no time for heroes
by Douglas Messerli
Fritz Freleng (animator), Hugh Harman (director) Ride Him, Bosko! / 1932
It’s utterly fascinating that the very first Warner’s animated short and its first “Looney Tune” creation was devoted to monkey-mouse-like creature named Bosko whose great love was a kind of Minnie Mouse look-alike named Honey.
In this very first eight minute work from
1932, however, Bosko rides into the Wild West, having at moments to carry his exhausted
horse, successfully making it to Red Gulch, a tough western town where, we’re
told through a title-card, “men are men nine times out ten,” precisely the
statistical percentage of homosexuals out of the total population.
Bosko is greeted with a shoot-out so
intense that it cuts one tall lanky hound dog down to the size of a puppy.
Bosko, himself puppy sized, finds bullet holes have turned his hat to a
something that looks like Swiss Cheese. But once inside the bar, he’s greeted with
a friendly-like hoot of “Howdy!”
Inside he finds a piano player accompanied by a banjo player and a fiddler performing a rendition of “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” that is so very appealing the man in town cannot resist a tap dance.
The piano player gives the end of the
song such an emphatic flourish that a foamy mug of beer sitting on the edge the
keyboard frame flies into the air, pouring its entire contents into his mouth. Clearly
this hooch is hot lightning, setting his stomach on fire and burning away his
pants to leave behind a tattered garment looking a bit like a pair of female
bloomers. He, suddenly revealed to have mascaraed eyes with long batting
eyebrows and lipstick-covered lips, acquires limp wrists and goes strutting off
like a suddenly just “gone queer” queen. Evidently, he couldn’t hold his
liquor.
Meanwhile, the stage is also coming round the bend holding the soon-to-be new girl in town, Honey. Around the corner, however, are the villains waiting to rob the coach, which roars so quickly past their gun-slinging leader that he and is horse are twisted into a coiled lasso.
The driver, once the thorns are our pulled of his ass, seats himself on the skeletal remains of his steed and heaves himself into town to breathlessly report: “The stage is robbed!”
How are we going to get Bosko to save
Honey, asks Isling? a question for which the other two apparently don’t have a answer.
Well we have to do something, Isling insists. But Harman declares it’s late,
time to go home, and three exit, leaving their very first creation without a
chance of becoming the hero who might save the day. No he-men around,
apparently, in this “looney” world to come to the rescue. “That’s All, Folks!”
Los Angeles, March 2, 2021
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (March 2021).
No comments:
Post a Comment