Boop Oop a Damn Fine Animation
Betty Boop started out her cartoon life as a dog-like creation of Max Fleischer (an animation legend who helped bring Popeye, Superman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to life).
Boop first appeared in the early 1930s sporting a decidedly 1920s style — it was all about the saucy little flapper dress, jazz beats and wry winks to sexily intoxicated good times. Eventually she was toned down (yet another black mark on the morality police) and her popularity waned.
One thing that makes Betty Boop’s earlier cartoons so great was that, unlike other movie-makers at the time, Max Fleischer wasn’t afraid to work with black musicians.
Check out the incredible1933 Betty Boop cartoon Snow White below (not to be confused with the Disney version that came out four years later: You can read Time’s 1937 review of that movie here).
Fleischer’s inspired version of Snow White features an incredible section with Koko the Clown dancing in a skeletal underworld. Koko was voiced by none other than Cab Calloway doing an amazing version of St. James Infirmary Blues…
(This film was chosen for preservation by the U.S. Library of Congress in the National Film Registry in 1994.)
