Buddy (Looney Tunes) - Looney Tunes

Looney Tunes

Buddy has his origins in the chaos that followed the severing of relations between animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising from producer Leon Schlesinger. Without his animators and Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid, the star character they had taken with them, Schlesinger was desperate to build his own cartoon studio and maintain his contract with Warner Bros. He lured in several animators from other studios, among them Tom Palmer from Disney. Schlesinger told his new employees to create a star character for the studio, and Palmer created Buddy in 1933. The character had a troubled beginning, as Warner Bros. refused to accept his first two cartoons, resulting in Palmer being fired and Friz Freleng being called in to re-edit and condense them into a single short. In the book Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, animator Bob Clampett is quoted as describing Buddy as "Bosko in whiteface". Despite these initial problems, Buddy would go on to be the studio's linchpin character for the next two years.

Music dominates in Buddy's world. The characters add visuals to the soundtrack and participate in gags. Buddy is usually accompanied in his films by his flapper girlfriend, Cookie, and his dog, Towser. The character would go on to star in 23 cartoons from 1933 to 1935 before he was retired to make way for new character called Beans the Cat, who became the third Looney Tunes star. Buddy's voice was most of the time performed by animator Jack Carr.