Goodbye, Waves Barney Bear

There’s an early Yogi Bear cartoon where the smarter-than-the-average you-know-what is suspended in mid-air after some balloons break. He turns to the audience, waves with a sad look on his face and then plummets out of the frame.

It sounds like something borrowed from Wile E. Coyote, but we also find it pre-Wile E. in the 1947 MGM cartoon The Bear and the Hare, co-directed by Mike Lah and Preston Blair. Incidentally, Lah animated the Yogi scene mentioned above.

It’s a six-drawing cycle, with the first and fourth drawings (the paw up and paw down) held for two frames. The third and the fifth drawings are re-used.



Here’s the cycle.



And here’s Barney falling out the scene.



Don Patterson, Irv Levine, Ray Abrams and Gil Turner provide solid, though not spectacular, animation. The story writer is not credited.