![]() ![]() An attitude the real Betty never once possessed when David & Max Fleischer put her in films.įreddie (Sean Allen) the ice deliveryman. Marrying a millionaire playboy would be easier. A life of two jobs is hard even if one of the jobs is what she likes to do. She picks up a gossip magazine called Blab! & the cover features millionaire playboy Waldo Van Lavish (Derek McGrath) with his "debutante tramps."īetty's never met Waldo but apparently has a crush. She's so tired, but prepares herself a meal, & has a lengthy dialogue with the parrot. The parrot is excited that his mistress is home. She enters her steam-heated apartment where she has a pet parrot (Frank Buxton). On the street near her apartment, she encounters a butcher who knows her well, who gives her a gift of meat, then he along with all the ladies hanging out on the ghetto street sing "My Dear Mr Shane." We first see her heading home from her day job, singing a swing tune with lyrics such as "Betty Boop is my name/ Boop oop a doop is my game." Except for Betty herself, the animation looks very 1980s & does not capture the Fleischer spirit, but it's pretty decent even so.īetty sells shoes by day, performs in the club by night. Some of the background sets are very beautiful, sometimes like Victorian wood engravings for the New York city streets. It's not always quite period-correct but none of the music's bad, & the original bits don't necessarily pale when heard back to back with classic tunes. The original music is co-written by Goyette & her husband Ed Bogas. Opening credits are shown on signs outside Club Bubble as we hear Betty singing on the soundtrack "Just Give 'Em Your Boop Oop a Doop," not bad really.īetty is voiced by singer-composer Desiree Goyette, pretty damned well done too, even if not the equal of Mae Questel. It's a very beautiful cartoon, just don't expect authentic Bettyisms.Ī color cartoon made for television by many of the same people who brought us "Charlie Brown" specials, The Romance of Betty Boop (1985) is supposedly set in 1939. In its defense, it predates both Rogers & Hemmerstein's musical & Disney's cartoon, & seems indeed to have influenced the set design of the Disney feature, as the Fleischer brothers rever before or after designed such lush backgrounds. It's all prettily done but awfully trite. The one fault in all this is it doesn't vary from the well-known story in any way peculiar to Betty Boop. They get married & if life was hell after that we don't see the story at that point. The prince promises he'll marry anyone the shoe fits, a risky promise, but fortunately only Betty was footbound I guess. She's a hit at the ball of course.Īs she & the prince dance with startling fluidity, while a Rudy Vallee figure sings a couple lines from "Poor Cinderella." At midnight she flees leaving behind a glass slipper. The mice sing "We are little mice & we are glad to be free." The pumpkin & lizards sing, too, then are turned into Cinderella's conveyance & guards.īefore she takes off for the ball, she's dressed up nicely, & warned to be home by twelve. I like that she had some white mice in a little cage as pets, not trapped pests. She sings "I'm just a poor Cinderella/ Nobody loves me it seems/ And like a poor Cinderella/ I find my romance in dreams."Īfter the ugly stepsisters go to the ball, the Disneyseque fairy godmother appears & sings "Pretty Cinderella." A pumpkin, six mice, & two lizards are turned into horse, carriage, & liverymen. ![]() She also stopped wearing jewelry and moving in suggestive ways.Betty Boop in Color Betty Boop remained a black & white cartoon character even after color became de rigour, with only a single exception during her classic period.ĭiscounting some Betty Boop cartoons that were garishly & ineptly colorized in the 1980s, Poor Cinderella (1934) is the only full color cartoon the Fleischer Brothers ever produced for Betty, & it turns out she had red hair!Ī couple minutes longer than most Boops, it passes the ten minute mark. Boop was no longer a carefree flapper but instead turned into a housewife or a career woman in some episodes. ![]() The Motion Picture Production Code, industry censorship guidelines for motion pictures, also impacted Betty Boop's content. The innocent yet sexual nature of the cartoons was a problem for the National Legion of Decency in 1934, a Catholic group founded by Archbishop of Cincinnati, John T, McNicholas. Many episodes also focused on men attempting to compromise her virtue. Some of the cartoons featured men trying to sneak a peek at her frame as she went on about her everyday life. Boop also wore a short dress and bodice that highlighted her cleavage. No other woman cartoon character at the time had a fully-developed figure. Fans of Betty Boop considered her a unique character because she represented a sexual woman versus being only comical or child-like. ![]()
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