KEY CREW BEHIND THE STAR: Dave Fleischer (director), Grim Natwick (animator), Mae Questel (voice)

CAREER HIGH: SNOW WHITE (1933) - The best known of the series of cartoons featuring musician Cab Calloway. This short is filled with nightmarish imagery.

Betty Boop is the sole female cartoon superstar. The major factor that seems to have elevated Betty to this status was sex. Almost half a century after her career in theatrical shorts officially ended, she is still a major merchandised character. While there are other memorable female characters who appeared in the short cartoons, they were usually supporting characters. Their roles were often as wives, girlfriends, princesses, witches or mothers. Even notable exceptions like Little Audrey or She-ra weren't able to match Betty's longevity or high recognition factor.

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. Perhaps that obliviousness to her own sexiness added to her appeal. In many ways, she was highly moral almost to the point of prudishness. She was genuinely shocked and offended when some lecherous boss wanted to take her "boop-boop-a-doop" away.

Her trademark phrase, "boop-boop-a-doop" seemed to be a synonym for sex. That was certainly the assumption since she was a parody of the wild "flapper" girls of the period. The Flappers of the Twenties were independent young women who were pushing the boundaries of the traditional roles of women especially in the areas of conduct, dress and sexual freedom. Betty may be the last living example of those carefree and careless women.

During a copyright infringement suit in 1934, a judge offered the following description of Betty: "There is the 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."

It was that image as a "girl-woman," caught in dark dreamlike adventures, that made Betty's reputation. In later years, public morality transformed her into an almost matronly homebody. This clean image is almost totally forgotten by today's audiences and merchandisers.

In the beginning, Betty was attired in a short and low cut black mini-dress that revealed one gartered leg. Her black hair was a host of spit curls framing a grotesquely ass-shaped face that hid any suggestion of a neck. Her huge round eyes contrasted with her minuscule nose and mouth. Hoop earrings and often hoop bracelets helped complete the picture.

Perhaps one of the reasons she did not survive domestication, like many other characters, was that generally she had no personality. Obviously, she was a good and nice person, always concerned about others. She got scared but loved to sing and dance. However, she only ran the emotional gamut from A to B and even that was often difficult for her. The emotional shadings of other characters, including Fleischer's version of Popeye, seemed unavailable to her because it would detract from the "pretty girl object" image.

There were suggestions in some of the early cartoons that Betty was a Jewish American Princess. This wouldn't be difficult to imagine especially considering some of the people that worked on her cartoons. A studio blurb from the time suggested she was 16 years old, but certainly a very mature 16.

It is the Lolita-like Flapper that is best remembered and loved by audiences. Her later years produced some pleasant but generally unexciting cartoon efforts that perhaps deserve to be forgotten.

THE BIRTH OF BETTY

The Fleischer Studios were a major producer of silent cartoons and even experimented with early sound films. In 1929, they began a new series called "Talkartoons." It was determined that a strong continuing character would help sell this series. They took one of their silent cartoon dog characters and with some redesigning christened the anthropormophic pup "Bimbo." This ill-proportioned, sometimes goofy looking character kept changing appearance and coloring in the early cartoons. He bears a slight resemblance to the official cute Bimbo version familiar to modern audiences.

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 was much more girl than dog, was the beginning of Betty. She had the famous spit curls and the short tight black dress that showed the tops of her rolled stockings. However, instead of the famous earrings, she had long floppy ears. Instead of the little upturned nose, she had a black spot to suggest a dog's nose.

Betty was designed by Grim Natwick, a legendary animator who was later responsible for bringing Disney's Snow White princess to life. Natwick had a strong art background. He was noted for his ability to animate a realistic human figure, while others were still concentrating on the rubber hose arms and legs of standard cartoon characters.

In interviews, Natwick has remarked that the original inspiration for Betty Boop was a song sheet he saw of a performer named Helen Kane. Kane had the same spit curls 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 singing career. The Fleischers won by proving that Kane had not been the first performer to "boop-boop- a-doop" although she was certainly the most prominent. Despite the court's decision, Betty Boop's debt to Kane is fairly obvious.

