(Claiming that they’d unfairly caricatured her image, the singer-actress brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against Max Fleischer and Paramount, which released the Boop films.)Ī number of performers have provided Betty’s voice, but Mae Questel, the originator, did so more often than any other. Betty Boop wasn’t the first to affect girlish tones, but in her pop-culture visibility she surpassed such real-life predecessors as Helen Kane, who served as a model. She’s a city-bred woman of the people when she runs for president, her opponent is, by contrast, a hat-wearing stick figure named Mr. There’s no sense of entitlement about Betty, who’s at ease mixing it up with all types. 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. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |