reader) have to support any and all official releases of these cartoons (this will be a given for all future posts): https://drive.google.com/file/d/11zzOOEgsUJtzd9dPePxEyd85kCEf_LUF/view?usp=sharing