Betty Boop Cartoons

Betty Boop made her first appearance on August 9,1930 in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, the sixth installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. She was originally designed by Grim Natwick, a veteran animator of the silent era who would become lead director and animator for the Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney studios. The character was modeled after a combination of Helen Kane, the famous popular singer of the 1920s and contract player at Paramount Pictures (the studio that distributed Fleischer's cartoons), and Clara Bow, who was a popular actress in the 1920s who had not managed to survive the transition to sound because of her strong Brooklyn accent which nevertheless became a trademark for Betty. By direction of Dave Fleischer, Natwick designed the original character in the mode of an anthropomorphic French poodle. The character's voice was first performed by Margie Hines, and was later provided by several different voice actresses including Kate Wright, Ann Rothschild (a.k.a. Little Ann Little), Bonnie Poe, and most notably, Mae Questel who began in 1931 and continued with the role until 1938.

Designing Betty Boop

While the original design was rather ugly and awkward, she was developed further after Natwick's departure under Berny Wolf, Seymour Kneitel, Roland Crandall, and Willard Bowsky. Betty became finalized as completely human by 1932 in the cartoon Any Rags. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her black poodle nose became a girl's button-like nose. Betty appeared in ten cartoons as a supporting character, a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons she was called "Nancy Lee" and "Nan McGrew", usually served as a girlfriend to studio star Bimbo.

Although it has been assumed that Betty's first name was established in the 1931 Screen Songs cartoon Betty Co-ed, this "Betty" was an entirely different character. Though the song may have led to Betty's eventual christening, any references to Betty Co-ed as a Betty Boop vehicle are incorrect. (The official Betty Boop website describes the titular character as a "prototype" of Betty.) In all, there were at least 12 Screen Songs cartoons that featured either Betty Boop or a similar character.

Talkartoon

Betty appeared in the first "Color Classic" cartoon 'Poor Cinderella', her only theatrical color appearance (1934). In a cameo appearance in the feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), in her traditional black and white, and voiced by Mae Questel, Betty mentioned that work had "gotten slow since cartoons went to color," but she still had "what it takes."

Betty Boop became the star of the Talkartoons by 1932, and was given her own series in that same year beginning with Stopping the Show. From this point on, she was crowned "The Queen of the Animated Screen." The series was hugely popular throughout the 1930s, lasting until 1939.

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Betty Boop TV Poster Card

Betty Boop is important to animation history for being the first cartoon character to fully represent a sexual woman. Other female cartoon characters of the same period, such as Minnie Mouse, displayed their underwear or bloomers regularly, suggesting children or comical characters, not fully defined in a woman's form. Many other cartoon "girls" were merely clones of their male co-stars, with alterations in costume with the addition of eyelashes and a female voice. Betty Boop wore short dresses, high heels, and a garter belt. Her breasts were suggested with a low, contoured bodice that showed cleavage. (In Any Rags she looks out the window and her dress momentarily falls down revealing her cleavage.) In her cartoons, male characters tried to sneak peeks at her while she's changing, or simply walking along minding her own business. In Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle, she does the hula topless, wearing only a lei and a grass skirt, which she repeated in her cameo appearance in the first Popeye cartoon, Popeye the Sailor (1933). Her "Bamboo Isle" performance was also included in the short Betty Boop's Rise to Fame, featuring a staged quasi-interview with studio head, Max Fleischer.

There was however, a certain girlish quality to the character. She was drawn with a head bigger than normal for an adult, but normal for a baby. This suggested the combination of girlishness and maturity many people saw in the "flapper" type which Betty Boop was supposed to represent. While compromises on Betty's virtue were always a challenge, the animators kept her "pure" and girl-like, on screen, anyway. The studio's 1931 Christmas card featured Betty in bed with Santa Claus, winking at the viewer. Also in 1931, the Talkartoons The Bum Bandit and Dizzy Red Riding Hood were given distinctly "impure" endings. Officially, Betty was only 16 years old according to a 1932 interview with Fleischer (although in The Bum Bandit she's portrayed as a married woman with many children and also has an adult woman's voice, not the standard "boop-boop-a-doop" voice).

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Betty Boop - Opening Night

In April 1934, Helen Kane launched a major lawsuit against Max Fleischer and Paramount Productions for the "deliberate caricature" that produced "unfair competition" that exploited her personality and image. While Kane had risen to fame in the 1920s as "The Boop-Oop-A-Doop Girl" star of stage, recordings, and films for Paramount, her career was over by 1930. Interestingly, Paramount promoted the development of Betty Boop following Kane's decline. As Kane's claims seemed on the surface to be valid, it was proven that her appearance was not unique, as both she and the Betty Boop character bore a resemblance to Clara Bow, another major Paramount star. However, the largest evidence against Miss Kane's case was her claims to the origins of her singing style. While an outgrowth of jazz "scat singing," testimony revealed that Kane had witnessed an African American performer, Baby Esther, using a similar vocal style in an act at the Cotton Club nightclub in Harlem some years earlier. An early test sound film was discovered of Baby Esther performing in this style, disproving Kane's claims.

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Betty Boop Classic 1930 Poster

Betty Boop's best appearances are considered to be in the first three years due to her "Jazz Baby" character and innocent sexuality, which was aimed at adults. However, the content of her films was affected by the National Legion of Decency and the Production Code of 1933. The Production Code guidelines imposed on the Motion Picture Industry placed specific restrictions on the content films with references to sexual innuendo. This greatly affected the content of the films of Mae West at Paramount, as well as the Betty Boop cartoons until the end of the series.

No longer a carefree flapper, from mid-1934 on, Betty became a husbandless housewife/career girl, wearing a fuller dress or skirt. For a few entries, she was given a boyfriend, "Freddie," who was introduced in She Wronged Him Right (1934) and appeared in five more cartoons. Next, Betty was teamed with her cute puppy, "Pudgy", beginning with Little Pal (1934). The following year saw the addition of the eccentric inventor Grampy, who debuted in Betty Boop and Grampy (1935).

While these cartoons were tame compared to her earlier appearances, their self-conscious wholesomeness was aimed at more of a juvenile audience, which contributed to the decline of the series. Much of this decline was also due to the lessening of Betty's role in the cartoons in favor of her co-stars. This was a similar problem experienced during the same period with Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, who was becoming eclipsed by the popularity of his co-stars Donald Duck and Goofy, not to mention Fleischer's biggest success, Popeye.

Being largely a musical novelty character, the animators attempted to keep Betty's cartoons interesting by pairing her with popular comic strip characters such as Henry, The Little King, and Little Jimmy hoping to create additional spin off series as with her pairing with Popeye in 1933. However, none of these films generated new series. While the period that Betty represented had been replaced by the big bands of the Swing Era, Fleischer Studios made an attempt to develop a replacement character in this style in the 1938 Betty Boop cartoon Betty Boop and Sally Swing, which was not a success.

The last "Betty Boop" cartoons were released in 1939, and a few made attempts to bring Betty into the Swing Era. In her last appearance, "Rhythm on the Reservation" (1939), she drives an open convertible labeled, "Betty Boop's Swing Band", while driving through a Native American reservation, where she introduces the people to swing music and creates a "Swinging Sioux Band." The Betty Boop cartoon series officially ended with one more 1939 entry, Yip Yip Yippy, which was actually a Boop-less one shot cartoon.

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