History of Betty Boop

[The Moocher]

Hi all, and welcome to this sparkling new forum.

In this thread I'm going to revise the material I posted in the Chit Chat Lounge. I compiled it in a hurry, and there were errors. I hope to correct most of them.

Please post comments and corrections. The last thing I want to do is monopolise the thread.

Because a fair proportion of posters speak UK English, and it's my natural language, I intend using UK spelling (colour rather than color). However, if there are any strong feelings about this I can switch to US English if required.

I'll start with a filmograpy. This includes both talkartoons and cartoons. I'll explain the difference between talkartoons and cartoons later, and I'll deal with screen songs later.

I'll list the shorts in release order. I won't state month of release as this is often debatable. The shorts weren't necessarily released in the order they were made.

I've put question marks after Hot Dog and Accordion Joe. The former starred "Bimbo and a pretty girl" and the latter "Bimbo and a woman" but the female character in either case is not identifiably Betty (although she probably was). I've done the same for The Herring Mystery Case because Betty wasn't in her normal form but had a small part as a very pretty fish.

Betty also appeared as a cat in the screen song Any Little Girl That's A Nice Little Girl (1931).

1929
Accordion Joe (?)

1930
Hot Dog (?)
Dizzy Dishes
Barnacle Bill the Sailor
Mysterious Mose

1931
The B*m Bandit
Silly Scandals
The Herring Mystery Case (?)
Bimbo's Initiation
Bimbo's Express
Minding the Baby
Mask-A-Raid
Jack and the Beanstalk
Dizzy Red Riding Hood

1932
Any Rags
Boop-Oop-a-Doop
The Robot
Minnie the Moocher
S.O.S
Crazy Town
The Dancing Fool
A-Hunting We Will Go
Chess-Nuts
Hide and Seek
Admission Free
Betty Boop Limited
Stopping the Show
Betty Boop's Bizzy Bee
Betty Boop M.D.
Betty Boop’s Bamboo Isle
Betty Boop's Ups and Downs
Betty Boop for President
I'll Be Glad When Your Dead, You Rascal You
Betty Boop's Museum

1933
Betty Boop's Ker-Choo
Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions
Is My Palm Read
Betty Boop's Penthouse
Snow-White
Betty Boop's Birthday Party
Betty Boop's May Party
Betty Boop's Big Boss
Betty Boop in Mother Goose Land
Popeye the Sailor
The Old Man of the Mountain
Poor Cinderella
I Heard
Morning, Noon and Night
Betty Boop's Hallowe'en Party
Parade of the Wooden Soldiers

1934
She Wronged Him Right
Red Hot Mama
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Betty in Blunderland
Betty Boop's Rise to Fame
Betty Boop's Trial
Betty Boop's Lifeguard
There's Something About a Soldier
Betty Boop's Little Pal
Betty Boop's Prize Show
Keep in Style
When My Ship Comes In

1935
Baby Be Good
Taking the Blame
Stop That Noise
Swat The Fly
No! No! A Thousand Times No!
A Little Soap and Water
A Language All My Own
Betty Boop and Grampy
Judge For A Day
Making Stars
Betty Boop and Henry, the Funniest Living American

1936
Little Nobody
Betty Boop and the Little King
Not Now
Betty Boop and Little Jimmy
We Did It
A Song Day
More Pep
You're Not Built That Way
Happy You and Merry Me
Training Pigeons
Grampy's Indoor Outing
Be Human
Making Friends

1937
House Cleaning Blues
Whoops! I'm a Cowboy
The Hot Air Salesman
Pudgy Takes a Bow-Wow
Pudgy Picks a Fight
The Impractical Joker
Ding Dong Doggie
The Candid Candidate
Service With a Smile
The New Deal Show
The Fox Hunter
Zula Hula

1938
Riding the Rails
Be Up to Date
Honest Love and True
Out of the Ink Well
Swing School
Pudgy and the Lost Kitten
Buzzy Boop
Pudgy the Watchman
Buzzy Boop at the Concert
Sally Swing
On with the New
Pudgy in Thrills and Chills

1939
My Friend the Monkey
So Does an Automobile
Musical Mountaineers
The Scared Crows
Rhythm on the Reservation
Yip Yip Yippy

1980
Betty Boop For President (compilation)

1985
Hurray for Betty Boop (compilation)

1988
Who Framed Roger Rabbit

1989
The Romance of Betty Boop

2004
Betty Boop and the Girls of Mischief


My thanks to Neckless, who was the first (as far as I know) to post a full filmography in the Chit Chat Lounge.

Mooch

[bboop480]

Hi all, and welcome to this sparkling new forum.

In this thread I'm going to revise the material I posted in the Chit Chat Lounge. I compiled it in a hurry, and there were errors. I hope to correct most of them.