The Betty character went through a process of development. In the early cartoons, she was identified as Nancy Lee or Nan McGrew. Whatever she was called, she began being featured more prominently in the "Talkartoons" series and was becoming more humanized. The sexual suggestiveness was clearly established as a natural part of the character and her virtue was soon threatened by lecherous characters.

One of the Fleischer's other cartoons series, "Screen Song Cartoons," encouraged the audience to sing along as a bouncing ball hit illustrated lyrics. One installment, BETTY COED (1931) was the first time the name "Betty" was used in connection with this girl character. However, it would take almost another six months before she became fully humanized in the "Talkartoon" ANY RAGS (1932). Her dog ears finally became earrings. As Betty had become more human, Bimbo had developed 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 in a short lived radio series, BETTY BOOP FABLES. Along with Betty, she also supplied the voices for Olive Oyl, Little Audrey and Casper the Friendly Ghost. She was more recently seen as the mother in Woody Allen's segment of the feature film NEW YORK STORIES (1989).

One of the last Betty "Talkartoons" was CRAZY TOWN (1932) where Betty and Bimbo, sitting on top of a trolley car, journey to Crazy Town. It's a 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! This film was typical of the dark- toned humor and dreamlike atmosphere of the early Boop cartoons.

BETTY ON HER OWN Betty Boop got her own series in August 1932 with STOPPING THE SHOW. Betty performs on stage and does impersonations of Fanny Brice (as an Indian princess with a goose headdress), Maurice Chevalier (when Betty changes into a man's suit on stage, it's revealed she wears a bra under her dress) and Jimmy Durante. Her performance is quite literally show stopping.

Also in 1932, Betty did an unforgettable topless hula number in BETTY BOOP'S BAMBOO ISLE. Her charms are barely hidden by a grass skirt and a well placed flowered lei. Most of the early Bettys had some incident of her standing in front of a light. This was so her silhouette could be seen through her now see- through dress. Other shorts offered a flash of underwear or some suggestive wiggle that would have given even Mae West pause.

Most of Betty's cartoons were just a long string of loosely connected gags. When the time limit for the cartoon ran out, the cartoons stopped leaving many situations unresolved. An example of this pattern is BETTY BOOP'S CRAZY INVENTIONS (1933). Betty, along with Bimbo and Ko-Ko the Clown, host a big invention show.

There are marvels like the Spot Remover Machine which removes a spot from a handkerchief by cutting a hole around the offending stain. A Self-Threader Sewing Machine goes out of control and sews up the tent where the show is being held. It must still be stitching up the countryside since it is never stopped at the end of the cartoon.

Another key element to the Boop cartoons was their music. Unlike the sweeter, orchestral music found in the Disney and Warners cartoons, Fleischer leaned towards a stronger beat. Jazz was a major part in many of Betty's best vehicles. She had such hot acts as Cab Calloway (MINNIE THE MOOCHER, SNOW WHITE and others) and Louis Armstrong (I'LL BE GLAD WHEN YOU'RE DEAD YOU RASCAL YOU).

One of the most popular Betty cartoons was released in 1934. BETTY IN BLUNDERLAND has Betty putting together an "Alice in Wonderland" puzzle. Out of the puzzle pops the White Rabbit, who Betty follows through a mirror into Lewis Carroll's Wonderland. When she is captured by the Jabberwocky, the famous storybook characters try to rescue her and end up falling back into her puzzle. This was one of the last cartoons where Betty would be able to flash her panties at the audience.

In 1934, the Production Code took effect. Concerned citizens were outraged by the low moral behavior and sexual suggestiveness in movies and even cartoons could not escape this wrath. (Betty's 1934 RED HOT MAMA was rejected by the British Board of Censors and was not allowed screened in England.)

A NEW BETTY

Betty was transformed. Yards of fabric were added to the top and bottom of her dress. Her wild animal friends disappeared as did the surreal stories. Her innocent sexuality was replaced with an attitude appropriate to a conservative young homemaker, complete with apron. What so many had failed to do previously finally occurred. They took her "boop-boop-a-doop" away. To domesticate her further, they gave her a cute puppy (Pudgy), a human boyfriend, a grandfather and other family members.

