Dress like Cubby Bear and Watch a Cartoon as Well.

Have you ever dreamed of dressing like Cubby Bear? While it turns out you are not alone, or if this was 1934 and you were a little kid, you would not be alone. For those of you who are unaware, Cubby Bear was a cartoon character created by the Van Buren Studio for various animated short subjects. Cubby Bear was one of the many American cartoon characters of his era to essentially be a copy of Mickey Mouse. His design was extremely similar to Mickey and his personality is exactly the same. This was nothing new for the Van Buren studio, they had been taken to court by Walt Disney himself after using a boy and a girl mouse who looked exactly like Mickey and Minnie in the cartoons A Close Call and Western Whoppee. Cubby first appeared in the 1932 cartoon Opening Night. However while doing some research I found a rather interesting mention of Cubby Bear in a 1934 article in the Broadway and Hollywood Movies magazine. By 1934 RKO was interesting distributing both Van Buren cartoons and Disney cartoons, and so this is mentioned right after discussing the Disney classic The Three Little Pigs. The article states "RKO Radio Pictures also release the Cubby Bear, and his sweetheart, series of animated cartoons. So popular are they growing that one of the RKO officials has asked Claire Julianne, a well know New York stylist, to design children's clothes for manufacturing purposes; based on the Cubby Bear idea." The idea of Cubby Bear being this popular seems very strange today as the character is forgotten by almost everyone who is not an animation buff. As someone who enjoys the Cubby Bear cartoons, I would have personally liked to have seen these. Below is the article itself if you would like to see it.

Don't go away too soon though because we have a cartoon as well. Naturally this is a Cubby Bear cartoon, and one of the most interesting of the lot. Though most Cubby Bear cartoons were produced on the east coast at the Van Buren Studio, this was one of the two cartoons (the other being Cubby's World Flight) that were produced on the west coast by Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising. Van Buren loaned out these two shorts and it shows. Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising had produced and directed the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons from 1930 to 1933. As such this is a remake of the first Merrie Melody cartoon, Lady Play Your Mandolin. In fact the background characters are exactly the same and except for the two main character looking different many shots look exactly the same. You may note the title card for the following cartoon is titled a Brownie Bear cartoon. This is because the cartoons were rereleased under this name when Official Films sold the cartoons as home 16mm movie prints. So without further ado from 1933, here is The Gay Gaucho.
















-Michael J. Ruhland