Bobby Bumps Adopts a Turtle
About Bobby Bumps Adopts a Turtle
Bobby Bumps brings home a mud turtle and posts a notice: do not turn on the light, and do not make a noise, because the turtle is asleep in the bathtub. He tells his dog Fido to stand guard while he hunts for a safer spot. The cook swears that a turtle in the icebox will go into the soup. Bobby asks his father, who is calling shots at a billiard table, where a safe place would be. Pa answers "side pocket." Bobby drops the turtle into his father's pocket. A later title reads "Unsafe."
Cast & crew
More about Bobby Bumps Adopts a Turtle
Earl Hurd wrote, directed, and animated the short for Bray. The Bray Animation Project and the Internet Animation Database both date the U.S. release to 5 March 1917, in the Paramount-Bray program. The title card credits processes patented by Bray Studios and Hurd.
Themes
Making
Hurd was still inside Bray in 1917, turning out Bobby Bumps on the monthly Paramount release slate. He left the studio in 1919 and kept making Bobby cartoons for other distributors until 1925.
Preservation
A print survives. Wikisource transcribes the titles, and Tommy José Stathes included the short on Cartoon Roots: Bobby Bumps and Fido (2019).
Notes
- One title card is a handwritten notice: "Don't turn on the light in the bathroom.
- Pa's line "side pocket" is a billiard call. Bobby treats it as storage advice.
- The cook's threat is specific: turtle soup if the animal is in the icebox.
- Fido is the dog's name throughout the Bray series, which Hurd had started at Universal in 1915 before moving the character to Bray.
- The Internet Animation Database lists this short on the 2019 Blu-ray Cartoon Roots: Bobby Bumps and Fido, restored by Tommy José Stathes.
- Wikisource has published the intertitles in order, from a surviving print.
Scenes
- Bobby nails up a notice over the dark bathroom where the turtle is sleeping.
- He asks Pa for a safe place and gets the billiard call "side pocket.
- The turtle ends up in Pa's pocket, under the title "Unsafe.
Influenced by
- R. F. Outcault's Buster Brown
Also available
- Cartoon Roots: Bobby Bumps and Fido (Blu-ray/DVD, Tommy José Stathes, 2019)
Quotes
Don't turn on the light in the bathroom because there's a mud turtle asleep in the bathtub.
If I ketch a turtle in that ice box, I'll make soup out of it!
