Like everyone, I had always vaguely known about a cartoon character named “Betty Boop”, from the 1930s - mostly from the marketing of her image on consumer goods, as a fashion icon. I had always assumed that the original cartoons would be boring, as I had no interest in a 1930s fashion plate kid’s cartoon with an oddly oversized head.
A friend of mine introduced me to some of the original cartoons (pre-Hays Code, that is, before the authorities that be cracked down).
Man o man, those things are hard-core weird and wonderful. Definitely not for kids, full of sexual and drug references - essentially, surrealistic music videos for jazz tunes. The animation is still incredible, especially considering how early these cartoons were. Though inappropriate by today’s standards in lots of ways - some of the humour derives from Betty being expressly threatened with rape, having her clothes torn off, etc. Also, references to doing coke and smoking opium (“kick the gong around” apparently was jive slang for smoking opium - features on at least two of the cartoons I saw).
The most bizzare shorts I saw were “Snow White”, “The Old Man of the Mountain”, “Minnie the Moocher”, and a very early one (Betty still has poodle ears!) “Mysterious Mose”.
There are lots of them. Louis Armstrong plays (and appears in) I’ll be Glad When You’re Dead, you Rascal You (which is also filled with pretty racist images):
A big hint – look at the earlier Betty Boops, not the later ones. Once they decided to make Betty “family friendly” in the late 30s and 40s she stopped being both surreal and sexy. But don’t go too early – Betty started out as a dog (!) – those loop earrings of hers were originally long Goofy-like dog ears.
By the way, they obviously didn’t look closely into the songs used, or else didn’t care. I suspect a combination of both. In Snow White the song is “St. James Infirmary Blues”, which is, when you come down to it, a lament about a lover who died in the emergency hospital from venereal disease. As the Koko-turned-Walrus/Skeleton sings this, the wall in the background shows some pretty violent and adult (and racist, in context) images.
See here, for instance:
Being chased by the disembodied head of Louis Armstrong threatening death would be pretty frightening - but yeah, having him morph in and out of some sort of monkey-tribesman is pretty damn racist. Wonder what he thought of the whole thing, at the time!
:eek:
Okay, that really takes the cake of bizzareness to a whole new level.
She still has dog ears in “Bimbo’s Initiation”.
I agree even more, after watching those you posted.
Koko goes back to the silent days. I have some of his silent cartoons. He was originally brother Dave dressed up in a clown suit and rotoscoped (The Fleischers invented the Rotoscope), but clearly they got away from that pretty fast, because the human body can’t do the things Koko had to.
I have the complete Betty Boop box set on VHS. I wonder if this has ever been released on Blu-ray. Not that I would ever part with the VHS set because it looks so cool on the shelf: Betty Boop VHS Collection - VHS Photo (35926125) - Fanpop
I must say the whole period is really interesting - a whole cultural phenom I never knew existed. In particular, I knew about the character “Betty Boop” because she appears on mugs and purses, but I had no idea that there was their whole vein of truly bizzare animation.
Is there any really good source for early Fleisher studeo cartoons? I’m viewing them off of youtube, which isn’t necessarily the best quality.
Get hold of Leslie Cabarga’s wonderful book The Fleischer Story It’s been published twice, with significant changes between the editions. Cabarga wrote it when a lot of the Fleischer artists were still alive, and could tell him about the place.
Felix the Cat is even more trippy although the drawings are more basic.
Betty Boop is fantastically well animated and worth viewing even if you’re not interested in the Ha-cha-cha’s!