BETTY BOOP
“What is it about Betty Boop that can still haunt your dreams long after her flesh-and-blood rivals fade away?” – Chicago Tribune
“Though Betty bowed out as a headliner in 1939, her popularity remains as intact as her boop-oop-a-doop. Maybe the appeal lies in her sassy independence, in the fact that she’s the only female cartoon character who’s not a foil for a male. Call it fatale feminism.” – Entertainment Weekly
Before Marilyn and Madonna, Betty booped and wriggled her way into hearts worldwide with her unique mix of wide-eyed innocence and powerful cartoon sensuality. Although she made her film debut as a curvaceous canine cabaret singer in the Max Fleischer short “Dizzy Dishes” on August 9, 1930, Betty Boop remains animation’s first leading lady and a glamorous international icon.
BETTY BOOP’S RISE TO FAME
It’s true – the first truly female animated star began her career as a dog. She was originally created as a feminine canine foil to play opposite Bimbo, a diminutive dog who had been the Fleischer Studios’ answer to Mickey Mouse before Betty came along. But even in her first appearance in “Dizzy Dishes,” the as-yet unnamed character clearly possessed uniquely feminine charms never before seen in cartoons – and only rarely attempted since.
Betty continued to evolve in the Fleischer “Talkartoon” series, and by the time “Any Rags” was released in 1932, her floppy dog’s ears had evolved into earrings, and the world’s first truly female cartoon star was fully formed. There had been female characters before Betty Boop, but by all accounts her predecessors were more or less stick-like figures in pumps who played second fiddle to male characters.
Eventually, the popularity of Betty’s baby face, little-girl voice, independent attitude and womanly charms proved powerful enough for her to star in a cartoon series of her own. Interestingly, even after Betty evolved into a human and hit the big time, Bimbo continued to appear as her nominal boyfriend, despite the fact that he remained a dog throughout his career.
BETTY’S SPECIAL APPEAL
From the beginning, Betty’s act had a hypnotic effect not just on Bimbo, but on just about everyone and everything in the constantly “morphing” Fleischer universe. Not even inanimate objects were immune to Betty’s charms. Betty always managed to fend off her numerous lecherous suitors without ever quite seeming to understand their behavior toward her. “Do you like your job?” asks Betty’s harassing employer in a cartoon titled “Boop-oop-a-doop.” The lout whispers his desires in Betty’s ear as his hand caresses her thigh in sensuous strokes. First surprised, then enraged, Betty slaps his face in reply, singing, “You can feed me bread and water, or a great big bale of hay, but don’t take my boop-oop-a-doop away!”
At the hands of her Times Square-based animators, Betty achieved a realism of feminine motion said to have been acquired through careful observation of the exaggerated strutting of that neighborhood’s ladies of the night. Certainly the occasional but quite detailed glimpses of Betty’s silhouetted form (which was often revealed by having Betty pass in front of an animated light source) demonstrate the animators’ keen grasp of the feminine anatomy.
During the heyday of such risqué screen sirens as Mae West, the Fleischer animators felt free to allow freak gusts of wind to raise her skirt – decades before Marylin Monroe straddled a subway grate.
THEY TRIED TO TAKE HER BOOP-OOP-A-DOOP AWAY
Betty’s flapper style and disarmingly innocent sexuality attracted passionate fans, but it also made her some enemies among moralists who felt her boop-oop-a-doop left too little to the imagination.
According to former Fleischer animator Myron Waldman, the 1933 short Boilesque” was banned in Philadelphia for being too risqué. In the same year, self-censorship arising from complaints about sexual content in films led to the brief disappearance of the garter on Betty’s left thigh, which was reportedly returned due to public demand.
A year later, just as Boop-o-mania reached its peak, a spit-curled singer named Helen Kane filed a $250,000 lawsuit charging that Betty had stolen her boop-oop-a-doop and loopy style, thereby causing her career to wane as Betty’s star rose. When the case came to trial, other performers testified that they had used “boop-oop-a-doop” and similar phrasings prior to Helen Kane; the singer lost her case.
By 1934, the overriding influence of the Hays office – creators of what was to become today’s movie rating system – caused a profound shift in the way Betty was presented to the public. Betty began showing far less leg, and her décolletage was often obscured by prim buttons.
Her lecherous suitors disappeared. Eventually, Betty was nudged from the limelight by Pudgy, a cute pet pooch who was forever getting her in trouble, and the lovable Grampy, who helped Betty solve problems with his wacky inventions. As World War II loomed, the market for Betty’s films at home and abroad thinned; the series ended with the release of “Yip, Yip, Yippy” in 1939.
BETTY BOOP’S RED HOT JAZZ
The Fleischer cartoons from the Betty Boop era were largely music-driven gag fests. The cartoons’ nominal narratives merely provided a launch point for the animators’ often jazz-inspired flights of fancy. Like “Uncle” Max himself, stars from Paramount feature films often appeared in live-action cameos. Musical stars, including Maurice Chevalier, Rudy Vallee, Ethel Merman, Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway, all appeared in Betty Boop cartoons. The exposure these shorts afforded black jazz performers in particular helped popularize the nascent American art form during the 1930s. At the time, the groundbreaking inclusion of black performers in the cartoons resulted in threats to the studio from the Ku Klux Klan.
INTERNATIONAL STAR
As has been the case with jazz, Betty Boop cartoons have traditionally found especially appreciative audiences in Europe and Asia as treasured artifacts of American culture.
Japanese audiences cheered during initial screenings of “A Language All My Own,” a 1935 short in which Betty flew to Tokyo and “booped” in Japanese. Myron Waldman, who directed that short, says he interviewed Japanese students in New York to make sure Betty’s movements and words would be culturally appropriate. Jean-Paul Sartre reportedly searched all of Paris for Betty’s films. Gertrude Stein was also said to have been a boop-o-phile.
In London, Betty enjoyed a resurgence of popularity when cartoonists obtained and restored some early Fleischer cartoons, which became favorites at the ICA moviehouses during the 1970s. Similar revivals in the United States helped spur sales of licensed Betty Boop merchandise worldwide.
BETTY’S ON THE AIR AGAIN
Betty Boop cartoons were among the first theatrical shorts to be repackaged for television syndication during the early 1960s. And, on August 8, 1996, American Movie Classics, which recently brought Betty Boop back to the small screen on Saturday mornings, aired a prime-time, star-studded tribute to the cartoon queen. AMC’s “65th Anniversary Salute to Boop” included a marathon presentation of original 1930s cartoons hosted by noted Hollywood director Richard Fleischer, son of Max Fleischer, who was responsible for bringing Betty Boop and co-stars Koko and Bimbo out of the inkwell in the early 1930s.
Arts & Entertainment aired a “Biography” of Betty Boop in 1996, marking the first time a cartoon star had been profiled for the cable network’s acclaimed series.
“The Romance of Betty Boop” and “Betty Boop’s Hollywood Mystery,” two full-color animated specials, were originally produced in the 1980s for network television.
Betty had a cameo role in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” (1988). The film blended animated, ink-and-paint cartoon characters and flesh-and-blood live actors.
Betty Boop’s name and image continue to turn up on popular television shows, including “Murphy Brown,” “Beverly Hills 90210, ” “Melrose Place” and the British cult import “Absolutely Fabulous.”
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