03. Hold Anything (1930)

Release date: October 1930 

Series: Looney Tunes 

Director: Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising 

Starring: Bernard Brown (Bosko, Saw), Rochelle Hudson (Honey) 

The 3rd installment of Looney Tunes is loosely based off the film Hold Everything (which is now a lost film) and prominently features the song “Don't Hold Everything” as the centerpiece for the short, with Bosko and Honey dancing and making music to the song.

The cartoon opens with Bosko on a construction site, whistling and playing the riveter and other various construction tools as instruments.

He has a band of mice helping him lay some bricks (who all look like a certain obscure, unnoteworthy, hard to come by mascot I know—which makes sense, since Harman and Ising had previously worked at Disney). The mice all march away to the beat of the music as more dancing occurs.

One of the gags includes (rather morbidly) Bosko decapitating one of the mice and playing with it, sliding the mouse around on the saw until the two halves pop back together. I wonder what Walt would think of that.

More of the same dancing and music happens, when Bosko asks one of the mice to raise the construction beam. The mouse ties the rope around a goat and uses it as a pulley system. As Bosko ascends, he notices Honey typing away on a typewriter (again, to the beat of the music.) 

Bosko dances and whistles for her, prompting her to type out “Gee, you’re swell!” and show him the message.

Bosko plucks the suspension strings like a harp and uses the music notes that come out to bridge his way over to Honey, where he takes over on the typewriter and begins to play it like a piano.

Back at the bottom, the goat holding the beam in the air gets tired of the work and slips out from the rope. As all goats do, it sees a pair of construction whistles and decides to eat them. The steam from the whistles inflated the goat like a balloon, which Bosko uses to float back to the beam (which is still being supported somehow.) 

Bosko plays the goat like a pipe organ. As the goat starts to float away, Bosko, in an attempt to maintain a grip, grabs onto one of the goat’s udders. The goat sprays him with milk and Bosko falls to the ground, splits into a bunch of miniature versions of himself before coming back together for a happy end.

Not too much stands out to me with this cartoon, it’s your average cheery and charming musical short with some gags to accompany it. The musical score is pretty catchy, though! Again, falling into the decent category. Not bad, but not exactly riveting. I do like that these cartoons are so cheery and happy, though. It’s pretty hard to feel down watching them.