Betty Boop
Betty Boop (designs from 1938)
Link to the picture
Betty Boop is a cartoon character from the Max Fleischer cartoons, which the Paramount studio continued to produce after the takeover and subsequent bankruptcy of Fleischer Studios . The first cartoons were made in 1930 in the talk cartoon series ; Later followed a series of Betty Boops. Betty Boop's trademark is her sex appeal .
Early years
The first film with Betty Boop was an episode in the talk cartoon series Dizzy Dishes (1930). With long ears and a dog nose, Betty appears here as a mixture of poodle and human and marks the female counterpart to Bimbo, the Dog . Already here she shows her well-known “boop-boop-a-doop”. The voice was often from Mae Questel .
Her appearance was modified in the years that followed, until she finally became fully female in the 1932 film Any Rags . At the end of 1932, the first official Betty Boop cartoon, Stopping the Show, appeared .
A role model was possibly the Broadway singer Helen Kane , who was very well known around 1929 , also known as Boop-Boop-a-doop Girl , who therefore brought an ultimately unsuccessful trial against Fleischer and Paramount in 1932. The silent film actress Clara Bow (known as the It Girl ) was discussed as another possible role model .
Betty as a sex symbol
With a short skirt, garter belt and curly bob , she embodies the flapper girl of the Roaring Twenties . Typically for this type of woman, she was dressed sexy, loved to party and dance. Betty Boop was the first female cartoon character with a sexuality of its own. While other female characters like Minnie Mouse were practically depicted as sexless beings, the Betty Boop films were full of sexual innuendos. There is hardly an episode in which Betty does not slide down her garter belt or slip up her skirt.
The Fleischer brothers began to incorporate music into their cartoons as early as the early twenties. Especially in the Betty Boop productions before the production code there are numerous music collaborations. Minnie the Moocher (1932) is one of the prime examples for which the jazz singer Cab Calloway provided the theme song. In the film I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You , also from 1932, the Louis Armstrong Orchestra plays the music while Louis Armstrong plays the trumpet and sings the song You Rascal You .
Betty tamed
Betty's sexy image eventually became her undoing. The Production Code forced Betty from 1934 to wear a longer dress and no longer look so sexy. She was remodeled into a good housewife with a little dog Pudgy and a friend Freddy . Max Fleischer tried to save the series by guest appearances by other popular cartoon characters, but interest in Betty Boop films declined significantly after the changeover; the last was produced in 1939.
Betty today
In the 1960s, some Betty Boop films were colored and aired on US television. Due to the lower production costs, the films in South Korea were colored by hand, the sequences of movements being simplified and intermediate images omitted.
In 1988, Betty made a guest appearance as a black and white cartoon character in the movie Wrong Game with Roger Rabbit . In the series Drawn Together there is the cartoon character Toot Braunstein , who is a parody of Betty Boop. Today Betty's adventures are widely available on DVD; there is also a large fan article market.
literature
- Catherine Gourley: Rosie and Mrs. America: Perceptions of Women in the 1930s and 1940s (= Images and issues of women in the twentieth century , 3rd vol.). Twenty-First Century Books, 2008, ISBN 0822568047 , pp. 39-47.
- David S. Kidder, Noah D. Oppenheim: The Intellectual Devotional Modern Culture: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently with the Culturati . Rodale, 2008, ISBN 1594867453 , pp. 56-58.
Web links
- Betty Boop Films in the Internet Archive (English)
- Betty Boops website (English)