Happy Harmonies

Happy Harmonies is the name of a series of thirty-six animated cartoons distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising between 1934 and 1938.

Produced in Technicolor, these cartoons were very similar to Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies. They would occasionally feature Bosko, a character who starred in the first Looney Tunes shorts that the duo produced for Leon Schlesinger. After the first few releases, the design of Bosko changed from an ink blot to a realistic African American boy.

The two final titles in the series was originally produced by Harman and Ising as Silly Symphonies cartoons. But when Disney only bought one of their three shorts, Merbabies, the others were sold to MGM who released them as Happy Harmonies.

List of cartoons

1934

All made in 2-strip Technicolor except where noted.

Cartoon No. No.	Title	Featuring	Directed By	Summary	Release Date
1	The Discontented Canary				1934-09-01
2	The Old Pioneer
3	Tales of the Vienna Woods
4	Bosko's Parlor Pranks	Bosko, Honey		Bosko tries to entertain a bratty cat while he (the cat) is waiting impatiently for an ice-cream cone.
5	Toyland Broadcast

1935

All made in 2-strip Technicolor except where noted.

Cartoon No. No.	Title	Featuring	Directed By	Summary	Release Date
6	Hey-Hey Fever	Bosko		The last cartoon featuring Bosko's original character design.	1935-01-09
7	When the Cat's Away				??? 1935
8	The Lost Chick
9	The Calico Dragon
10	Good Little Monkeys
11	The Chinese Nightingale
12	Poor Little Me				1935-05-11
13	Barnyard Babies	Coffee the Lion		The last cartoon featuring MGM's "Coffee the Lion"
14	The Old Plantation	Tanner the Lion		The first cartoon featuring MGM's "Tanner the Lion" Shown in three-strip Technicolor.	1935-09-21
15	Honeyland			Shown in three-strip Technicolor.	1935-10-19
16	Alias St. Nick			Shown in three-strip Technicolor
17	Run, Sheep, Run	Bosko		The first cartoon featuring the redesigned Bosko. Shown in three-strip Technicolor.

1936

All shown in 3 Strip Technicolor except were noted

Cartoon No. No.	Title	Featuring	Directed by	Summary	Released Date
1	Bottles				1936-
2	The Early Bird and the Worm
3	The Old Mill Pond
4	Two Little Pups
5	The Old House1
5	The Pups' Picnic
6	To Spring				1936-06-20
7	Little Cheeser
8	The Pups' Christmas

¹ Features Bosko

1937

• Circus Daze¹
• Swing Wedding - An abridged version exists, entitled Hot Frogs.
• Bosko's Easter Eggs¹
• Little Ol' Bosko and the Pirates¹
• The Hound and the Rabbit
• Little Buck Cheeser
• The Wayward Pups
• Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals¹

¹ Features Bosko

1938

• Little Ol' Bosko in Bagdad¹ (Final theatrical appearance of Bosko)
• Pipe Dreams
• The Little Bantamweight

¹ Features Bosko

Home media

The only official home release containing a significant number of the Happy Harmonies film shorts is the Happy Harmonies Cartoon Classics laserdisc box set. The laserdisc set was released in 1994 by MGM/UA Home Video [1], which predated the merger of Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner in 1996. The four-disc set contains 17 of the 36 Happy Harmonies shorts while the remaining 25 shorts include one side of six Barney Bear cartoons, the 1939 animated short Peace on Earth and the 1940 animated short The Milky Way. As of 2015, there has not yet been an official DVD/Blu-ray release for the entire Happy Harmonies series by Warner Home Video.[2]

External links

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