In STOP THAT NOISE (1935) she flees the city noise outside her apartment window for the supposed quiet of the country. In SWAT THE FLY (1935) Betty is in her kitchen preparing to bake when she and Pudgy must do battle with a bothersome fly. These domestic situation comedy plots could have been handled by any of a number of cartoon characters since they didn't feature the elements that had made Betty unique.

BETTY BOOP AND GRAMPY (1935) introduced Grampy, supposedly Betty's grandfather, who was "so full of pep" that he outdanced his party guests, including Betty. Thanks to his thinking cap, a graduation mortar board with a light bulb on top, he was able to devise a vast array of Rube Goldberg like inventions. He used this ability to help out Betty many times such as cleaning up her house after a party in HOUSE CLEANING BLUES (1937) or giving Irving, the cruel practical joker, a taste of his own medicine in THE IMPRACTICAL JOKER (1937).

An attempt was made to use Betty's cartoons to spin off comic strip characters into animated series. It had proven quite successful with Popeye. He first appeared in animation dancing the hula with Betty in POPEYE THE SAILOR (1933), a Betty Boop cartoon.

Betty was teamed with Carl Anderson's Henry, Jimmy Swinnerton's Little Jimmy and Otto Soglow's The Little King. Neither Henry nor the Little King spoke in their own comic strips which amused audiences with the pantomimed antics. Fleischer saw fit to give these characters inappropriate voices; Henry got an odd mumbling voice while the Little King got stuck with an effeminate whistling lisp.

BETTY BOOP WITH HENRY THE FUNNIEST LIVING AMERICAN (1935) had Henry helping out pet shop owner Betty because he wanted to buy Pudgy, the dog. BETTY BOOP AND LITTLE JIMMY (1936) has Betty trapped in an out-of-control exercise machine and sending Little Jimmy to find an electrician. BETTY BOOP AND THE LITTLE KING (1936) has the Little King sneaking away from a special performance in his honor to go to a vaudeville house to see Betty's horse riding act.

None of these cartoons had that raw energy that propelled Popeye to stardom. Betty suffered through the next few years with a new supporting cast. Freddie, an effeminate but muscular young man, was supposedly her boyfriend and he was cast in the role of lifeguard or soldier. Billy Boop, Betty's kid brother showed up to get into cute scrapes (BABY BE GOOD/1935). Certainly these characters couldn't compete with the earlier oddball supporting cast like the rough and tumble Gus Gorilla.

One of the last Betty cartoons was MUSICAL MOUNTAINEERS (1939) where Betty runs out of gas and a group of grotesque looking hillbillies help her out with some moonshine. Betty's dancing in this cartoon bears absolutely no resemblance to her sensual wiggling in pre-1934 efforts.

The last official Betty Boop cartoon, YIP YIP YIPPY, was released August 1939. Betty doesn't even appear in the story. There were many reasons for Fleischer ending the series. Besides the waning public interest in the new Betty and the difficulty in coming up with interesting stories, the Fleischers moved their studio to Florida and needed all available manpower to concentrate their efforts on their first feature cartoon, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (1939). Mae Questel's refusal to relocate to Florida also contributed to the decision. Soon afterwards, Paramount took control of the Fleischer studio and saw no reason to revive the character.

BETTY COMES TO TV & HER MORALS COME INTO FASHION

When the pre-1948 Paramount cartoons were sold to TV in the late Fifties, the Betty Boop cartoons were syndicated on local stations. These shorts met the fate of most black and white cartoons in the late Sixties and began to disappear from the small screen. However, with almost no notice, Betty was becoming a hot property again.

The late Sixties was a time of dissidence throughout the U.S. Between the "love generation," pot, "hippies" and the Vietnam war, a large anti-establishment mentality pervaded the nation's youth. The new celebrities were classic stars who basically disrupted society: W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers and "sexy" Betty Boop. Other attractions were films that were "enhanced" when one was "high:" Disney's FANTASIA, 2001 and, again, "weird" Betty Boop. She was covered in a number of free thinking publications of the time, including Rolling Stone.

The increased attention was noticed by National Telefilm Associates (NTA) who had acquired the rights to the cartoons. Sensing a new market, they had the original black and white shorts "colorized" for TV. This primitive process involved shipping the cartoons to Korea where they were traced frame by frame and the tracings hand painted in color.

