Director Richard Fleischer, son of legendary animator Max Fleischer, is getting a lot of media attention and interviews with the release on DVD of the classic Disney film he directed 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. Fleischer has used this opportunity to promote another project that is near and dear to his heart.
In the June STARLOG, Fleischer remarked, “Right now, we’re developing an animated Betty Boop TV series, and that’s coming along very well. We’re having scripts written. She’ll be in 3-D-computer images. Fleischer Studios is producing the 3-D series. It’s fully financed and we’re ready to go. And we’re involved in the development of a Betty Boop Broadway musical.”
However, this is just the latest in a long line of attempts to re-introduce Betty Boop to new generations. How many remember that back in 1995, Richard Zanuck and his wife Lili (the team behind such Oscar winning films as DRIVING MISS DAISY and COCOON) were hard at work on an animated feature film to be set in Hollywood in the Thirties which would have featured the Boopster herself.
“We realized the impact of this character around the world in terms of recognition when we found even six year olds in Taiwan know who she is,” stated a surprised Richard Zanuck when he was interviewed for DAILY VARIETY, “I never really thought about doing animation but the character of Betty Boop is such a historic one in terms in terms of cartoon characters. She’s really the only one that has survived through the years.”
While there are a handful of other memorable female characters who have appeared in animated cartoons over the decades, they were usually supporting characters like wives, girlfriends, princesses, witches or mothers. Generally, the female characters were reactive not active. It has only been within the last two decades that strong female characters have appeared so prominently in animated projects. In an animated world dominated by male characters, Betty Boop for the longest time was the sole female character who could match those male cartoon superstars.
Perhaps one of the major factors that gained her such recognition was her connection with sex. With revealing outfits, her suggestive movements and her little girlish voice, Betty might be considered a classic tease. Her actions seemed to constantly promise unbelievable joy but in actuality she never delivered on that promise. She often seemed oblivious to her own sexiness and in fact at times was highly moral to the point of prudishness. She was genuinely shocked and offended when some lecherous male wanted to take her “boop-boop-a-doop” away.
Betty was modeled on the Flappers of the Twenties, independent young women who were pushing the boundaries of the tradtional roles of women especially in the areas of conduct, dress and sexual freedom. Like many of those young women, Betty straddled a borderline between the worldly sophisticated woman and the playful little girl. During a copyright infringement suit in 1934, a judge offered the following description of Betty: “There is a broad baby face, the large round flirting eyes, the low placed pouting mouth, the small nose, the imperceptible chin and the mature bosom. It was a unique combination of infancy and maturity, innocence and sophistication.” At the time, the Fleischer Studio who were producing Betty Boop’s cartoon adventures sent out a publicity blurb stating that their popular character was supposed to be sixteen years old!
It is Betty’s image as this “girl-woman” caught in dark, dreamlike adventures that made Betty an audience favorite and is the image that immediately comes to mind when people think of the character. Few fans remember that in later years, public morality transformed her into an almost matronly homebody. Unlike some other cartoon characters, Betty did not survive domestication. Her emotional range was limited compared to other characters like Fleischer’s version of Popeye and without her low cut black mini-dress which offered occasional glimpses of her underwear, she seemed less appealing.
The birth of Betty Boop, like most major cartoon characters, was a gradual evolution over a period of years. The Fleischer Studios were a major producer of silent cartoons and even experimented with early sound films. In 1929, they began a news series called TALKARTOONS. It was decided that a strong continuing character would help sell this series to distributors and an audience.
The studio took one of its silent cartoon dog characters and with some redesigning, named this revamped anthropormorphic puppy “Bimbo”. This oddly proportioned but pleasantly goofy looking character kept changing appearance in these early cartoons. It was then decided to add a love interest to the series. In the sixth TALKARTOON, DIZZY DISHES (1930), Bimbo is having trouble being a waiter. He is distracted by the restaurant’s entertainment provided by a chubby female dog singer. She is unnamed in this cartoon, but there can be little doubt that this character (who is already more girl than dog) was the beginning of Betty Boop.
She had the famous spit curls and the short, tight black dress that provocatively showed the tops of her rolled stockings. There were two noticeable differences: instead of the famous earrings, she had long floppy dog ears and instead of a cute little upturned nose, she had a black spot to indicate a dog’s nose.
Betty was designed by Grim Natwick, a legendary animator who was later responsible for bringing the character of Disney’s Snow White to life. Natwick had a strong art background and was noted for his ability to animate a realistic human figure. At the time, most animators did what was called “rubber hose” animation where limbs like arms and legs could twist and extend and flop about without any regard to the laws of anatomy.
In interviews, Natwick was quite candid in stating that the original inspiration for Betty Boop was a song sheet he saw of a young female performer named Helen Kane. Kane had the same spit curls as Betty Boop and had added the phrase “boop-boop-a-doop” to the popular song “I Want To Be Loved By You”. Later, Kane sued the Fleischer Studio claiming that Betty Boop had damaged her performing career. She was perceived as an imitator rather than an originator and she lost job opportunities because audiences had already seen Betty do her act.
The Flesichers won by proving that Kane had not been the first performer to “boop-boop-a-doop” although there was no denying that she was certainly the most prominent. Despite the court’s decision in favor of the Fleischers, the debt Betty owes to Helen Kane was fairly obvious.
The Betty Boop character like most cartoon superstars went through a process of evolution. In the early cartoons, she is even called “Nancy Lee” and “Nan McGrew”. However, no matter what she was called, she was being featured more and more prominently in the TALKARTOONS series as she was slowly humanized. One of the Fleischer’s other cartoons series, SCREEN SONG CARTOONS encouraged audiences to sing along with a bouncing ball that bounced on lyrics at the bottom of the screen. One episode, BETTY COED (1931) was the first time the name “Betty” was used in connection with the character. Within another six months, she had become completely humanized in the TALKARTOON, ANY RAGS (1932). Likewise, bimbo changed into the familiar short, round, black dog who behaved like a human and was generally considered Betty’s boyfriend.
Several actresses supplied the voice for the early Betty. In 1931, Max Fleischer hired a teenager who had recently won a Helen Kane look-alike contest to do the voice of Betty. Mae Questel was that lucky teen and she continued doing the voice until the series ended in 1939. She even supplied Betty’s voice for a short lived radio series, BETTY BOOP FABLES.
“I actually lived the part of Betty Boop: walked, talked and everything!” claimed Questel who would later supply the voices for Olive Oyl, Little Audrey and Casper the Friendly Ghost.
One of the last Betty TALKARTOONs was CRAZY TOWN (1932). It was a typical Betty adventure where she and Bimbo sing while they are sitting on top of a trolley car going through Crazy Town where fish swim in the air and birds fly underwater. Betty visits a beauty parlor where females can literally get a brand new head to replace their own and one patron wants Betty’s head!