Then, as was common in the big downtown movie palaces of the time, what follows is a limited stage show. It begins with a movie audience watching a faux newsreel followed by a cartoon (featuring Bimbo and Koko). In fact the best thing about this short is that, in cartoon terms, it describes what going to the movies was like in the early 1930s. Wikipedia describes Stopping the Show, the first official "Betty Boop Cartoon" (though she'd appeared in earlier Fleischer shorts), as set in a Vaudeville house but that's not really correct. Included this time are: Stopping the Show (1932), Snow White (1933), Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, She Wronged Him Right, Red Hot Mamma, Poor Cinderella, There's Something About a Soldier, When My Ship Comes In (all 1934), Zula Hula (1937), Riding the Rails, The Swing School, Pudgy the Watchman, and Sally Swing (all 1938). What's important though is that these logos aside, the shorts themselves all look fantastic, especially considering their age, convoluted ownership and distribution history. Presumably that's because their original negatives were cut in order to release the picture (but not the audio) with the logo of the U.M.&M.TV Corp., who syndicated the cartoons beginning in 1955. Most are missing their original Paramount logos and credits, and where those exist the majority are doctored. Happily, the shorts here have been remastered in 4K using the original negatives and, in some cases, fine grains. Further, like various Popeye cartoons and most (all?) of the Superman cartoons, many Betty Boop shorts apparently have fallen into public domain, and home video versions of those shorts have been of variable quality. Though hugely popular in their day, probably because the Betty Boop cartoons were made in black and white, their marketability has nonsensically been limited in recent decades. As animation historian Leonard Maltin and others have pointed out, where Disney exploited the natural fears of children, the Fleischers' cartoons explore the darker psychology of adults. She had no idea Betty Boop cartoons even existed.)īut Betty's best, the two-dozen or so cartoons from 1932-34, and even many of those made later on, positively ooze the Fleischer house style, one more adult and far more surreal than their rivals, with imagery at times more Dali than Disney. (Here in Japan, I recently asked a young woman carrying a Betty Boop handbag if she was a fan of the cartoons. Betty never lost her charm, however, and soldiered on through the end of the 1930s, often with Betty playing a supporting part in her own cartoons (she's not even in the very last "Betty Boop"), though her image can still be found on merchandise everywhere, all over the world. Indeed, so sexy was "The Queen of the Animated Screen" that like Mae West and Maureen O'Sullivan's Jane in the early Tarzan films, Hollywood's Production Code eventually insisted Betty "put more clothes on," and forced her to assume a subtly degrading, housewifey demureness, no matter that she was single. Last time, as you'll recall, Max and Dave Fleischer's trifecta of classic animation series, one that included the black-and-white and early color "Popeye" cartoons and the first screen appearance of "Superman," began with a uniquely hallucinatory series of one-reel cartoons eventually starring Betty Boop, the innocent but sexy jazz baby, a throwback to the risqué Roaring Twenties. Moreover, the picture quality remains supremely high and, overall, this is a real feast for the eyes. Most of these cartoons feature early TV syndication titles replacing Paramount's originals, though several here happily include the original Paramount logo. This collection generally shows off Betty at her absolutely best, however, highlighted by an amazing color adaptation of Cinderella, a short that, all by itself, is worth the price of the disc. As with Volume 3, they span Betty's early peak years, from 1932, focusing mainly on its 1934 season, and the series' slight decline through 1938, with Betty unceremoniously off on the sidelines while the Fleischers attempted to establish new cartoon stars. Olive Films has yet another dazzling collection of Paramount-licensed Max and Dave Fleischer cartoons in Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Volume 4, 13 more razor-sharp one-reel shorts.
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