Please post comments and corrections. The last thing I want to do is monopolise the thread.

Because a fair proportion of posters speak UK English, and it's my natural language, I intend using UK spelling (colour rather than color). However, if there are any strong feelings about this I can switch to US English if required.

I'll start with a filmograpy. This includes both talkartoons and cartoons. I'll explain the difference between talkartoons and cartoons later, and I'll deal with screen songs later.

I'll list the shorts in release order. I won't state month of release as this is often debatable. The shorts weren't necessarily released in the order they were made.

I've put question marks after Hot Dog and Accordion Joe. The former starred "Bimbo and a pretty girl" and the latter "Bimbo and a woman" but the female character in either case is not identifiably Betty (although she probably was). I've done the same for The Herring Mystery Case because Betty wasn't in her normal form but had a small part as a very pretty fish.

Betty also appeared as a cat in the screen song Any Little Girl That's A Nice Little Girl (1931).

1929
Accordion Joe (?)

1930
Hot Dog (?)
Dizzy Dishes
Barnacle Bill the Sailor
Mysterious Mose

1931
The B*m Bandit
Silly Scandals
The Herring Mystery Case (?)
Bimbo's Initiation
Bimbo's Express
Minding the Baby
Mask-A-Raid
Jack and the Beanstalk
Dizzy Red Riding Hood

1932
Any Rags
Boop-Oop-a-Doop
The Robot
Minnie the Moocher
S.O.S
Crazy Town
The Dancing Fool
A-Hunting We Will Go
Chess-Nuts
Hide and Seek
Admission Free
Betty Boop Limited
Stopping the Show
Betty Boop's Bizzy Bee
Betty Boop M.D.
Betty Boop’s Bamboo Isle
Betty Boop's Ups and Downs
Betty Boop for President
I'll Be Glad When Your Dead, You Rascal You
Betty Boop's Museum

1933
Betty Boop's Ker-Choo
Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions
Is My Palm Read
Betty Boop's Penthouse
Snow-White
Betty Boop's Birthday Party
Betty Boop's May Party
Betty Boop's Big Boss
Betty Boop in Mother Goose Land
Popeye the Sailor
The Old Man of the Mountain
Poor Cinderella
I Heard
Morning, Noon and Night
Betty Boop's Hallowe'en Party
Parade of the Wooden Soldiers

1934
She Wronged Him Right
Red Hot Mama
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Betty in Blunderland
Betty Boop's Rise to Fame
Betty Boop's Trial
Betty Boop's Lifeguard
There's Something About a Soldier
Betty Boop's Little Pal
Betty Boop's Prize Show
Keep in Style
When My Ship Comes In

1935
Baby Be Good
Taking the Blame
Stop That Noise
Swat The Fly
No! No! A Thousand Times No!
A Little Soap and Water
A Language All My Own
Betty Boop and Grampy
Judge For A Day
Making Stars
Betty Boop and Henry, the Funniest Living American

1936
Little Nobody
Betty Boop and the Little King
Not Now
Betty Boop and Little Jimmy
We Did It
A Song Day
More Pep
You're Not Built That Way
Happy You and Merry Me
Training Pigeons
Grampy's Indoor Outing
Be Human
Making Friends

1937
House Cleaning Blues
Whoops! I'm a Cowboy
The Hot Air Salesman
Pudgy Takes a Bow-Wow
Pudgy Picks a Fight
The Impractical Joker
Ding Dong Doggie
The Candid Candidate
Service With a Smile
The New Deal Show
The Fox Hunter
Zula Hula

1938
Riding the Rails
Be Up to Date
Honest Love and True
Out of the Ink Well
Swing School
Pudgy and the Lost Kitten
Buzzy Boop
Pudgy the Watchman
Buzzy Boop at the Concert
Sally Swing
On with the New
Pudgy in Thrills and Chills

1939
My Friend the Monkey
So Does an Automobile
Musical Mountaineers
The Scared Crows
Rhythm on the Reservation
Yip Yip Yippy

1980
Betty Boop For President (compilation)

1985
Hurray for Betty Boop (compilation)

1988
Who Framed Roger Rabbit

1989
The Romance of Betty Boop

2004
Betty Boop and the Girls of Mischief


My thanks to Neckless, who was the first (as far as I know) to post a full filmography in the Chit Chat Lounge.

Mooch

WOW !!!! FABULOUS MOOCHER,

thank you,

bboop480

[The Moocher]

In the 1920s Fleischer Studios was a major producer of silent cartoons, with stars such as Koko the Clown. In 1924, the Fleischers used the Lee DeForest phonofilm system to make the very first sound animations, called Song Car-tunes. These, however, failed to achieve wide distribution and the project was abandoned.

