Hold Anything (1930)

Hold Anything was the third short in the Looney Tunes series from Warner Bros., released to theaters in November 1930. Featuring Bosko (the star of Looney Tunes shorts of that time), it was loosely based on the lost film Hold Everything, one of whose songs, "Don't Hold Everything," features prominently in the cartoon. It was directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising, and animated by Isadore "Friz" Freleng and Norman Blackburn.

The film features Bosko working on a construction site with a goat and several small mice (all of which bear a strong resemblance to Mickey Mouse; Harman and Ising had worked with Walt Disney for several years before joining Warner Bros.). After several minutes of relatively uneventful working (marked mainly by a song and dance sequence in which one of the mice is temporarily decapitated), Bosko spots his girlfriend, Honey, working in a nearby office building. After some brief flirtation, Bosko jumps down into Honey's office, pulls out a piece of sheet music, places it in Honey's typewriter, and begins playing the typewriter like a piano (Bosko types the words "Don't Hold Everything" before launching into the song). Meanwhile, back at the construction site, the goat eats a steam-powered machine and begins to float upward. Bosko reaches out the window and begins playing the goat like a pipe organ. The goat begins to float away, and as Bosko hangs on for his life, he accidentally grabs onto a set of udders and gets sprayed with milk, distracting him enough to lose his grip and fall onto a set of bricks. Bosko inexplicably divides into six miniature Boskos and begins playing the bricks as a xylophone before he orms to his usual self and the cartoon irises out.