Early Betty

Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by animator Grim Natwick, appearing in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop series of films produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. With her overt sexual appeal, Betty was a hit with filmgoers, and despite having been toned down in the mid-1930s, she remains popular today. She has been featured in two different comic strips, one in the 1930s and another in the 1980s.

Betty Boop made her first appearance on August 9, 1930 in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, the sixth installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. The character was modeled after a combination of Helen Kane, the famous popular singer of the 1920s and contract player at Paramount Pictures (the studio that distributed Fleischer's cartoons), and Clara Bow, who was a popular actress in the 1920s who had not managed to survive the transition to sound because of her strong Brooklyn accent which nevertheless became a trademark for Betty. The character was originally created in the mode of an anthropomorphic French poodle.

Max Fleischer finalized Betty Boop as completely human by 1932 in the cartoon Any Rags. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her black poodle nose became a girl's button-like nose. Betty 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", usually serving as a girlfriend to studio star Bimbo.

Betty's voice was first performed by Margie Hines, and was later provided by several different voice actresses including Kate Wright, Ann Rothschild (a.k.a. Little Ann Little), Bonnie Poe, and most notably, Mae Questel who began in 1931 and continued with the role until her death in 1998. Today Betty is voiced by Tress MacNeille and Tara Strong in Commercials.

Although it has been assumed that Betty's first name was established in the 1931 Screen Songs cartoon Betty Co-ed, this "Betty" was an entirely different character. Though the song may have led to Betty's eventual christening, any references to Betty Co-ed as a Betty Boop vehicle are incorrect. (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.

Betty appeared in the first "Color Classic" cartoon 'Poor Cinderella', her only theatrical color appearance (1934). In this film, she was depicted with red hair. In a cameo appearance in the feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), in her traditional black and white, and voiced by Mae Questel, Betty mentioned that work had "gotten slow since cartoons went to color," but she has "still got it, boo bee bah, doo!"

Betty Boop became the star of the Talkartoons by 1932, and was given her own series in that same year beginning with Stopping the Show. From this point on, she was crowned "The Queen of the Animated Screen." The series was hugely popular throughout the 1930s, lasting until 1939. It is still tremendously popular today.

Betty Boop is known as the first and one of the most famous sex symbols on the animated screen; she was a symbol of the Depression era, a reminder of the more carefree days of Jazz Age flappers. Her popularity was drawn largely from adult audiences, and the cartoons, while seemingly surrealistic, contained many sexual/psychological elements, particularly in the "Talkartoon", Minnie the Moocher, featuring Cab Calloway and his orchestra. Minnie the Moocher is perhaps the one cartoon that defined Betty's character as a teenager of a modern era at odds with the old world ways of her parents.

Betty is at odds with her parents and opts to run away from home, only to get lost in a haunted cave with her boyfriend Bimbo. 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, sweet home". "Minnie the Moocher" was a huge success on two levels. It was a tremedous promotion for Calloway's subsequent stage appearances, and also established "Betty Boop" as a cartoon star. The eight Talkartoons that followed all starred Betty, leading her into her own series beginning in 1932. With the release of Stopping the Show in August 1932, the Talkartoons were replaced by the Betty Boop series, which continued for the next seven years, with Betty being one of Paramount's top stars.

Betty Boop is important to animation history for being the first cartoon character to fully represent a sexualized woman. Other female cartoon characters of the same period, such as Minnie Mouse, displayed their underwear or bloomers regularly, suggesting children or comical characters, not fully defined in a woman's form. Many other cartoon "girls" were merely clones of their male co-stars, with alterations in costume with the addition of eyelashes and a female voice. Betty Boop wore short dresses, high heels, and a garter belt. Her breasts were suggested with a low, contoured bodice that showed cleavage. (In Any Rags she looks out the window and her dress momentarily falls down revealing her cleavage.) In her cartoons, male characters tried to sneak peeks at her while she's changing, or simply walking along minding her own business. In Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle, she does the hula topless, wearing only a lei and a grass skirt, which she repeated in her cameo appearance in the first Popeye cartoon, Popeye the Sailor (1933). Her "Bamboo Isle" performance was also included in the short Betty Boop's Rise to Fame, featuring a staged quasi-interview with studio head, Max Fleischer.

There was, however, a certain girlish quality to the character. She was drawn with a head bigger than normal for an adult, but normal for a baby. This suggested the combination of girlishness and maturity many people saw in the "flapper" type which Betty Boop was supposed to represent. While compromises on Betty's virtue were always a challenge, the animators kept her "pure" and girl-like, on screen, anyway. The studio's 1931 Christmas card featured Betty in bed with Santa Claus, winking at the viewer. Also in 1931, the Talkartoons The Bum Bandit and Dizzy Red Riding Hood were given distinctly "impure" endings. Officially, Betty was only 16 years old according to a 1932 interview with Fleischer (although in The Bum Bandit she's portrayed as a married woman with many children and also has an adult woman's voice, not the standard "boop-boop-a-doop" voice).

Attempts to compromise her virginity were reflected in Chess-Nuts (1932) and most importantly, Boop-Oop-A-Doop (1932). In 'Chess nuts', the White King goes into the house where Betty is and ties her up. When she rejects him, he pulls her out of the ropes, and drags her off to the bedroom and says "I will have you". The bed however, runs away and Betty yells out the window for someone to help her. Bimbo comes to her rescue and she is saved before anything happens. In Boop-Oop-A-Doop , Betty is a highwire performer in a circus. The villainous 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 doesn't submit. This is perhaps one of the earliest portrayals of sexual harassment on the screen, and was very daring at a time when such subject matter was considered taboo. Betty begs the Ringmaster to cease his advances, as she sings "Don't take my Boop-Oop-A-Doop Away." Koko the Clown is outside of the tent, practicing his juggling and hears the struggle from inside the tent. He leaps in to save Betty's virtue, struggling with the Ringmaster who loads him into a cannon, firing it, thinking that he has sent the hero away, laughing with self-satisfaction. But Koko is hiding inside the cannon, and strikes the Ringmaster out cold with a mallet, returning with "the last laugh." When Koko expresses concern about Betty's welfare, she answers in song, "No, he couldn't take my boop-oop-a-doop away!"

Betty Boop's Big Boss (1933), however, wrong-foots the audience. After the usual menacing advances, there is a vast mobilization of outraged citizens, the Army, the Navy etc. to rescue Betty. The rescuers break in and discover Betty and the Big Boss happily embracing. The cartoon closes with astonished exclamations of disgust.