In 1928, Disney introduced Mickey Mouse in the sound cartoon Steamboat Willie, and the Fleischers decided to revisit the project that they had pioneered. They invented a type of animated short that they called a Talkartoon. Unlike a cartoon, in which the soundtrack is recorded on the same medium as the animation, Talkartoons synchronise the animation with a separate sound source.

This has a number of implications. It is a lot easier to synchronise singing than speech (although the Fleischers and their animators were meticulous in coordinating speech with lip movement). As a result, much of the dialog in these early shorts was sung rather than spoken, and there were a lot of songs. This suited audiences of the time, who were used to Vaudeville and sing-along entertainment. It also suited the Fleischers’ rather unusual methodology.

Fleischer Studios had no writers. Out Of The Inkwell Productions, which made the Talkartoons, consisted of Max, Dave and Leonard Fleischer, and a bunch of animators. Leonard Fleischer was a jazz music fan. He would buy the latest hot jazz records and bring them to the studio where Max and Dave would then listen to them and select those that were suitable for animation. They would then come up with a simple plot and a few gags, and give the record to the animators and tell them to animate to the music. This is opposite of most cartoon studios. In other studios (such as Disney) animators worked from storyboards and the music for the soundtrack is added later.

This system was what made Fleischer cartoons exceptionally surrealistic, if somewhat light on storylines. It had the additional attraction that the parsimonious Max did not need to pay for a story department. He didn’t pay royalties for the use of the music either!

This worked until the New York musician's union found out about it. Max did a deal. The musicians would come to the studio and be paid for performing, and he would then film and record them. The filmed images of the jazz performers would then appear in Fleischer animations based on their performance. As a result live performances by artists such as Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, and Don Redman are a feature of the early Fleischer Talkartoons and cartoons.

Out Of The Inkwell needed a new star for the Talkartoons. Following the success of Mickey Mouse and, before him, Oswald the Rabbit, animal (or half animal half human) characters were in fashion. Koko went into honourable retirement, and his dog Rex was adapted to become Bimbo. Unfortunately, the Fleischers could not decide what he should look like. At first Bimbo was tall and skinny, then he was short and round. Sometimes he was black, sometimes black with white spots and sometimes white with black spots. Bimbo would not achieve his final appearance until The Herring Murder Case (1931).

Possibly due to his changing appearance, Bimbo proved to be no rival to Mickey. However, Disney Productions had inadvertently provided what seemed to be the answer. In 1929, the Disney cartoon Plane Crazy – a remarkably racy short for the normally staid Disney – had introduced Minnie Mouse. The Fleischers reckoned that Bimbo needed a girlfriend, and they decided they would make her sexy. Nobody, except possibly Mickey, would describe Minnie as sexy.

As an aside, Plane Crazy provides a good example of the cruelty that permeated Mickey Mouse cartoons. A dachshund is twisted up like a rubber band in order to power an aeroplane. Fleischer animations may have been surreal, sometimes downright weird, but they were seldom cruel.

So an attractive female character was introduced into Bimbo Talkartoons. Accordion Joe (1929) starred “Bimbo and a woman.” Hot Dog (1930) starred “Bimbo and a pretty girl.” It would be interesting to see what this early female character looked like, but unfortunately the Talkartoons seem to be lost and I can’t obtain screenshots. It is likely that she would be at least partly canine, as a girlfriend for Bimbo wouldn’t be fully human.

In Dizzy Dishes (1930) the character is recognisably Betty (picture 1), but only just. She has a poodle head and long ears, but a curvaceous (if somewhat chubby) human body. She is wearing a short, flapper-style dress that shows the tops of her stockings, although in this screenshot the trademark garter is not in evidence. She had no name. It would be some time before she was called Betty, and even longer before she became Betty Boop.

The well-known animator Grim Natwick designed the original Betty. Natwick was noted for his ability to animate realistic human figures. In the 1930s, most animators used "rubber hose" animation where limbs like arms and legs could twist and extend and flop about without any regard to the laws of anatomy. From the beginning, Betty moved like a real person, although some “rubber hosing” was used in Barnacle Bill the Sailor (1930) in which she had an extensible neck. Max Fleisher also invented a technique called “rotoscoping” in which a human is filmed (usually dancing) and the cartoon character is drawn over the human character on the film frames. This technique was used very successfully in several shorts, most notably Betty Boop’s Bamboo Isle (1932).

Natwick was quite candid in stating that the original inspiration for Betty Boop was a young female performer named Helen Kane. Kane had the same spit curls as Betty Boop and had added the phrase "boop-boop-a-doop" to the popular song "I Want To Be Loved By You". Kane later sued Max Fleischer and Paramount, claiming that Betty Boop had damaged her performing career. I’ll discuss this in detail in a later post.

