Happy Harmonies

Happy Harmonies is a series of twenty-six animated cartoons distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising between 1934 and 1938.
Produced in Technicolor, these cartoons were very similar to Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies and Warner Brothers’ Merrie Melodies musical series. They occasionally featured Bosko, a character who starred in the first Looney Tunes shorts that the duo produced for Leon Schlesinger. After the first two cartoons, the design of Bosko changed from an "inkblot" to a more realistic African-American boy.
The two final titles in the series were originally produced by Harman and Ising as Silly Symphonies cartoons. Disney originally had Harman and Ising create three shorts for Disney, but when they only kept one of their three shorts, the copyrights to the other two were sold to MGM who released them as Happy Harmonies.

List of cartoons

1934

1935

1936

1937

Non-officially Happy Harmonies cartoons

In addition, the following list includes additional short films that are not officially part of the Happy Harmonies series but are considered part of it and are therefore included in this list. The first of these shorts, The Discontented Canary, was labeled as A Metro Color Cartoon and the rest were released as one-shot cartoons. The last two shorts on the list were produced for Disney as part of the Silly Symphony series but were eventually rejected by Disney and later sold to MGM and released as one-shot cartoons.

Title	Directed by	Notes	Release date
The Discontented Canary	Rudolf Ising	The first cartoon produced for MGM. Oldest MGM cartoon to be owned by Warner Bros. via Turner Entertainment Co. Extra on the DVD of Evelyn Prentice.	September 1, 1934
Swing Wedding	Hugh Harman	Featuring the "Jazz Frogs". Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Bill Robinson, Louis Armstrong, Stepin Fetchit, Ethel Waters and The Mills Brothers are caricatured.	February 13, 1937
Bosko's Easter Eggs	Hugh Harman	Featuring Bosko. Final appearance of Honey.	March 20, 1937
Little Ol' Bosko and the Pirates	Hugh Harman	First of three "Little Ol' Bosko and the Jazz Frogs" shorts. Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Bill Robinson, Louis Armstrong, Stepin Fetchit, Ethel Waters and The Mills Brothers are caricatured.	May 1, 1937
The Hound and the Rabbit	Rudolf Ising	Extra in the DVD of Double Wedding.	May 29, 1937
The Wayward Pups	Rudolf Ising	Final appearance of the "Two Little Pups". Extra in the DVD of The Prisoner of Zenda.	July 10, 1937
Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals	Hugh Harman	Second of three "Little Ol' Bosko and the Jazz Frogs" shorts.	August 28, 1937
Little Buck Cheeser	Rudolf Ising	Final appearance of "Little Cheeser". Extra on the DVD of Captains Courageous.	December 15, 1937
Little Ol' Bosko in Bagdad	Hugh Harman	Third of three "Little Ol' Bosko and the Jazz Frogs" shorts. Final Bosko cartoon.	January 1, 1938
Pipe Dreams	Hugh Harman	Featuring the "Good Little Monkeys". Originally produced for Disney, but released by MGM. Rarely shown on television due to showings of tobacco.	February 5, 1938
The Little Bantamweight	Rudolf Ising	Originally produced for Disney, but released by MGM.	March 12, 1938

Home media

The only official home release to date containing a significant number of the Happy Harmonies shorts is the Happy Harmonies Cartoon Classics LaserDisc box set. The LaserDisc set was released in 1994 by MGM/UA Home Video, which predated the merger of Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner in 1996. The four-disc set contains 17 of the 37 Happy Harmonies shorts while the remaining 25 shorts include one side of six Barney Bear cartoons, the 1939 short Peace on Earth and the 1940 animated short The Milky Way. In 1999, MGM paid Time Warner $225 million to end its lease of distributing content owned by Turner Entertainment Co. prior to 1996. While the copyrights remain with Turner, distribution rights are now with Warner Bros. Pictures, Turner's current parent company.