Noted film critic, Leonard Maltin found the new cartoons questionable. He stated at the time of their release that "Superficially, the color is quite good, with more to offer than many newly made TV cartoons. But somehow, in the process of transference, a certain amount of detail is lost -- detail that would go unnoticed by the average TV-viewing youngster, and probably by most viewers, period."

In the Korean process, many drawings were skipped and backgrounds were simplified. The final results bore little relation to the classic Fleischer styling. Even worse was the bizarre selection of colors which resulted in such oddities as a bright purple wolf in DIZZY RED RIDING HOOD (1931).

The shorts were released under the title of THE BETTY BOOP SHOW. Each half hour contained four cartoons. Unfortunately, these color efforts did little if anything to increase Betty's popularity on TV. Cleaned up and in color, she was just another cartoon.

However, she was still dynamite in her original form. IVY Films put together a feature called THE BETTY BOOP SCANDALS OF 1974. It was merely a grouping of some of her most bizarre and best cartoons such as SNOW WHITE, MINNIE THE MOOCHER and BIMBO'S INITIATION. (Also included were some live action comedy shorts of the same period, and the first chapter of the original BUCK ROGERS serial.) The film proved moderately successful at theatres and very successful on college campuses. A soundtrack album of the film was released, and sold so well a second album of Boop cartoon soundtracks was issued.

Still trying to catch some of the Boop hype, in 1976 NTA approached producer Dan Dalton with the proposal of editing a compilation feature of the colorized shorts to tie-in with the upcoming presidential election. Originally titled BETTY BOOP FOR PRESIDENT, the film took almost four years to complete. When it finally appeared in 1980, it was retitled HURRAY FOR BETTY BOOP.

The film features excerpts from 35 different Boop shorts, ending with BETTY BOOP FOR PRESIDENT (1932). Throughout the film, the Devil in a variety of guises tries to prevent Betty from winning the presidential election. Victoria D'Orazi redubbed Betty's voice and Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers narrated the story as Pudgy the Pup. Even though some of the original Cab Calloway songs were kept, there were additional songs by Debby Boone and the Association included in the soft rock soundtrack.

Dalton, along with some other writers, wrote new dialog for the film, making no attempt to match these new words with the previously animated mouth movements. For example, as Betty cleans the kitchen in HOUSE CLEANING BLUES (1937) she asks, "Are your sure Carter started out this way?" a reference to President Jimmy Carter.

New Line Cinema, which distributed the film, spent a minimum of $50,000 on promotion. New York publicist Alan Abel was hired to run a "Betty Boop for President" campaign. This campaign included supporters picketing the Democratic convention in New York. Boop campaign slogans were painted on New York sidewalks and walls. Victoria D'Orazi, the new voice of Betty, toured the country in a Betty Boop costume. This often caused some confusion because of then-current plans to develop a Broadway musical about Betty Boop reportedly starring Bernadette Peters.

People were unclear exactly what all this Boop publicity was supposed to be promoting. The film, after a limited series of theatrical bookings, recouped its cost by being sold to cable TV.

BETTY GETS NEWLY ANIMATED

In 1985 Betty starred in a prime time special THE ROMANCE OF BETTY BOOP by Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez, the team responsible for the Peanuts TV specials. Set in 1939 New York, the story followed Betty's attempt to gain stardom. She deals with millionaires, mobsters and Hollywood. At the end she must decide between being a star and being a wife; no decision is made.

The special has little to reccommend it. Though officially giving "thanks" to Grim Natwick, this new Betty had little of her Boop-boop-a-doop. Mae Questel, upon hearing of the production, offered to do the voice but was refused. The part was played by singer-composer Desiree Goyette, Mendelson's wife.

In 1987, "The Great Betty Boop Talent Search Pageant" was held in connection with a $20 million live action motion picture being produced about the Cartoon Superstar. Edward Lozzi and Associates were involved. However, a year later, the winner complained there was no movie and no contract with the Ron Smith look-alikes that she was promised.

However Questel got to "boop-boop-a-doop" again in 1988's WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? Making fun of her plight as a black and white cartoon star, she appears as a waitress in the famous Ink and Paint Club sequence and the final sing-a-long.

