Featuring BETTY BOOP

"Made of pen and ink, She can win you with a wink..."

Betty Boop was everyone's heartthrob during the Great Depression, and lately we have rediscovered her innocent sexiness, thanks to her role in 1988's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" To top it off, Republic Video released a 8-volume retrospective (1996) of the bubbling  beauty of the cartoon world, and we can now enjoy her in sharp focus and clear sound.

In her early appearances, Betty was nothing like the sex symbol for which she was later famous. Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick fashioned Betty in 1930 after singer/actress Helen Kane, at that time a star for Paramount Studios (which also released the Boop toons). He took Kane's own physical features and blended them with that of a poodle, so in her early toons Betty sports long floppy ears and moves canine-like in her actions. In 1932 she was completely revamped, and now sported her button nose, spit curls, wide-sparkling eyes, flapper dress and garter. She was an instant success, spawning merchandise and a daily comic strip. Even though Kane was the initial inspiration for Betty, she never did any voice work for the toon babe. Betty's voice over the years was supplied by Mae Questel (shown with Rudy Vallee in the Paramount 2-reeler "Musical Justice"), Ann Rothschild, Margie Heinz, Katie Wright and Bonnie Poe. This had legal implications, for when Kane sued Paramount Studios for using her voice characteristics in the mid-1930s, the studio won the case by showing many people could do the Boop voice. Alas, Betty's sex appeal became her undoing by the mid-1930s, with stricter censorship codes being enforced against cartoons. Betty's garter, short skirt and decolletage were gone, undermining her appeal. Bimbo and Ko-Ko, her Fleischer costars who had come out of retirement from the silent era, were also gone. She did not survive the decade.

But what remains are more than 120 timeless toons, full of 1930s sensitivities in music, race, politics, sex and culture. Betty Boop starred with some of the biggest music stars of her day: Rudy Vallee, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Rubinoff and The Royal Samoans appeared in one form or another with Betty. These wonderful toons are definitely the forerunners of today's music videos. In "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You," Armstrong appears live-action with his band and as a sort-of menacing giant head chasing Ko-Ko and Bimbo. Betty does a duet with Calloway in "The Old Man Of The Mountain," and her funeral in "Snow White" affords a rotoscoped Calloway the chance to dance to the blues tune "St. James Infirmary." Betty also did impersonations of President Herbert Hoover and Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith ("Betty Boop For President" in 1932) and entertainers Fanny Brice and Maurice Chevalier. She even became a tanned South Seas beauty for "Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle." Betty's attraction was in her assertiveness: though she almost always threatened by some evil or danger, she calmly triumphed over adversity either through her own wits or with the aid of others. She was a likeable, saucy woman who loved to party but did not shy away from working, even the most menial of tasks. She rewarded her friends and won over her enemies. Betty's friends included Fleischer veterans Bimbo and Ko-Ko, and one of her most mischevious allies was Grampy, the inventor with the light-bulb mortar board hat who solved impossible dilemmas with homemade solutions that even McGyver would envy.

The Betty Boop cartoons were all done in glorious black-and-white, with one notable exception. In the mid-1930s, Fleischer Studios launched a new series in color called, appropriately enough, Color Classics. The first cartoon in the series featured Betty as the namesake heroine in "Poor Cinderella." This was her only appearance in color, and in it she and the Prince are serenaded by none other than Rudy Vallee at the ball. Here we see her and the Prince tripping the light fantastic as her two evil stepsisters fairly boil in their own jealous juices. Notice how the artists even kept the familiar garter in Cinderella's fancy ball attire. The next time Betty appeared in color was more than 50 years later, in a television special called "The Romance of Betty Boop" in 1985. She also was in black-and-white as a waitress in 1988's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" There are some colorized versions of Betty Boop cartoons available on some bargain label videocassettes, but the intention is better than the product. Stick to black and white for the best images available.

Nowadays Betty's image can be seen on coffee mugs, T-shirts, ties, caps, clocks, and all sorts of merchandise. She also has a legion of modern-day fans, and can be seen on a variety of sites on the Internet. For a gal old enough to be collecting Social Security, she certainly is active and still full of life.

The Definitive Collection (from Republic Video)

122 Toons in 8 vols.: The Birth of Betty (Intro, 8 toons); Pre-Code (14 toons w/musical guest stars Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Rudy Vallee, others); Surrealism (16 toons); Musical Madness (16 toons, including fairy tales); Curtain Call (16 toons, including wild inventor Grampy); Betty's Boys (16 toons); Betty's Travels (16 toons); Betty & Pudgy (14 toons).

For a complete listing of the toons, e-mail Tooneyjake@aol.com

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Jake Jacobs                                                                           E-mail: Tooneyjake@aol.com

http://members.aol.com/tooneyjake/bboop.htm                                  Updated  8 January 1999