Betty Boop made her first appearance on August 9, , in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes , the seventh installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. Although Clara Bow is often given as being the model for Boop, [10] she actually began as a caricature of singer Helen Kane , who in turn gained fame by imitating the style of black singer Baby Esther Jones. The character was originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle. Within a year, Betty made the transition from an incidental human-canine breed to a completely human female character.
Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings , and her black poodle nose became a girl's button-like nose. Although it has been assumed that Betty's first name was established in the Screen Songs cartoon, Betty Co-ed , this "Betty" is an entirely different character. Even though the song may have led to Betty's eventual christening, any reference to Betty Co-ed as a Betty Boop vehicle is incorrect although the official Betty Boop website describes the titular character as a "prototype" of Betty.
There are at least 12 Screen Songs cartoons that featured Betty Boop or a similar character. Betty appeared in the first "Color Classic" cartoon Poor Cinderella , her only theatrical color appearance in In the film, she was depicted with red hair as opposed to her typical black hair. Betty also made a cameo appearance in the feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit , in which she appeared in her traditional black and white and was voiced by Mae Questel.
Betty Boop was the star of the Talkartoons by and was given her own series that same year, beginning with Stopping the Show. From that point on, she was crowned "The Queen of the Animated Screen". The series was popular throughout the s, lasting until Betty Boop is regarded as one of the first and most famous sex symbols on the animated screen; [15] [16] she is a symbol of the Depression era , and a reminder of the more carefree days of Jazz Age flappers.
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Her popularity was drawn largely from adult audiences, and the cartoons, while seemingly surreal, contained many sexual and psychological elements, particularly in the "Talkartoon" Minnie the Moocher , featuring Cab Calloway and his orchestra. Minnie the Moocher defined Betty's character as a teenager of a modern era, at odds with the old-world ways of her parents. In the cartoon, after a disagreement with her strict parents, Betty runs away from home, accompanied by her boyfriend Bimbo, only to get lost in a haunted cave.
A ghostly walrus rotoscoped from live-action footage of Calloway sings Calloway's famous song "Minnie the Moocher", accompanied by several other ghosts and skeletons. This haunting performance sends the frightened Betty and Bimbo back to the safety of home. The eight Talkartoons that followed all starred Betty, leading her into her own series beginning in With the release of Stopping the Show August , the Talkartoons were replaced by the Betty Boop series, which continued for the next seven years.
Betty Boop was unique among female cartoon characters because she represented a sexual woman. Other female cartoon characters of the same period, such as Minnie Mouse , displayed their underwear or bloomers regularly, in the style of childish or comical characters, not a fully defined woman's form. Many other female cartoons were merely clones of their male co-stars, with alterations in costume, the addition of eyelashes, and a female voice. Betty Boop wore short dresses, high heels, a garter, and her breasts were highlighted with a low, contoured bodice that showed cleavage. In her cartoons, male characters frequently try to sneak peeks at her while she is changing or simply going about her business.
In Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle , she does the hula wearing nothing but a lei , strategically placed to cover her breasts, and a grass skirt. This was repeated in her first cameo appearance in Popeye the Sailor There was, however, a certain girlish quality to the character. She was drawn with a head more similar to a baby's than an adult's in proportion to her body.
This suggested the combination of girlishness and maturity that many people saw in the flapper type, which Betty represented. While the character was kept pure and girl-like onscreen, compromises to her virtue were a challenge. The studio's Christmas card featured Betty in bed with Santa Claus, winking at the viewer. Officially, Betty was only 16 years old, according to a interview with Fleischer although in The Bum Bandit , she is portrayed as a married woman with many children and with an adult woman's voice, rather than the standard "boop-boop-a-doop" voice.
Attempts to compromise her virginity were reflected in Chess-Nuts and most importantly in Boop-Oop-a-Doop When she rejects him, he pulls her out of the ropes, drags her off to the bedroom and says, "I will have you". The bed, however, runs away and Betty calls for help through the window. Bimbo comes to her rescue, and she is saved before anything happens. In Boop-Oop-a-Doop , Betty is a high-wire performer in a circus. The ringmaster lusts for Betty as he watches her from below, singing "Do Something", a song previously performed by Helen Kane.
