Goopy Geer is an

animated cartoon Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...

character created in 1932 for the ''

Merrie Melodies ''Merrie Melodies'' is an American animated comedy short film series distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was part of the ''Looney Tunes'' franchise and featured many of the same characters. Originally running from August 2, 1931, to Septem ...

'' series of cartoons from

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...

He is a singing, dancing,

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

-playing

dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the gray wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it was selectively bred from a population of wolves during the Late Pleistocene by hunter-gatherers. ...

who is considered to be "the first ''Merrie Melodies'' star", although he only starred in three cartoons.

History

The character is a tall, lanky anthropomorphic

with scruffy whiskers and long, expressive ears. He was "a wisecracking entertainer -- 'part comedian, part musician and part dancer' -- inspired by vaudeville showmen of he 1930s" Goopy's character was based on a familiar archetype of entertainment, as Hank Sartin says in ''Reading the Rabbit: In all of his animated appearances, Goopy is depicted as light colored, but in an early promotional drawing for his first cartoon, he had black fur. Goopy Geer was the last attempt by

animator An animator is an artist who creates images, known as frames, which give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, and video games. Animat ...

Rudolf Ising Rudolf Carl "Rudy" Ising ( ; August 7, 1903 – July 18, 1992) was an American animator best known for collaborating with Hugh Harman to establish the Warner Bros. and MGM Cartoon studios during the early years of the golden age of American a ...

to feature a recurring character in the ''

'' series of films. Like most other early sound-era cartoon characters, Ising's Goopy has little personality of his own. Instead, he sings and dances his way through a musical world in perfect syncopation. Ising only featured the character in three cartoons. In the first, " Goopy Geer" (April 16, 1932), he plays a popular

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

entertaining at a

nightclub A nightclub or dance club is a club that is open at night, usually for drinking, dancing and other entertainment. Nightclubs often have a Bar (establishment), bar and discotheque (usually simply known as disco) with a dance floor, laser lighti ...

. In Ising's other two Goopy films, both in 1932, he cast the dog first as a

hillbilly ''Hillbilly'' is a term historically used for White people who dwell in rural area, rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in the Appalachian region and Ozarks. As people migrated out of the region during the Great Depression, ...

in " Moonlight for Two" (June 11, 1932), then as a

court jester A jester, also known as joker, court jester, or fool, was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch kept to entertain guests at the royal court. Jesters were also travelling performers who entertained common folk at fairs and town ma ...

in " The Queen Was in the Parlor" (July 9, 1932). All of these cartoons also feature Goopy's unnamed girlfriend who debuted without her gangly consort in the earlier ''Merrie Melodie'' " Freddy the Freshman" (February 20, 1932). A month after Goopy Geer's first cartoon had been released,

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney ( ; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Golden age of American animation, American animation industry, he introduced several develop ...

released a cartoon called " Mickey's Revue" with a character named Dippy Dawg, whose overall appearance was very similar to that of Goopy Geer; due to the close proximity of the two cartoons' releases, there is little chance that either character was intended to be a copy of the other. Dippy Dawg would eventually be renamed to "Goofy". Goopy made a cameo in the

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 thirty-nine ''Looney Tunes'' shorts released by Warn ...

cartoon " Bosko in Dutch" (January 14, 1933), but after Ising left Warner Bros. that same year, Goopy and other recurring ''Merrie Melodies'' characters were retired, to be later replaced by such recurring characters as Sniffles the Mouse, Inki and the Mynah Bird, the Curious Puppies, and, on two occasions,

Porky Pig Porky Pig is a cartoon character in the Warner Bros. ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his celebrity, star power, and the animators created man ...

(a character who was more prevalent in the black and white Looney Tunes).

Later appearances

Goopy Geer had a small role in the 1990s

animated series An animated series, or a cartoon series, is a set of Animation, animated films with a common title, usually related to one another. These episodes typically share the same main heroes, some different secondary characters and a basic theme. Series ...

Tiny Toon Adventures ''Tiny Toon Adventures'' is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Warner Bros. Animation. It originally aired from September 14, 1990 to December 6, 1992, airing in syndication before eventually settling a ...

'' episode " Two-Tone Town" voiced by

Robert Morse Robert Alan Morse (May 18, 1931 – April 20, 2022) was an American actor. Known for his gap-toothed boyishness, he started his career as a star on Broadway acting in musicals and plays before expanding into film and television. He earned numero ...

. Goopy, reprising his role as the happy-go-lucky pianist from his first cartoon, meets the series' stars when they visit the "black-and-white" part of town. His appearance in this cartoon is updated somewhat and seems to be based on early promotional drawings where his fur is black rather than his actual cartoon appearances.

References

External links

* *
Goopy Geer
' at the

TCM Movie Database Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of ...

Goopy Geer
at The Big Cartoon DataBase
Goopy Geer
at

Don Markstein's Toonopedia Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...

Archived
from the original on August 3, 2016. * {{Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies Film characters introduced in 1932 Anthropomorphic dogs Looney Tunes characters Characters created by Rudolf Ising Male characters in animated films Fictional jesters Animated characters introduced in 1932