Step back in time with us and rediscover the jazz-infused world of the 1920s through the captivating eyes of Betty Boop. Your ears won't believe the fascinating origins of this flapper icon, as we unveil her journey from Max Fleischer's drawing board to the hearts of millions. With the help of our co-host phoenix, we'll spill the secrets behind Betty's creation, inspired by the cheeky Helen Kane and how the "boop-boop-a-doop" songstress's lawsuit didn't hinder Betty's rise but rather sealed her stardom. Revel in the nostalgia as we recount Betty's groundbreaking role in animation, her dance with jazz legends like Cab Calloway, and the flapper spirit that paved the way for women's self-expression.
Fasten your garter belts for a rollercoaster ride through Betty Boop's transformation from risqué flapper to domestic darling, all thanks to the restrictive Hays Code. Witness how societal shifts and the Great Depression reshaped Betty's persona and the world's perception of femininity. Despite being nudged out of the spotlight, Betty's sass and charm refuse to fade, with her legacy living on in modern adaptations. So raise a glass to the boop-oop-a-doop girl as we celebrate the audacious and ever-charming Betty Boop, whose story is as rich and lively as the era she symbolizes.
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Episode Transcript
Welcome to.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Smarticast Tales.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
History.
Alright, enough with the Echoand Fanfare.
You're here for history, right,and not that boring crap you
learned in high school.
This stuff's actuallyinteresting, like things you've
never heard about the Civil War,cleopatra, automobiles,
monopoly, the Black Plague andmore Fascinating stories,
interesting topics and somedownright weird facts from the
(00:27):
past.
It's a new twist on somestories you may know and an
interesting look at some thingsyou may have never heard.
So grab a beer, kick back andenjoy.
Here's your host, smarticast.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hello history enthusiasts, welcome back to
another episode of SmarticastTales History.
I am your host, smarticast,accompanied by my co-host,
phoenix.
Hello, today we have a specialtreat for you all.
We are diving deep into thecaptivating world of animation
history, specifically focusingon Betty Boop and the world that
she was made in.
If you didn't know what aflapper was and how the world
(01:02):
perceived them, well, you'regonna find out.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yep, the first drinks I have, champagne, and to
commemorate the awesomeness ofthe end of prohibition, which
was around that time.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, shameful on them for prohibition.
It was a terrible thing.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, and it didn't work because people were getting
bootleg crap from everywhereand this is really good too, by
the way.
Oh, you got so much hereDrinking.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I am.
I forgot to go get thechampagne.
My bad, I made a mistake.
I'm a human, so I made.
I figured, since we're in the20s, any kind of alcohol really
would work.
Hmm, I have cranberry juice andI have a bottle of apple crown.
(01:57):
So that's what I did.
I made a cranberry apple crowndrink.
I figured what they called it.
I think they called it awhiskey sour.
A whiskey sour?
Okay, yep, I think on the crownRoyal website it actually
called it a crown, a crown berry, a crown berry and apple.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
That's cute, I like that.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
It's great really.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
If you're drinking whiskey nothing's girly.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, I mean, that's true, I guess.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And I'm drinking my champagne out of a glass that
has skulls and crossbones on it.
So I know nothing, girly, here.
That's what they were reindeerfor some reason.
No, really, really.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I see it now yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Reindeer.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I couldn't even really see it, so it still
didn't make sense, Like why didI think it was reindeer?
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I had brandy earlier and now I'm having champagne.
It's a fun Sunday.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Don't mix your liquors.
That's what they say I've doneit and I usually end up hacking
up later, so Really, I'll eatsomething, even if I eat the
rage that's hacking it up, nottoday, when I know this.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Probably not.
No.
Well, one thing you should knowis that Betty Boop, the beloved
animated character from the1930s, was patterned after Helen
Cain.
Cain was a famous singer andactress at the time.
Max Fleischer, one of BettyBoop's creators, wanted her to
be a character of Cain's mostwell-known boop-boop-a-dupe line
(03:36):
and characters.