As Betty returns to her tent, the ringmaster follows her inside and sensually massages her legs, surrounds her, and threatens her job if she does not submit. Koko the Clown is practicing his juggling outside the tent and overhears the struggle inside. He leaps in to save Betty, struggling with the ringmaster, who loads him into a cannon and fires it. Koko, who remained hiding inside the cannon, knocks the ringmaster out cold with a mallet, while imitating the ringmaster's laugh. Koko then inquires about Betty's welfare, to which she answers in song, "No, he couldn't take my boop-oop-a-doop away".
According to Jill Harness of Mental Floss , these portrayals of Boop fighting off sexual harassment on the animated screen made many see her as a feminist icon. While Kane had risen to fame in the late s as "The Boop-Oop-A-Doop Girl", a star of stage, recordings, and films for Paramount, her career was nearing its end by Paramount promoted the development of Betty Boop following Kane's decline.
The case was brought in New York in Although Kane's claims seemed to be valid on the surface, it was proven that her appearance was not unique. On April 19, Fleischer testified that Betty Boop purely was a product of the imaginations of himself and detailed by members of his staff. The most significant evidence against Kane's case was her claim as to the uniqueness of her singing style. Testimony revealed that Kane had witnessed an African American performer, Baby Esther — whose name was given in the trial as Esther Jones, which was possibly a pseudonym for Gertrude Saunders, [21] using a similar vocal style in an act at the Cotton Club nightclub in Harlem, some years earlier, although she was presumed to be dead at the time of the trial.
McGoldrick ruled, "The plaintiff has failed to sustain either cause of action by proof of sufficient probative force". The ruling concluded that the "baby" technique of singing did not originate with Kane. Betty Boop's best appearances are considered to be in her first three years due to her " Jazz Baby " character and innocent sexuality, which was aimed at adults. However, the content of her films was affected by the National Legion of Decency and the Production Code of The Production Code of imposed guidelines on the Motion Picture Industry and placed specific restrictions on the content films could reference with sexual innuendos.
This greatly affected the Betty Boop cartoons. No longer a carefree flapper from the date the code went into effect on July 1, , Betty became a spinster housewife or a career girl who wore a fuller dress or skirt. Additionally, as time progressed, the curls in her hair gradually decreased. She also eventually stopped wearing her gold bracelets and hoop earrings, and she became more mature and wiser in personality, compared to her earlier years.
Right from the start, Joseph Breen , the new head film censor, had numerous complaints. The Breen Office ordered the removal of the suggestive introduction which had started the cartoons because Betty Boop's winks and shaking hips were deemed "suggestive of immorality".
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For a few entries, Betty was given a new human boyfriend named Freddie, who was introduced in She Wronged Him Right The following year saw the addition of the eccentric inventor Grampy , who debuted in Betty Boop and Grampy While these cartoons were tame compared to her earlier appearances, their self-conscious wholesomeness was aimed at a more juvenile audience, which contributed to the decline of the series. Much of the decline was due to the lessening of Betty's role in the cartoons in favor of her co-stars. This was a similar problem experienced during the same period with Walt Disney 's Mickey Mouse , who was becoming eclipsed by the popularity of his co-stars Donald Duck , Goofy , and Pluto , not to mention Fleischer's biggest success, Popeye.
Since she was largely a musical novelty character, the animators attempted to keep Betty's cartoons interesting by pairing her with popular comic strip characters such as Henry , The Little King and Little Jimmy , hoping to create an additional spin-off series with her pairing with Popeye in However, none of these films generated a new series. The last Betty Boop cartoons were released in , and a few made attempts to bring Betty into the swing era.
