Sinkin' in the Bathtub

Name: Sinkin' in the Bathtub
Director: Hugh Harman
Genre: Animation, Comedy
Released: 1930
Duration: 8 min
Cast: Carman Maxwell, Rochelle Hudson

1930 Animation Comedy 8 minutes Directed by Hugh Harman

About Sinkin' in the Bathtub

Bosko whistles "Singin' in the Bathtub" in the bath, plays the shower like a harp, and rides the spray out the window. His car has gone to the outhouse. At Honey's, a goat eats the flowers he brought, and she pours soapy water into his saxophone so the bubbles make steps from the balcony. On the road a cow spits tobacco at the car and is run flat. The car goes over a cliff into a lake, and Bosko turns the date into a boat ride, playing lily pads like a marimba.

Cast & crew

More about Sinkin' in the Bathtub

Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising made it as the first Looney Tunes short and the first Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon. It opened on April 19, 1930, at the Warner Bros. Theater in Hollywood, with the Vitaphone feature Song of the Flame, and went into general release on May 25, 1930. Leon Schlesinger is the associate producer. Friz Freleng animated it, using some drawings Harman and Ising had made for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The title card credits Western Electric.

Themes

A bath that becomes a musical instrument
A date that survives a wrecked car
Songs used as gags
Bosko
Honey
bathtub
saxophone
goat
cow
cliff
lily pads

In film history

The series name echoes Disney's Silly Symphonies, which had begun in 1929. Steve Schneider writes that Harman and Ising thought they had to follow that model to stay in the cartoon business.

Music

Frank Marsales arranged current Warner songs for Abe Lyman's Brunswick orchestra. The picture opens and closes on "Singin' in the Bathtub."

Preservation

The copyright was not renewed, and the short is in the public domain in the United States. A restored copy is on the Looney Tunes Collector's Vault: Volume 3 Blu-ray. Unrestored copies are on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 (DVD, disc 2) and Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2 (Blu-ray, disc 3).

Notes

The title puns on the 1929 song "Singin' in the Bathtub." The short was copyrighted by mistake as 1931, under that song title.
Carman Maxwell speaks Bosko in the blackface dialect used in the unreleased pilot. Rochelle Hudson speaks Honey. Later Bosko shorts use a different voice.
Frank Marsales arranged Warner songs, including "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," "Lady Luck" from The Show of Shows, and "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine," played by Abe Lyman and his orchestra. A cow walks off to Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance.
In the original track Bosko shouts "mammy" when the car runs away.

Scenes

The bathtub stands up and dances, and Bosko rides the shower spray out the window.
Honey's soapy water turns Bosko's saxophone into a staircase of bubbles.
After the car drops into a lake, Bosko plays the lily pads like a marimba.