Cain did sue Fleischer overthis and lost, which we'll talk
about in a little bit, but itdidn't go so well.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
No, and Betty Boop, she did start out looking like
an anthropomorphic dog-facedwoman, right.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, that's right she did For her first ten-tune
appearances.
Betty had droopy ears, jowlsand some rather adorably
stupid-looking puppy eyes.
She ran around with herdog-like boyfriend named Bimbo,
portraying the stereotypicalflapper with more heart than
brains.
Eventually that changed, though, to think of flappers.
(04:14):
I don't think I've actuallywent into detail about flappers,
but flappers were women whowore much shorter skirts and had
way looser morals, or Not amodern-day working girl, okay.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well by bad.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
They paved the way for what's going on now.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
They paved the way for what's going on now.
You're right, although that'snot entirely true, because they
were women like that in the1800s.
You know the Western Times too.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
The name just changed .
They tried to make it moresensible.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yes, so in 1933, in fact, while animation was still
in its infancy and characterslike Mickey Mouse and Popeye the
Sailor were gaining popularity,Betty was beating Disney to the
punch.
Betty Boop made her debut inthe cartoon Dizzy Dishes, but in
1933 she was the first to playthe beloved German character
Snow White.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Speaking of which, you need to watch that.
Just watch the little snip Itold you about to the tail end.
I'll watch it.
Okay, that's crazy.
How long was the runtime?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Well, I will tell you , I actually have it written
down.
It ran for seven minutes eightseconds and it's got a trippy
scene.
During the glass coffin bit,the evil queen turns into a
dragon that chases Betty Bimboand a clown friend named Coco
Not the monkey, hmm.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I'm sorry, not the gorilla?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
No, there's a gorilla named Coco too, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yeah, she died.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
I'm pretty sure it was a dude A while back.
I could be wrong.
I'm pretty sure it was a dude.
I could be wrong.
I'm pretty sure it was a dudenamed Coco.
Wait a minute, girl, it doesn'tmatter.
It's during this scene that CabCallaway, a famous jazz singer
of the time, performs a song asCoco.
In fact, Callaway was ofteninvited to perform in the
cartoons, especially after Bettylost her dog-like appearance
(06:15):
and became a main character inFletcher's Talk Tunes.
It's important to note thatBetty that during Betty's
performance as Snow White, shewas human.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yep, that was after they had gotten rid of her doggy
appearance and made her a16-year-old body and a baby
doll-faced person.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I got you.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Oh, such a weird fetishizing kind of thing.
What I was reading was justweird, anywho.
Yeah, that happened after 10appearances as a supporting
character alongside a jazzorchestra, fleischer found that
audiences were coming to themovies mostly to see Betty
rather than Bimbo and Coco.
So she quickly got an upgradeto full human status with the
(07:02):
big baby doll head and eyes andcurls, with the figure of a 16
year old girl.
I did cover that, I forgot,sorry.
Her dress was shorter and shewas given a garter with a heart.
Of course this was all part ofthe backdrop for making sexual
jokes for grabby disgustingsecondary characters.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
While Disney was making sweet, beautiful and
hopeful movies for audiences,Fleischer was setting Betty Boop
and her pals in dark urban,usually dangerous places.
Strange and wild thingshappened in Fleischer's tunes
that were impractical andsometimes possibly grotesque,
but, as his grandson has said,Fleischer's motto was if you can
do it in real life, why animate?
(07:42):
Of course, this was at a timewhen Hollywood didn't have much
in the way of censors.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Because of the deficiencies, betty Boop and
even poor Minnie Mouse weresubject to harassment during
that time.
One episode saw Mickey stealingkisses from Minnie when she was
adamant about not giving them.
Though Minnie had issues withBluto trying to take advantage
of her that was hidden behindgrand chases.
Betty's encounters were muchmore obvious, but it wasn't as
(08:09):
if Betty were unaware of her sexappeal.
In fact, she used it to heradvantage often enough in the
earlier films.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Which brings us to the concept of a flapper.
During the roaring twenties,flappers were women who were
seeking a more elevated life ina man's world.
They wanted to smoke, drink andhave sex with a bandit like the
men.