Betty Boop went through a process of evolution. She is "Nancy Lee" in Barnacle Bill the Sailor (1930) and "Dangerous Nan McGrew" in B*m Bandit (1930). In one of her most famous shorts, Mysterious Mose (1930) she had no name at all! In the Screen Song Any Little Girl That’s A Nice Little Girl (1931) she was a cat, and she even had a tiny part as a fish in The Herring Murder Case (1931). Arguable she was given the name Betty in the Screen Song Betty Co-ed, based on the Rudy Vallee song, but the first time she was called Betty in a short was Silly Scandals (1931) in which the audience yells “Betty” when she appears on stage. Paramount claims that she became Betty Boop in Stopping the Show (1932) but I believe – and I shall explain why later, that she was Betty Boop in Jack and the Beanstalk (1931).

Betty’s appearance also evolved. She became less dog-like and more human in successive Talkartoons, with long ears remaining her only canine feature. I have seen claims that she became fully human in Betty Co-ed, but it is more commonly accepted that this happened in the Screen Song Kitty From Kansas City (1931). In Dizzy Red Riding Hood (1931) she certainly looked human (and exceptionally pretty) but her ears were hidden under a fetching bonnet, and Any Rags (1932) is generally accepted as the first Talkartoon in which her long ears became loop earrings. Certainly by Boop-Oop-A-Doop (1932) she was fully human.

Several actresses supplied the voice for the early Betty. In 1931, Max Fleischer hired Mae Questel, a teenager who had recently won a Helen Kane look-alike contest. Mae also sounded a lot like Helen and was Betty’s “main” voice until 1938 when Fleischer Studios moved to Florida and Margie Hines became the voice of Betty Boop. Another teenager, Little Ann Little, also provided a voice for Betty, mostly in the Betty Boop stage shows.

Betty was designed to be sexy. Bimbo needed a sexy girlfriend to help him compete with Mickey Mouse. She was based on 1920s flappers (as was Helen Kane, and, indeed, Minnie Mouse). She wore a very short, backless skirt that showed her trademark garter – and occasionally other items of lingerie – and she made no secret of her liking for a kiss and a cuddle.

But somehow the character also retained an air of innocence and vulnerability. She could be simultaneously a worldly sophisticated woman and a playful little girl. In 1934, during a copyright infringement hearing 1934, the judge offered the following description of Betty: "There is a broad baby face, the large round flirting eyes, the low placed pouting mouth, the small nose, the imperceptible chin and the mature bosom. It was a unique combination of infancy and maturity, innocence and sophistication." At the time, Fleischer Studios sent out a publicity blurb quoting Max Fleisher’s statement that Betty Boop was and always will be sixteen years old.

The 1920s flappers were independent women who pushed the traditional boundaries of the roles of women especially in the areas of conduct, dress and sexual freedom. Like many of those women, Betty straddled a borderline between a worldly sophisticated woman and a playful little girl. It is as a wide-eyed girl caught in a series of weird, surreal adventures that she is remembered, but she was also in many cases the brave, competent woman who sorted out the problems she encountered, without calling on the nearest male for help.

Possibly the strangest feature about the birth of Betty Boop was how long it took for the Fleischers to realise they had a star on their hands. The perceived wisdom of the day was that successful cartoon characters were male and animal. Betty was female and (mostly) human. She was created to boost Bimbo’s popularity, but making Betty completely human would demote Bimbo from a boyfriend to a companion or even a pet (nobody seems to have told Bimbo this). Could a human female cartoon character really support a series and become a star?

Couldn’t she just!

Mooch

[The Moocher]

I haven't posted for a few days. I have a good excuse, my daughter was married on Saturday.

I'm working on the next episode. Watch this space.

Mooch

[The Moocher]

A picture of the bride and groom - my lovely daughter Bryony and her husband, James.

Mooch

[The Moocher]

Try again.

Mooch

[boopsiegirl]

Hi Moocher, Congrats good luck to the bride & groom they make a great couple. Your daughter is a beautiful girl. Good luck may they have many years of health & happiness, God bless Gina

[bettyboopfan]

I am glad you have your own little space now to post about the history of Betty and her cartoons!

Easily accessible for anyone to look something up!

Great job, Mooch!

Oh, I am not sure if you saw my other post but congrats on your daughters marriage!!

[PeterHale]

There's a debate going on on another site about whether this is a "Betty" film - the problem seems to be the release date. Many sites (and the filmography in Cabarga's book) say 13 December 1930 - a full year later than 1929 and well after Betty's debut. You have Accordion Joe as a "maybe" - is this because of the date? Which date is correct?

[bettyboopfan]

Mooch? Do you know?