In her last appearance, Rhythm on the Reservation Betty drives an open convertible, labeled "Betty Boop's Swing Band", through a Native American reservation, where she introduces the people to swing music and creates a "Swinging Sioux Band". While "Yip Yip Yippy" appears at the end of the Betty Boop series, it is only a one-shot about a "Drug Store" mail-order cowboy "wannabe" without Betty.
In , Betty's cartoon appearances were sold to television syndicator U. NTA was reorganized in as Republic Pictures , which folded in , and became Melange Pictures, a subsidiary of Viacom , the parent company of Paramount. She has made cameo appearances in television commercials and the feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
While television revivals were conceived, nothing has materialized from the plans. There were no such releases for the Betty Boop cartoons on DVD and Blu-ray , up until when Olive Films finally released the non- public domain cartoons, although they were restored from the original television internegatives that carried the altered opening and closing credits.
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Volume 1 was released on August 20, , and Volume 2 on September 24, On February 11, , Deadline announced that a new episode television series focusing on Betty Boop is in production, in partnership with Normaal Animation, Fleischer Studios and King Features and is set to air sometime in The show will be aimed towards the tween and teenage audience. The show's premise, according to the article, will "recount the daily struggles, joys and victories of young Betty Boop, who has every intention of being on stage and becoming a superstar".
In , Dynamite Entertainment published new Betty Boop comics with 20 pages in the alternative American anime graphic novel style. Betty Boop's films found a new audience when Paramount sold them for syndication in However, the mountain motif remains on some television prints, usually with a U. The original Betty Boop cartoons were made in black-and-white. As new color cartoons made specifically for television began to appear in the s with the spread of color TV sets, the original black-and-white cartoons were retired.
Boop's film career saw a revival with the release of The Betty Boop Scandals of , becoming a part of the posts counterculture. NTA attempted to capitalize on this with a new syndication package, but because there was no market for cartoons in black and white, they sent them to South Korea, where the cartoons were hand-traced frame-by-frame in color, resulting in the degradation of the animation quality and timing. Unable to sell these to television largely because of the sloppy colorization, they assembled a number of the color cartoons in a compilation feature titled Betty Boop for President , to connect with the election, but it did not receive a major theatrical release; it resurfaced in on HBO under the title Hurray for Betty Boop.
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It was the advent of home video that created an appreciation for films in their original versions, and Betty was rediscovered again in Beta and VHS versions. The ever-expanding cable television industry saw the creation of American Movie Classics , which showcased a selection of the original black and white "Betty Boop" cartoons in the s, which led to an eight-volume VHS and LV set, "Betty Boop, the Definitive Collection".
Some of the non-public domain Boop cartoons copyrighted by Republic successor Melange Pictures Viacom's holding company that handles the Republic theatrical library have been released by Olive Films under Paramount's license, while the Internet Archive currently hosts 22 Betty Boop cartoons that are public domain. Marketers rediscovered Betty Boop in the s, and Betty Boop merchandise has far outdistanced her exposure in films, with many not aware of her as a cinematic creation.
Much of this current merchandise features the character in her popular, sexier form, and has become popular worldwide once again. The s rapper Betty Boo whose voice, image and name were influenced by the cartoon character rose to popularity in the UK largely due to the "Betty Boop" revival.
There were brief returns to the theatrical screen.
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It was to be a musical with music and lyrics by jazzman Bennie Wallace. Wallace had completed several songs and seventy-five percent of the film had been storyboarded when, two weeks before voice recording was to begin with Bernadette Peters as Betty, the head of MGM, Alan Ladd, Jr. Ownership of the Boop cartoons has changed hands over the intervening decades due to a series of corporate mergers, acquisitions and divestitures mainly involving Republic Pictures and the corporate split of parent company Viacom into two separate companies.
As of the present, Olive Films under license from Paramount holds home video rights and Trifecta retains television rights. The rights to the "Betty Boop" character were not sold with the cartoons by Paramount, and it was transferred to Harvey Films, inc. In the judgement, the US courts were unable to come to a majority decision concerning the ownership of the copyright, only agreeing that Paramount sold the copyright to Harvey Films Inc.
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