It was a huge boom in the fieldof seeking equality between the
sexes.
Their skirts were shorter, allthe way up to their knees, if
you can believe it, but that wasexactly what Fleischer wanted
(08:40):
Betty Boop to be, not theirknees.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Oh yeah, and you know what's even worse, what those
hussies were rouging their knees?
Oh yeah, I still to this dayhave no idea why that was a big
deal, but apparently having rosyknees Showing your ankles.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Was like rosy knees.
We don't talk about that, rosyknees.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
I see and I wondered if it had some kind of
implication of, you know,getting on your knees and that's
what I'll yeah.
But that wasn't somethingpeople really talked about in
polite society, so I don't knowif that was the actual
implication or not.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I mean, I don't know what else it could be.
I don't either.
I was I was scrubbing Dusting,scrubbing the floors, yeah.
I almost said vacuuming, butthey probably didn't have
vacuuming.
Oh, she was vacuuming, allright, yeah, she was she was
(09:37):
hoovering, for sure, oh man.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Oh my gosh.
There's a flaw in that, though.
Betty Boop might have been oneof the most developed cartoon
characters of the time, but shewas never expected to be
anything more than a humoroussex symbol.
By 1935, her time was up.
Due to scandals in Hollywood,public scrutiny saw many states
enacting their own censorshiplaws.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Now it should be mentioned that the motion
picture producers anddistributors of America, mmpda,
which was created in 1927, hadmade lists of don'ts and be
careful for the industry toadhere to.
This was the building blocksfor the 1930 motion picture
production code, which wascommonly known as the Haze Code
after MPPDAs President William HHayes.
(10:24):
The Haze Code further outlinedhow to approach subjects such as
sex dancing, drugs, vulgarityand crime Dancing what kind of
dancing?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
are y'all doing out there?
Oh, if you've seen any of thoseold black and white ones where
they aren't talking, they'repretty dang raunchy.
Yeah, oh, my gosh, some of them, you're kind of going.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, are they dancing or are they having sex
there?
What's going on?
Pretty sure they're doing both.
We're doing both.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
I'm pretty sure I'm seeing lots of nipples here from
everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
A quote from the guidelines.
Declared that excessive andlustful kissing, lustful
embraces and justive posturesand gestures are not to be shown
.
In another section wherecostumes were talked about.
Insisted that there will be noindecent or undue exposure.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Cover the girls Cover up.
Just saying.
This led to a significanttransformation in Betty Boop's
character.
Betty Boop's flapper image,along with her more risque and
suggestive nature, was toneddown to comply with the new
regulations.
Her hand lines were lengthened,hiding her trademark heart
garter.
Her persona became morewholesome and she was aged up.
Her character was altered to bemore wholesome and her plot
(11:41):
lines followed a similar pattern.
It marked the end of an era forthe character.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Up to that point, betty Boop had been a circus
performer, a race car driver anda presidential candidate she
had had, which is a really funnyepisode, is it?
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Oh yeah, I've seen most of the old ones.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
She had had many jobs that were typically considered
masculine, but in the mid-30s,in the middle of the Great
Depression, men were growingincreasingly worried that women
were going to steal their jobs.
So Betty Boop and her friendschanged yet again.
She became domestic anddemurrer, while Coco the Clown
changed to Grampy, an eccentricadventurer who doted on his
(12:21):
granddaughter, and Bimbo waschanged into an adorable little
puppy named Pudgy.
So obviously that's proof thatthe censors couldn't stop Betty
Boop from being an enduringfigure in animation history.
Some historians believe thatthe sanitized storylines, such
as Betty Boop trying to wash astruggling Pudgy or keep up with
a hotel full of demandingguests, made her increasingly
(12:42):
boring to watch.
Unfortunately, Fleischer'sgrandson felt the Hays Code was
the beginning of the end forBetty Boop as well.
He was quoted as saying A lotof the spirit went out of it,
and I wouldn't be surprised ifmy grandfather had just said
Well, you know what?
We're not going to let you ruinher, we're just going to comply
and then just move on, whichexplains the fizzling out of her
(13:05):
movies and subsequentretirement in 1939.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Interestingly enough, the Fleischer's studio was
shortly after acquired byParamount.
