The Bear That Wasn't

The Bear That Wasn't
Front and back cover of book
Directed by	Chuck Jones Maurice Noble (co-director and production design)
Produced by	Les Goldman (production supervisor) Chuck Jones Frank Tashlin (Tashlin had no involvement)
Story by	Frank Tashlin (also original book) Irv Spector
Narrated by	Paul Frees
Music by	Dean Elliott
Animation by	Ben Washam (supervising) Tom Ray Phil Roman Richard Thompson Don Towsley
Distributed by	MGM
Release date(s)	December 31, 1967
Color process	Metrocolor
Running time	10 minutes 21 seconds
Language	English

The Bear That Wasn't is a 1946 children's book by film director and Looney Tunes alumnus Frank Tashlin.

In 1947, a new audio version was issued by MGM Records: 78 RPM, 25 minutes across two sides, narrated by Keenan Wynn.

In 1967, Tashlin's former Termite Terrace colleague Chuck Jones directed an animated short film based upon the book for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Incidentally, The Bear That Wasn't was the final animated short subject made by MGM and the second-to-last animated project for MGM (The Phantom Tollbooth would be the last). This was also the last time that Tanner the Lion was used in a MGM logo. Despite being credited as a producer, Tashlin had no involvement in the short. Chuck Jones credited him as a producer, so if the film won the Oscar for Best Short, Tashlin would receive an Oscar (in those days, Oscars for Best Short were given to producers, not the director). Frank Tashlin was dissatisfied with this film adaptation of his own book, feeling that the film did not present its original message very well.

A bear settles down for his long winter nap, and while he sleeps the progress of man continues. He wakes up to find himself in the middle of an industrial complex. He then gets mistaken by the foreman for a worker and is told to get to work. To this he responds, "But I'm not a man, I'm a bear". He is then taken to each of his successive bosses (general manager and the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st vice-presidents), all of whom tell him their own version of him being a "silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat", reaching all the way up to an elderly president (who in the animated version is depicted as a dwarf whose face is never seen) of the factory who concludes he cannot be a bear because "bears are only in a zoo or a circus; they're never inside a factory".

The bear is, by the president and his employees, taken to the zoo and hopes to gain support from his own species, but even the zoo bears claim that he is not a bear, because if he was "he would be inside the cage here with us" (in the animated version, a bear cub also repeats the exact same claim of the bear being a "silly man"). Eventually he concludes that he must be a "silly man", and works hard at the factory to the satisfaction of the foreman and the other bosses all of whom shake hands as the bear works. However, when winter comes again and he was freezing in the cold snow, he wishes that he was a bear, but in the end discards his human items and finds a cave and enters, feeling comfortable and bear-like once more. As the bear is sleeping, he reflects on the events of the year, as the narrator concludes that even though all the bosses and even the zoo bears disbelieved that he was a bear, "that did not make it so; the truth is he was not a silly man...and he was not a silly bear, either".