Bosko

Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko was the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger's cartoon series and was the star of 39 Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros. Pictures. He was voiced by Carman Maxwell, Bernard B. Brown, Johnny Murray, Philip Hurlic, and Eugene Jackson during the 1920s and 1930s and once by Don Messick during the 1990s. The character would briefly appear in shorts released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer prior to his retirement; the rights to the character and the Looney Tunes-era films are owned by Turner Entertainment Co. through separate acquisitions; the latter have fallen into the public domain due to their copyrights not being renewed after rights disputes.

== Creation and the first film == In the mid-1920s, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising worked for the Walt Disney Studios on a series of live-action/animated short subjects known as the Alice Comedies. The two animators created Bosko in 1928 to capitalize on the recent success of talkies in the motion picture industry. They began thinking about making a sound cartoon with Bosko in 1928 even prior to their departure from Disney. Hugh Harman made drawings of the new character and registered it with the U.S. Copyright Office on January 3, 1928. The character was registered as a "Negro boy" under the name of Bosko.