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Little Ann Little |
The voice of Betty Boop was done by several women, including Margie Heinz, Kate Wright and Bonnie Poe, but Little Ann Little and Mae Questel were the most important. Little Ann Little did the voice first and then went on the road with a Betty Boop act. The act consisted, in part of a drawing demonstration by Pauline Comanor, who drew Ann as Betty Boop and handed out the drawings to lucky audience members. Mae Questel did the voice until the series ended in 1939. She was quite adept at mimicry and could imitate anyone. She also, like Ann bore a striking resemblance to Betty. |
Mae Questel |
Natwick himself later conceded that Betty's original look was quite ugly.[citation needed] The animator redesigned her in 1932 to be recognizably human in the cartoon Any Rags. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her poodle fur became a bob haircut. She appeared in ten cartoons as a supporting character, a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons she was called "Nancy Lee" and "Nan McGrew". She usually served as studio star Bimbo's girlfriend.
Although some claim that Betty's first name was established in the 1931 Screen Songs cartoon Betty Co-ed, this "Betty" was, in truth, an entirely different character. Though the song itself may have led to Betty's eventual christening, any references to Betty Co-ed as a Betty Boop vehicle have been made in error. (The official Betty Boop website describes the titular character as a "prototype" of Betty.) In all, there were at least 12 Screen Songs cartoons that featured either Betty Boop or a similar character.
There were only two films known in which Betty was featured in color. 'Poor Cinderella' and 'Crazy Town' (1932). (Although she appeared in the color feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Betty appeared in her traditional black and white. Betty made light of it in the film, saying work may have been slow since cartoons went to color, but she still had what it took.
Betty as sex symbol
Betty Boop in Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle (1932).Betty's development was still incomplete, however. Max Fleischer's brother, Dave, further altered the character, making her sexier and more feminine. The character was officially christened "Betty Boop" with the release of the 1932 Talkartoons short Minnie the Moocher, to which Cab Calloway and his orchestra lent their talents. Betty's famous personality also finally came into play in this film. In Minnie the Moocher, Betty runs away from her over-bearing parents, only to get lost with her boyfriend Bimbo in a haunted cave. A ghostly walrus (rotoscoped from live-action footage of Calloway), sings Calloway's hit song "Minnie the Moocher" accompanied by several skeletons and other ghosts. The ghosts' performance impels the frightened Betty and Bimbo to flee back to the safety of home. The eight Talkartoons released after Minnie the Moocher all featured Betty as their star. With the release of Stopping the Show in August of 1932, the Talkartoon series was replaced by a series of Betty Boop cartoons.
The portrayal of Betty's parents in Minnie the Moocher as seemingly being Orthodox Jews has led many to assume that Betty herself was intended as an overtly Jewish character. However later cartoons, such as the 1936 short Be Human, introduced Betty's Grandpa, who was portrayed very much as an 'old timer' in the style of such characters from wild west films. In 1932, Betty had become the self-proclaimed "queen of the animated screen"-above even Minnie Mouse- and also became one of Paramount's top stars.[1]
Betty Boop is noteworthy for being the first cartoon character to fully represent a sexual woman. Other female characters of the same period showed their panties regularly, like Minnie Mouse, but didn't have a full caricature of a woman's form. Betty, however, reveled in her sexuality. She wore short dresses and a garter belt. Her breasts were prominent, and she showed her cleavage. In her cartoons, other characters try to sneak peeks at her while she's changing. In Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle, she does the hula wearing only a lei and a grass skirt, a bit she repeated in her cameo appearance in the first Popeye cartoon.
Nevertheless, the animators made sure to keep the character "pure" and girl-like (officially, she was only 16 years old). As Betty tells Koko the Clown in the film Boop-Oop-A-Doop after being threatened by a salacious ringmaster, "He couldn't take my boop-oop-a-doop away!"
Her cartoons also stood out from the competition due to their upbeat jazz soundtracks. In addition to three cartoons with soundtracks by Cab Calloway, guest bands for Betty Boop cartoons included the bands of Louis Armstrong, Rudy Vallee, and Don Redman. Ethel Merman, Irene Bordoni and Reis and Dunn also appeared in a few shorts as guest performers.
In the end, Betty's heightened sexuality would spell her doom. The Production Code censorship laws enforced beginning in 1934 forced her to wear a longer skirt and less revealing neckline. Betty was no longer a flapper; she was a husbandless housewife with a little dog named Pudgy. As a result, Betty's popularity sharply declined [2] The animators struggled to keep Betty's cartoons interesting by pairing her with popular comic strip characters, but none of these films were very successful (though one such pairing did propel Popeye to stardom of his own). Betty's cartoon career came to an end, at least temporarily, in 1939.
A Betty Boop comic strip by Max Fleischer was syndicated from 1934 through 1937. From 1984 through 1987, another strip, Betty Boop and Friends was produced by Brian Walker, Ned Walker, Greg Walker, and Morgan Walker.
Betty today
Betty Boop's films would reach audiences once again when they were placed into syndication on television in the 1950s by U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. and later National Telefilm Associates (NTA). U.M.&M. and NTA altered the Paramount openings, removing the Paramount logo from the opening and closing. However, the mountain part of the logo remains on television prints, usually with a U.M.&M. copyright, but some prints contain Paramount-Publix bylines.
She also gained exposure in the 1960s counterculture movement. NTA capitalized on this and bought the rights to her shorts to colorize and re-air them on TV as The Betty Boop Show. There was criticism towards NTA's colorization since, as Turner Entertainment later did with Fleischer's Popeye the Sailor, the Korean artists who traced the cartoons into color skipped drawings and simplified movements, using limited animation in place of Fleischer's full animation.
Ivy Films put together a movie of some of Betty's better shorts called The Betty Boop Scandals of 1974 which saw some limited success. NTA later released another compilation movie, Hurray for Betty Boop in 1980. Marketers rediscovered Betty Boop in the 1980s as well, and merchandise featuring the character (in her earlier, sexier form) is now widely available. Also in the 1980s, rapper Betty Boo (whose voice, image, and name were influenced by the cartoon character) rose to popularity in the UK.
In 1988, Betty appeared for the first time in years, with a cameo in the Academy Award-winning film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It was widely reported that the animators had slipped in one frame of Betty nude, invisible to the audience, of course. If such a frame existed, it was replaced by a conventional frame once the movie came out on home video.
In 1993, animation director Jerry Rees, best known for his film The Brave Little Toaster, wrote and produced a new Betty Boop feature film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Seventy-five percent of the film was storyboarded, but two weeks before voice recording was to begin, MGM switched studio chiefs and the project, tentatively called The Betty Boop Feature Script, was abandoned.
A display of Betty Boop collectibles.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 2006 corporate split of parent company Viacom into two separate companies). As of 2006, Lions Gate Home Entertainment (under license from Republic) holds home video rights, and CBS Paramount Television handles television distribution, while, ironically, original distributor Paramount handles theatrical distribution, although any sort of rerelease has yet to be announced. Also, the Betty Boop character and trademark is currently owned by King Features Syndicate and Fleischer Studios.