Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising (1930)

Hold Anything is the third short in the Looney Tunes series from Warner Bros., released to theaters in October 1930. Featuring Bosko, it is loosely based on the lost film Hold Everything, one of whose songs, “Don’t Hold Everything,” features prominently in the cartoon. It was directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, and animated by Isadore “Friz” Freleng and Norman Blackburn.

Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko was the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon series and was the star of thirty-nine Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros. He was voiced by Carman Maxwell, Johnny Murray, and Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas.

In 1927, Harman and Ising worked for the Walt Disney Studios on a series of live-action/animated short subjects known as the Alice Comedies. The two animators created Bosko in 1928 to capitalize on the recent success of talkies in the motion picture industry. They began thinking about making a sound cartoon with Bosko in 1928 before even leaving Walt Disney. Hugh Harman made drawings of the new character and registered it with the U.S. Copyright Office on January 3, 1928. The character was registered as a “Negro boy” under the name of Bosko.

After leaving Walt Disney in early 1928, Harman and Ising went to work for Charles Mintz on Universal’s second-season Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. In April 1929 they left Universal to market their new cartoon character.

Schlesinger saw the Harman-Ising test film and signed the animators to produce cartoons at their studio for him to sell to Warner Bros. Bosko became the star vehicle for the studio’s new Looney Tunes cartoon series. Bosko wore long pants and a derby hat, and he had a girlfriend named Honey and a dog named Bruno. He was also sometimes accompanied by Honey’s cat-like son named Wilbur and an often antagonistic goat, particularly in early cartoons.