Cartoon a Day: Betty Boop's Penthouse

Betty Boop's Penthouse
1933
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Available on: YouTube

I had to not blog for several days, due to a puppet festival and a very sick child at home. So here we go again, enjoy "Betty Boop's Penthouse," courtesey of YouTube.



From the very first frame you can tell this is going to be a creative short. The broken smoke stack haphazardly repaired with smoke that twists around as it comes out is such an original gag, it sets the tone for what's to come.

The short doesn't actually spend that much time at Betty's penthouse. Bimbo and Koko's science lab is a source for a lot more humor. Their experiments at the opening of the film are classic Fleischer and have a great progression as the gags build on each other. When they discover Betty on the roof of a building across the street, well, it's a perfect example of just how risque Miss Boop could be. As they watch her cool herself off with a garden hose I couldn't help think of David watching Bathsheba.

My only complaint with this short is that the ending is a bit abrupt, otherwise this is a great Betty Boop short.

Cartoon a Day: Betty Boop, M.D.

Betty Boop, M.D.
1932
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Available on: YouTube

Here's another Betty Boop cartoon available for viewing in full thanks to YouTube and the public domain. Enjoy.




This is a truly bizarre cartoon featuring Betty, Koko, and Bimbo as part of a medicine show. By the time this cartoon get rolling, their wonder product, Jippo, has got people's skeletons jumping out of their skin, babies turning into monsters and all sorts of other weird stuff. The cartoon is almost psychedelic.

It's pretty weird, but it is a great example of the originality that went on at the Fleischer studio. Whereas many cartoons from this era are repetitious in their animation, this is anything but. We don't see the same gag, not to mention the same animation, over and over. This cartoon quickly moves from bit to bit.

I've certainly seen some Betty Boop shorts over the years, but I guess I've never looked at them as closely as I am now. There is really a lot of innovation in them. I finding the Fleischer studio to be one of the under appreciated gems of early animation.

Cartoon a Day: Snow-White

Snow-White
1933
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Available on: YouTube

Well, I'm behind again on Cartoon a Day after a late night out last night seeing "High School Musical: The Ice Tour." It was a long way from the Ice Capades I saw growing up. Anyhow, we're playing catch up today. Now earlier today I saw and episode of the show "Biography" that was about Betty Boop. So I felt like doing some Betty Boop cartoons, however, I don't own any Betty Boop DVD's. But, since the Betty Boop cartoons are pretty much all in the public domain, it is legally available on YouTube. So we'll just embed the whole cartoon below and you can watch it yourself.



Betty Boop seems to be often ignored in the grand history of animation. Her film career wasn't that long, 1932-39, and all but one of her cartoons were in black and white. Yet Max and Dave Fleischer (her creators) were incredibly innovative and her cartoons do have great historical significance. Not to mention that they are a lot fun to watch. This short is considered by many to be the best Betty Boop film.

In this film, Betty plays the role of Snow White while her frequent co-stars, Koko the Clown and Bimbo, play two of the queen's guards. It's not quite the Snow White story we're used to, but that's ok.

The Fleischers were somewhat known for having cartoons that featured regular everyday objects come to live, that is certainly present here. The use of rotoscoping is also worth noting here. In the second half of the film, Koko launches into a Cab Calloway song, which was rotoscoped, and beautifully so, using footage of Calloway himself. I'm usually not a fan of rotoscoping (like in Ralph Bakshi's "The Lord of the Rings") but here it works really well. The Fleischers invented the technique, so I guess they knew how to use it.