The old school cartoon character, created by Max Fleischer, was a hit sex symbol on the animated screen and she defined youth in many ways. Not only children but elders are also in love with the lovely woman and like to keep her pictures. Being a favorite of millions, Betty Boop pictures are a hit on the online space. Hers was a sexy avatar and she wore her fearless attitude on her sleeves and that also took her into various legal tangles but she came out of all that with flying colors. Known for her saucy attitude, Betty Boop was distinct in many ways from other female cartoon characters. CAPTION: Come hither: The Biograph hosts "Betty Boop Confidential.The sexy cartoon character of Betty Boop, who made her mark in the era of 1930s, is still etched in the minds of the people. Betty Boop Confidential, at the Biograph through June 22, is not rated. Incidentally, the real hula dancer shown here has nothing on Betty's undulations.Ĭheerfully subversive, enlivened by constantly propulsive music (most but not all of it hot jazz), and visually sharp - new 35-millimeter prints were struck from original or restored negatives - "Betty Boop Confidential" celebrates the free spirit of both creator and creation. When cartoon figures parody the "Sugarcanes" sing-along, you appreciate the surrealistic zing of both sound and image at the heart of Fleisher's work.īetty Boop's pals, Koko the Clown and Bimbo the Cat, show up in the nightmarish "Swing You Sinners" and the fraternity-hazing "Bimbo's Initiation." As for Betty, her last stand is "Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle." Though in black-and-white, Betty gets a tan and a hula skirt before being plopped down in an exotic tropical setting. The singers, visually integrated "Roger Rabbit"-style, lead bouncing-ball sing-alongs. The problem with these cartoons and several others is that there's not enough Betty Boop in them she's absent from "Down Among the Sugarcanes" and "Any Rags," though you do get vocal cameos from Lillian Roth and Ethel Merman. The then-new color technology is primitive, but the colors themselves are wonderfully rich. The other two color cartoons in this collection are "Dancing on the Moon" (a silly Noah's-Ark-meets-the-Love-Boat fable with a dash of Rocket 99) and "Somewhere in Dreamland" (which melds elements of "Annie," "The Wizard of Oz" and "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"). She wasn't good, she was just redrawn that way. In fact, Betty was a very different 'toon, and it was probably boredom that led to her retirement at the end of the decade. Wearing more clothes and sporting brown hair that one suspects was inky-dinky black in the good old days, Betty Boop as Cinderella was a very nice girl singing a very different tune (less nasally too). Time brought not only the Hays Code but color as well, and "Poor Cinderella" shows the influence of both. ![]() James Infirmary," with ghostly cakewalking hipsters out in full force. His skewed take on that familiar story is evident in his choice of music - Cab Calloway and his populist big band swinging the "St. Betty is a naughty-but-nice circus performer lusted after by an oily ringmaster who tries to force his attentions on her: sexual harassment in the workplace 64 years before "Disclosure."įleisher also tackled "Snow White" five years before Disney. Most of the Betty Boop cartoons here are light fare, but her debut in 1931's "Boop-oop-a-doop" now seems weirdly prescient. And in early cartoons that shimmered with musical and visual rhythms, undulating Betty seemed to have a perpetual case of ants-in-her-pants. In fact, she may have been the first animated figure to burst out of a bustier and dance topless (albeit with a strategically placed lei). Until the 1934 Hays Code banned lewd imagery in cartoons, Fleisher Studios clearly didn't waste a lot of ink on Betty Boop's clothes. While Disney's heroines came across as professional virgins, Betty Boop looked as if she'd stepped off a burlesque stage onto the animator's page. In the early days of animation, Fleisher Studios was the Rolling Stones to Walt Disney's Beatles. After seeing this, you'll never be able to listen to Cindy Lauper or Meg Tilly again without thinking: Betty Boop. And watching these Max Fleisher creations from the '30s, one senses she is the mother of, if not all of us, definitely Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. Boop is the inspiration for "Betty Boop Confidential," a 10-cartoon collection playing at the Biograph. Betty Boop's "the little queen/ Of the animated screen." And though "made of pen and ink,/ She can win you with a wink."
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