When people think of Warner Bros. cartoons, they almost always think of the Looney Tunes. It started in 1930 with Bosko and Honey and later evolved into a collection of iconic characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, and more! They helped to cement Warner Bros. as an icon and pioneer of animation by fans, historians, and casual viewers alike. The Looney Tunes are so ingrained in pop culture that it’s hard to imagine a world without them.
But did you know that there was another Warner Bros. cartoon series so obscure that even animation historians hardly knew of its existence? So obscure that it’s been buried for over 90 years? Well, let me introduce you to Buster Bear, the almost first Warner Bros. cartoon that faded into obscurity.
WHO IS BUSTER BEAR?
Buster Bear was created by animator John “Scarfoot” McCrory back in 1930. McCrory was a WWI soldier turned animator and cameraman, working at various studios before creating his own in 1926. The studio produced cartoons centered around a humanoid monkey named Mike the Monk, which later spun into another series called Krazy Kids. Almost all of these cartoons are lost to time, though some clips from certain Mike the Monk shorts can be found online.
In 1930, Warner Bros. film producer Leon Schlesinger was offering a contract to a cartoon studio. McCrory and his studio came up with several shorts for their new character Buster Bear, such as “The Life and Adventures of Buster Bear,” “Buster Bear in The Opera House,” and “Buster Bear in the Spring Carnival.” All of these shorts were eventually combined into one short simply titled “Buster Bear.” After the cartoon was copyrighted and shown to Schlesinger, he rejected it for being too outdated. He ended up going with Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising’s character Bosko, the star of the Looney Tunes.
To make this story even worse, there have been reports of a hostile work environment at McCrory Studios. Rumors of long work hours and assaulting animators behind schedule have been spread, the only aspect of production history that still remains. All for a cartoon that was seen as outdated, but how outdated is it really? Let’s analyze the cartoon and find out!
THE CARTOON ITSELF
The cartoon opens with a title card with a similar style to the first Looney Tunes short. In fact, the music is the same! (“A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” if you are curious) Buster Bear walks onto screen, greets everyone, and dances before the cartoon fades in. Not a bad title card.
From the first shot, you can tell that the designs and animation style are outdated. Throughout the entire cartoon, there are so many scenes recycled and repeated, a common trope of early cartoons from the silent ‘20s. The character designs also reflect that decade, especially at the beginning, looking similar to the characters in Van Buren’s Aesop Fables and Disney’s Alice Comedies. I will give the animation this, though. It is nice and fluid with some well-drawn characters for most of the duration. However, the character poses are not dynamic or take advantage of their rubberhose limbs, and sometimes the animation is too fluid for a certain action!
The sound design is also fairly basic. The instrumental music serves as accompaniment, except for a couple of scenes, which is not very impressive compared to what Disney was able to do around that time. Sound effects are also pretty lackluster. Lots of the same types of sounds are used throughout, not helped by the rather repetitive nature of the cartoon.
The pacing is very slow. Animated scenes linger on for too long, the characters move like in space, and several gags are repeated! It makes scenes like the geese French kissing very uncomfortable and also drags out the horseshoe-anvil gag before the climax. Speaking of climax, the climax where a water pipe breaks and the opera house floods is rather nonexistent since the cartoon ends after that. This adds to the lack of a real structure, just gag after gag after gag, with the first third or so taking place before the opera house.
This cartoon is an overall dull experience, not helped by the outdated character designs and reuse of animation. The beginning and ending were the best parts, for me, because they creatively had the character move and talk onscreen. Harman-Ising’s Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid pilot from 1929, is miles better, even though it wasn’t intended to be a full-fledged short, since it creatively uses the medium of sound and snappy, rubberhose animation to capture the audience’s (or, in this case, studio executives’) attention. Even Sinkin’ in the Bathtub, released in June 1930 by Warner Bros. as the first Looney Tunes short, is miles better for these exact reasons! It’s a skip from me.
WHAT MAKES THIS CARTOON SIGNIFICANT?
Buster Bear had only one release in one theater on January 3, 1931, as far as we’re aware, before it faded into obscurity. However, the idea of another Warner Bros. cartoon series released around the same time as the first Looney Tunes had animation enthusiasts intrigued. Did the full cartoon exist somewhere in a storage shed? What would it have looked like?
In 2017, film archivist and cartoonist Steve Stanchfield revealed that, with the help of animation historian David Gerstein, the original film masters of the full cartoon were found and scanned in late 2016. Animation and lost media enthusiasts were thrilled by this discovery! They were getting closer and closer to viewing it for themselves!
In 2022, silent clips of the cartoon were uploaded online, but they didn’t gather as much attention as the full release of the cartoon on Stanchfield’s YouTube channel, uploaded on December 11, 2024. The full cartoon is out online for anyone to view! It was a historic moment for animation fans, especially since it has ties to Looney Tunes history. Granted, they also found out that the cartoon was boring and “didn’t really pass muster,” as Stanchfield put it.
Although Buster Bear is a rather outdated cartoon that is really dull compared to Disney and other studios, it is important for the history of Warner Bros. in the animation industry. Warner Bros. was one of the biggest studios in Hollywood back then, so it’s right to assume that there might’ve been competition from other studios to win the contract for producing an animated series. Of course, Buster Bear didn’t stand a chance against Bosko and Looney Tunes, given that Harmon and Ising were both ex-Disney animators, but it’s a fascinating cartoon nonetheless. It’s good to have for historical preservation, for it gives more insight into how animation was rapidly evolving as an art form, making examples like Buster Bear fade into obscurity.
About the Author
Stephen Q. Bero, or Stevie for short, is a freshman at DePaul majoring in Animation (BFA). He has made YouTube videos since 2016, slowly learning about video production and film techniques. His goal is to create animated cartoons based on the Golden Age of Animation, hoping to revive the cinematic aspect of the medium in a soulful, sophisticated fashion.
Read more at the Honors Blog.
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