Betty Boop laid dormant and allbut forgotten until all the pre
1950s shorts were sold to atelevision syndicate.
She was still in the public eyefor the next few decades thanks
to merchandise and throughscattershot cameos and cartoons,
like you were saying in Popeye,right, yep.
(13:30):
And in 1985, she had a CBStelevision special called the
romance of Betty Boop.
And let's not forget that shemade a brief appearance in who
framed Roger Rabbit, which isone of my favorite movies.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
In case anyone is wondering, Sadly, that was her
last appearance in cinema, but afamily owned version of
Fleischer Studios is keeping herimage alive by continuing to
update her along with the times.
She's been a biker, a championfor recycling, she does yoga and
even has a self help book,which is quite a bit more than
her inspiration Ellen Kane wasable to achieve during her
(14:04):
lifetime in cinema.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Yeah, and that brings us back to the lady we flew
over briefly before, ellen Kane,who, I said before, was a
popular singer of the 1920s.
Her distinctive singing style,which involved the use of the
catchphrase boop, boop, boop,became a hallmark of Betty
Boop's character.
Her eyes were big andexpressive, bobbed black hair
that was curled, much likeBetty's, and a toothy, dark
(14:28):
lipped smile.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
In May of 1932, kane filed an infringement lawsuit
against Fleischer Studios forwhat she perceived as the
unauthorized use of her imageand style in creating Betty Boop
.
The legal battle that ensuedonly brought more attention to
Betty Boop and cemented herstatus as the cultural icon.
On the flip side of that,kane's popularity at Paramount
had started to decline in theyear before, tragically, betty's
(14:54):
growing fame did nothing tohelp Kane's, and in 1934 she
took her lawsuit to New York.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
It did not go the way she had hoped, and when a
theatrical manager was broughtin as a witness, he testified
that he had seen Kane watch aperformance in 1928 by an
African-American child going bythe stage name of Baby Esther.
She had done a similarperformance to the one that Kane
was known for, wearing a cutebaby-styled outfit while singing
in a babyish voice.
(15:23):
He even went so far as to saythat he had seen Cain go into
Baby Esther's dressing room tospeak with her.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
There were other attempts by multiple sources
during that trial that weretrying to discredit Cain's claim
.
While a child who had playedBaby Esther could not be found,
the judge ruled that there wasnot enough evidence to prove
that such a style of acting andsinging was original to Cain.
After the ruling, cain went onto try and hold out in the
Hollywood industry, but by the40s her act was dated and so she
(15:52):
had to move on.
At one point she did do asinging voiceover for Debbie
Reynolds, who, in case youdidn't know, is the mother of
Carrie Fisher, aka Princess Leia.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
One last little fact before we sign off, dear
listeners, there have been manywomen who have done the voice of
Betty Boop throughout the years, but if you've seen National
Lampoon's Christmas Vacation,you've seen one of them, aunt
Bethany, the little old lady.
You know who.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
You know the sweet little old lady.
She wrapped her cat up as apresent and said that the pledge
of allegiance.
Sorry, and said the pledge ofallegiance instead of saying
grace at dinner.
That was Betty Boop during theGolden Age.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Wow, that's pretty cool.
Cool fact, right?
Yeah, that's pretty cool, yeah.
Um well, that wraps up today'sslightly out of character
episode for Smarticast Tell'sHistory.
We hope that you enjoyed thisjourney into the world of
animation and Betty Boop's wildand crazy history.
If you have any historicalquestions or topics that you
would like us to explore infuture episodes, please don't
(16:51):
hesitate to reach out.
Thank you for joining us, andif you enjoyed this episode,
please subscribe and leave us areview.
We will be back with morestories from the past.
Until then, keep exploring.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Thanks for listening to Smarticast Tell's History.
If you enjoyed this episode,don't forget to rate and review
and make sure to subscribe, andbe sure to follow the show at
facebookcom.
Slash Smarticast Tell's Historyor just click the link in the
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Thanks again for listening.
See you next time.
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