![]() There is something poignant in her down and out manner of telling Mr. But nobody is pinching Betty, or even noticing her, despite that she is portrayed in black and white in a room packed with cartoon characters in full color. Fortunately for Miss Questel, she took on the job of Olive Oyl’s voice, and continued to ad lib while watching a cartoon, and doing a splendid job.ĭecades later we see Betty again in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) in the nightclub scene where she is a lowly and somewhat forlorn cigarette girl making small talk with Bob Hoskins. “Boop-a-doop” may have been outlawed by the Code, but bashing somebody’s skull in, as Popeye and Bluto repeatedly did to each other, was good clean all-American fun. Though Betty had always been a black and white cartoon, now she was truly colorless.Ī new cast member in a minor role, a guy named Popeye, broke free from the mundane polite menagerie and became a star on his own. Finally, Betty no longer starred, but was the supporting player to the new cast. She became matronly, where she no longer appeared as a race car driver or circus performer, but sang songs about housecleaning. The run-down houses and apartments were Betty struggled to keep up like everybody else did the Depression became cozy cottages and swanky digs. Pals Bimbo and Ko-Ko were pushed aside for a cute puppy, a cute nephew, and Grampy, who never leered at Betty. Her dress was lowered to cover the garter, and the neckline was raised. Glimpses of her underwear were no longer allowed. Then the Code, and Betty had to clean up her act, or rather, the Fleischers did. It was raucous, and riotous, and freewheeling. James Infirmary.” Betty imitated Fanny Brice and Maurice Chevalier. The cartoons always had at least one song, and the scenarios were usually risqué.Ĭab Calloway’s dance steps were Rotoscoped on the body of Ko-Ko, and he wailed “St. By the time Fleischer’s “Snow White” was released in 1931 (not a bit like the Disney’s version), Betty was established as the star of Fleischer Studios.įrom “Stopping the Show”, “Betty Boop’s Bamboo Isle” both from 1932 we get Betty singing, stripping, and pouring her heart out. Bimbo and Ko-Ko, a clown, were the Fleischer stars through the 1920s. Betty started as a guest in “Bimbo’s Initiation” (1931). Some of Betty’s earliest outings have been called by some critics, including Leonard Maltin, as a kind of “cartoon noir” because of the menacing shadows and looming backgrounds, and the inanimate objects that spring to life in threatening manner. ![]() (A technique which led to Popeye, another Fleischer production, noted for its humorous extemporaneous patter of dialogue.) The actors watched the cartoon and then invented lines to go with what was happening on the screen. Mae Questel was reportedly very good at ad libbing, as this is what she was required to do in the recording session after the cartoon was filmed. Max Fleischer had the cartoon created first, a kind of stream-of-consciousness storytelling on the part of the cartoonist (which led to some pretty weird dream-like scenarios for Betty and her crew), and then the sound came afterwards. Mae Questel, who voiced Betty, did a Helen Kane impersonation, and “boop-oop-a-doop” became a catch phrase.Īn interesting evolution of Betty and the Fleischer manner of production is noted in “Serious Business” by Stefan Kanfer (Scribner, 1997), which notes that unlike the Disney studio which recorded the dialogue before creating the cartoon, a method which continues today, Fleischer did it the other way around. ![]() The cartoon heroine with the giant head with its coy rolling eyes burst from the Fleischer studio in the early 1930s and made full use of what the new sound technology had to offer. Then the hapless creature suffered the indignity being called naughty by the Code. She also stopped wearing jewelry and moving in suggestive ways.Betty Boop suffered the indignity of lewd and lascivious employers groping her and threatening her for sexual favors. Boop was no longer a carefree flapper but instead turned into a housewife or a career woman in some episodes. The Motion Picture Production Code, industry censorship guidelines for motion pictures, also impacted Betty Boop's content. The innocent yet sexual nature of the cartoons was a problem for the National Legion of Decency in 1934, a Catholic group founded by Archbishop of Cincinnati, John T, McNicholas. Many episodes also focused on men attempting to compromise her virtue. Some of the cartoons featured men trying to sneak a peek at her frame as she went on about her everyday life. Boop also wore a short dress and bodice that highlighted her cleavage. No other woman cartoon character at the time had a fully-developed figure. Fans of Betty Boop considered her a unique character because she represented a sexual woman versus being only comical or child-like. ![]()
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