As recently as 1990, Betty was being talked about for a new special. King Features, who now owns the character, signed a deal for Big Pictures to produce BETTY BOOP'S HOLLYWOOD MYSTERY.

The studio promised the new special would reunite Betty with her original co-stars Bimbo and Koko the Clown. The trio work for Diner Dan and help a detective solve a jewelry heist. Betty's voice was to be provided by Melissa Fahn. Also promised was a return to the "jazz-age surrealism of Max Fleischer's original '30s cartoons."

HER SUPPORTERS

Bimbo was a revised version of the dog character who appeared in the silent cartoon series "Inkwell Imps." Bimbo was assumed to be Betty Boop's boyfriend, despite the fact that he remained a dog while Betty became more human. This mixed love relationship didn't bother early audiences any more than the one between Jessica and Roger Rabbit. Bimbo was a short, black dog who was quite street smart. He wore a longsleeve turtleneck sweater and shoes but no pants.

Ko-Ko the Clown was the famous silent cartoon star of the Fleischers who used to pop out of an inkwell. He was brought out of retirement to become another of Betty's boyfriends and sometime companion to Bimbo. He wore a black clown costume with a black pointed hat. He was a white face clown, the kind most apt to terrify children because they look unreal. Ko-Ko never seemed as sharp as Bimbo.

Grampy was supposedly Betty's grandfather and he frequently upstaged the new Betty. Always full of pep, he was an inventor capable of turning household items into a wild array of useful gadgets.

Pudgy was a small, cute, playful and mischievous white puppy. He really loved his owner, Betty. While he had some degree of understanding, he was obviously just a dog (unlike Bimbo) and never talked.

OTHER MEDIA

Betty was a highly merchandised cartoon star of the Thirties. There were toys, clothing, candy, dolls (including the jointed wooden doll by Cameo), watches, and two Big Little Books (including the unusual MISS GULLIVER'S TRAVELS). In the late Sixties, there was a revival of interest in Betty Boop items which has increased tremendously in the Eighties.

Today, the Betty Boop character is currently licensed for more than 300 products worldwide. There are items geared not only for children (Betty Boop Makeup Kit) but for adults (expensive ceramics, calendars and greeting cards). The line has even been extended to include "Baby Boop." This toddler version is geared for young children and features Baby Boop in strollers, on rocking horses, etc.

There was a daily newspaper strip in 1934 that lasted a year, and a Sunday version that lasted until 1937 drawn by Bud Counihan. (These strips have been reprinted in recent years by Blackthorne Publishing.) There was one issue of an unauthorized comic book with Betty published in the Seventies. In the Eighties, the Walker Brothers (sons of Mort Walker of Beetle Bailey comic strip fame) tried to revive Betty Boop in an unsuccessful newspaper strip that teamed the classic Betty with Felix the Cat as her pet! In 1990, First Publishing planned to release a graphic novel comic book story entitled BETTY BOOP'S BIG BREAK with new art by Milton Knight.

Betty is also a spokesperson for the Home Shopping Network (a cable network), Hershey's Chocolate and Sumitome 3M video cassettes in Japan. She's also an official NFL cheerleader.

SUPERSTAR QUALITY

Strangely, Betty Boop seems more popular today than at the peak of her theatrical career. Even though Betty's adventures are available on videotape, most fans haven't seen her perform. They are enamored of her classic, sexual, innocent image.

CREATOR QUOTES

"It's a great children's movie, a great doper's movie, a great midnight movie." - Dan Dalton, producer/director HURRAY FOR BETTY BOOP

"He likes to boop-boop-a-doop, but I never cared to boop-boop-a- doop..." - Betty Boop in STOPPING THE SHOW (1932)

"Betty Boop was really unique in that, unlike other cartoon characters, she didn't really change much physically." - Bernie Wolf, animator of the orginal Betty Boop Fleischer shorts.

"We have nothing else to do so let's go crazy." - Betty & Bimbo in CRAZY TOWN (1932)

"An auto horn can't boop-boop-a-doop like Betty Boop can do." - Betty Boop theme song

"I actually lived the part of Betty Boop: walked, talked and everything!" - Mae Questel

"She's hard working and fun at the same time - a true metaphore for the career woman of the Eighties." - King Features press release, 1985