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Sinkin' in the Bathtub

Sinkin' in the Bathtub is a 1930 American animated comedy short film directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. It is the first Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon short as well as the first of the Looney Tunes series. The short was released on April 19, 1930, at the Warner Bros. Theater in Hollywood. The cartoon features Bosko, and the title is a pun on the 1929 song Singin' in the Bathtub. The film was erroneously copyrighted under the same title as the 1929 song. It is now in the public domain in the United States as its copyright was not renewed.

Plot
The film opens with Bosko taking a bath while whistling "Singin' in the Bathtub". A series of gags allows him to play the shower spray like a harp, pull up his pants by tugging his hair, and give the limelight to the bathtub itself, which stands on its hind feet to perform a dance and wasting toilet paper. He sends the shower spray out of the window and rides it outside his house. Once he finds his car, which had left the garage to use the outhouse, Bosko goes to visit his girlfriend Honey, who is showering in front of an open window. "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" plays in the background. A goat eats the flowers he brought, so he serenades her to get her to come out; the goat attempts to humiliate him, only to have his buttocks kicked and leaves while feeling butthurt. A saxophone full of bubbles (caused when she dumps a bathtub full of soapy water into Bosko's saxophone due to his butchering of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips") provide a floating cascade of steps for her as she alights from the balcony. "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" accompanies this action. Bosko and Honey drive into the countryside, only to find a stubborn grazing cow. The cow hits Bosko's car, only to be humiliated by being flattened and run over, walking away to the tune of Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance Marches". The drive continues as Bosko is thrown out of the car, temporarily turning into mini versions of himself before chasing the car up a steep hill, then speeds out of control while Bosko collides into various objects that create the sounds of ascending and descending C major scales. (Bosko exclaims "mammy" in the original version during this portion of the film.) The sequence ends with the car plunging over a cliff into a lake. Always able to adapt, Bosko continues their date as a boating trip and plays the last refrain (a reprise of "Singin' in the Bathtub") using lilypads as a marimba. ==Production==
Production
This cartoon was first theatrically released with the lost Warner Bros./Vitaphone Technicolor film Song of the Flame. This is the first publicly released non-Disney cartoon to have a pre-recorded soundtrack (in addition, Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid had a pre-synched track). Some of the animation by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising was lifted from some of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons they made a couple of years earlier. ==Release==
Release
The short originally had a special premiere alongside the lost film Song of the Flame at the Warner Bros. Theater in Hollywood on April 19, 1930. ==Home media==
Home media
The short was released on disc 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 DVD set, and on disc 3 of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2 Blu-ray set. ==References==
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