In the early short “Minnie the Moocher,” not included in the Olive package, what at first appears to be a yarmulke on her father’s head might instead by a bald spot.īut she is definitely the child of European immigrants, like Max Fleischer, who was a toddler when his family moved from Galicia to New York. Betty herself might be Jewish, although the Fleischers left this matter ambiguous. A number of handy creature-appliances prefigure the Stone Age innovations of “The Flintstones.”Īlong with pop-culture references (Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Maurice Chevalier), the scripts are lightly peppered with Yiddish. Rube Goldberg-isms pop up, and mechanical things sprout hands and legs when needed, as when a boat climbs down a waterfall. Betty Boop shorts exemplify his studio’s deft mix of playfulness and surrealism, stripped-down simplicity and loose-limbed exuberance. The roster included Superman, Koko the Clown and Popeye, who made his first screen appearance in a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon.Ī seminal figure in animation, Max Fleischer invented Rotoscoping, a technique for frame-by-frame tracing of live-action footage. And unlike the anthropomorphic critters at Disney, their characters were mainly of the humanoid variety. In the pre-Code days especially, the Fleischer brothers’ output stood apart from their competitors’ by targeting adults. She’s fully domesticated - although, intriguingly, apparently still single. No more strapless frock and exposed garter.
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Though a number of the selections were made after the Motion Picture Production Code went into effect, only one demonstrates the full impact of the morality guidelines on the free-spirited Betty: In 1937’s “Foxy Hunter,” she’s a supporting player again, while the wholesome adventure of her little boy and puppy claims center stage. The first in a projected four-volume compilation that brings nonpublic-domain Boop material to home video for the first time, the black-and-white ‘toons are newly remastered in high definition and have a fine retro sheen. That short is among the dozen in Volume 1 of “Betty Boop: The Essential Collection,” out Tuesday on DVD and Blu-ray from Olive Films. One car crash later, she plays the all-male jury like a finely tuned fiddle. She can’t be bothered - “Fresh!” she chides him - and speeds away in her roadster. In 1934’s “Betty Boop’s Trial,” a square-jawed motorcycle cop chases her down to engage in some en-route flirting.
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Being a pragmatic child of the Depression, though, she knows how to work it when necessary. She’s comfortable in her own hand-drawn skin, but she doesn’t necessarily rely on her looks to get by.
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In 1932, two years after her first bit part in the Talkartoon series, producer-inventor Max Fleischer remade the series as Betty Boop Cartoons, with his brother Dave directing.īetty is a sexual being, as animated characters go. The star of more than 100 spirited and gently risqué shorts in the 1930s, the animated flapper boop-oop-a-dooped into the upper registers as the flagship character of New York-based Fleischer Studios, a chief rival of Disney in the golden age of American animation.
Tina Fey focused her comic rage at it in an episode of “30 Rock.” Lake Bell takes a somewhat more compassionate aim in her new movie, “In a World…" But whatever the proper response to this affectation of today’s seemingly grown women, it would be wrong to consider them descendants of the distinctive-voiced cartoon siren Betty Boop.Ī Jazz Age baby, Betty is a self-sufficient cookie, not a self-satisfied coquette. It’s not a new phenomenon, but it does appear to be on the rise: the exasperating vocal inflection known as the sexy-baby voice.
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