The Bear That Couldn't Sleep

The Bear That Couldn't Sleep is a 1939 animated short film, directed by Rudolf Ising for MGM as part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Barney Bear series. Released with the feature film 6,000 Enemies by MGM on June 10, 1939, the short is notable for featuring the first appearance of Barney Bear. Ising created the character Barney Bear in the late 1930s for MGM at this time, basing the sleepy-eyed character partially on himself.

Plot
As autumn draws to a close, and the first gentle blanket of snow covers the great brown forest, Barney Bear happily prepares for his nice long winter's hibernation. But water leaks, a loose shutter, a noisy fire, a teakettle left on, and some stray embers all get in the way and keep him up until spring.

After Barney puts a "Do Not Disturb until Spring" sign on his front door, he locks it and sets his alarm to go off at Spring. When he finally heads to bed, he ties up a leaking root but his hot water bottle starts leaking as well. Before he is able to cry about it, the leaky root he tied up also bursts, pouring water all over him. Soon afterwards his window bursts open, thanks to the wind, and blows a bunch of snow all over him. Barney finally boards the window up, and tries to go to sleep until the fireplace cracks and makes the kettle whistle. Barney pulls it from the fire, and the whine dies down, but when he looks at the kettle, it whines again and shoots him in the face with a puff of steam.

He turns to set the kettle down, but a pair of coals pop and dance into his pajama bottoms. He returns to bed, and whenever the coals pop inside his pants, he looks back at the fire angrily to try and hush it. He climbs into bed, entirely unaware of the smoke pouring out of his bottom. But, soon enough, he starts to sniff and smell the smoke, and after a good doubletake, he finally understands it is coming from him. However, he is too late, and the coals pop loudly and sharply under his backside, and he is sent flying in a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, and then back down roughly onto his bed. He runs to find some way to put out the fire as alarms blare on the soundtrack, and finally, he decides to unlock his front door, and then zips to the nearest snowhill and soothes his burnt rear in the calming snow.

All better now, with the fire put out for good, Barney can only watch helplessly as the wind not only shuts his front door with him on the outside of it, but fate smacks him, too, by allowing the locks to engage themselves on its closure. Barney remembers his window, but does not remember the barricade that he built inside of it, and when he tries to dive through it, his progress is painfully impeded by the wall of furniture and household goods. Barney takes two casual steps back, and after pausing briefly, turns into a whirlwind of fury and smashes clean through the barricade! As the camera strolls through his cave, the destruction is almost total: every piece of anything inside Barney domicile is smashed to bits, and as he stares in numb shock at the camera, a spring from his bed pops up and smacks him in the chin.

Barney crashes through his boarded up window and is still insomniac, mainly because of his record player which he destroys in seconds. After tapping his foot and staring at the ticking clock, Barney lies back down and tries counting sheep. His rough, exhausted voice counts out each number as he keeps a deathgrip on his pillow, his reddened eyes droopy and filled with spidery cracks. As he counts, the ticking of the clock grows louder, and the eerie faces of baaing sheep and lambs are superimposed over closeups of clock gears, springs and alarm bells. Barney count reaches the 500's, and then he ends up at "one million, nine hundred and seventy-nine thousand, seven hundred and nine-nine", and when he is shown in his bed, he is half in and half out of his dream of vast crowds of cute, baaing lambs. He finally falls into snoring, but just as he does, Barney awakens to the clanging of his month alarm, and spies with horror that a little buzzer announcing the arrival of Spring has gone off, as well. He hears the happy chirping of a bluebird outside his home, and he sticks his head out of his window to see its beauty. Shocked, he says simply and wearily, "Spring..." but then is hit in the head with more drops of water. He looks up, and discovers it is the melting snow from his roof, as the bluebird chirps us through iris out.

Soundtrack
Written by Johannes Brahms
 * Lullaby (Cradle Song)

Played in the score Written by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
 * Frühlingslied (Spring Song) Op.62 #6 (1842)

In the score for the spring sign

Reprised when spring arrives Written by Henry Clay Work
 * My Grandfather's Clock

Played in the score Music by Jimmie Rodgers
 * Sleep, Baby, Sleep

Played and sung on a record Music by Walter Donaldson Lyrics by Gus Kahn
 * Sleepy Head

Played in the score Written by Allan M. Hirsch
 * Boola Boola

Played on a record