Barney Bear

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Barney Bear in the opening sequence.

Barney Bear was a series of animated cartoon short subjects produced by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. The titular character was an anthropomorphic cartoon character, a sluggish, sleepy bear who often is in pursuit of nothing but peace and quiet.

He was created for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by director Rudolf Ising, who based the bear's grumpy yet pleasant disposition on his own and derived many of his mannerisms from the screen actor Wallace Beery. Barney Bear made his first appearance in The Bear Who Couldn't Sleep in 1939, and by 1941 was the star of his own series, getting an Oscar nomination for the 1941 short The Rookie Bear. Ising left the studio in 1943.

Ising's original Barney design contained a plethora of detail: shaggy fur, wrinkled clothing, and six eyebrows; as the series progressed, the design was gradually simplified and streamlined. Lah's cartoons tended to have a hint of Tex Avery's influence and more stylilized, rubbery movements--which wasn't surprising, as Lah worked as both animator and co-director on several of Avery's pictures.^{[citation needed]} Avery himself never directed a Barney short. The last original Barney Bear cartoons were released in 1954, by then Dick Lundy was responsible for them.

Barney Bear did not appear in new material again until Filmation's The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show in 1980.