Why the Hays Office cracked down on Betty

What a dog!

Took me a while to find, or re-find this. I kept remembering a Betty Boop cartoon that somehow wasn't a Betty Boop cartoon. And this one isn't. A. Betty. Boop. Cartoon.

Surely it is not, because not only is she NOT called Betty Boop in this cartoon - she isn't even the same species.

Most afficionados of early animation know that BB started life as a dog. And if they don't, they're idiots and should go stand in the corner. It's not obvious that she evolved from a canine, of course, unless you've watched Max Fleischer cartoons from 1930 - 1931, in which a strange, flapper-esque character with long pendulous ears trots around on high heels talking in a squeaky, seductive voice.

A DOG.

Nobody knew what to call her when she made her debut in a cartoon called Dizzy Dishes. Though some people were heard to call, "HELP".

In this first incarnation, "Betty" (unnamed) dances on the table, flipping up her skirt and puffing out her face as if it's retractable, an animal snout or muzzle. She is both seductive and unbearable, her eyes like multi-legged insects. There's no sound here, but it's just as well.

This cartoon is typical of the nightmarish atmosphere of the Fleischerscape, one of those things where you just. . . can't. . . wake. . . up. The other character, which looks like a cross between a bug, a dog and Felix the Cat, becomes disturbingly aroused by this - thing.

I could never quite square those floppy ears with that huge, semi-human head teetering on an absurdly tiny human body. They seem stuck-on somehow, and eventually, like the back legs of a whale, they would recede into uselessness, turning into a pair of hoop earrings to maintain character consistency.  Doggiform, without being dogged. 

But the one I didn't remember, or almost remembered, or forgot to remember - I couldn't figure out why I couldn't find it, and certainly the title meant nothing to me. I only remembered somebody ringing a doorbell, Betty leaning out a second-story window, and a whole lot of furniture dancing around.

I found it almost by accident in a Betty Boop compilation, one of those two-hour YouTube jobbies, only this one was in chronological order. I knew it had to be EB (Early Betty) because I had a gif of her with floppy long ears.

Not only are her ears  monstrously large, she acts like a maniac, mugging and flopping her head around. The only thing that signals Betty is her substantial cleavage. Cleavage on a dog, though.

So flipping through the compilation, the two-hour compilation, the two-hour LONG compilation of Betty Boop cartoons, I realized the one I wanted would have to be near the beginning. But it didn't jibe somehow, because the one that SEEMED to be the right one was called Barnacle Bill. Oh hell. That was a Popeye cartoon, wasn't it? This couldn't be the same one. Or the same title. Or whatever.

It actually was, though, or is. This character, the bug or dog or whoever-he-is, Binky or Blinky or Blanky or Blonky, is actually Barnacle Bill the Sailor, and he and "Betty" go through the routine. Except! She isn't even called Betty in this:

Nancy Lee, one of Betty's many aliases (along with Fifi, Frou-Frou and Arf-Arf).

So this character - aha, his name is Bimbo, though that makes no sense to me - having been swallowed up by Nancy's wall, is subjected to her seductive overtures. When the sofa begins to speak and Bimbo becomes airborne, things get really strange.

So now the secret is revealed: Betty was hideously ugly at the start of her career. She continued to look pretty strange, but at this point there was nowhere to go but up.

Post-it Note: I found the lyrics of the version of Barnacle Bill I remember from the old Popeye cartoon, but when removing the formatting of the thing, THIS happened: so I thought I'd leave it the way it is.

As featured in the 1935 Popeye cartoon "Beware Of Barnacle Bill", with the voices of William Costello as Popeye, William Pennell as Bluto (playing Barnacle Bill), and Mae Questel as Olive Oyl: OLIVE: Popeye, dear, we cannot wed Popeye, dear, we cannot wed Popeye, dear, we cannot wed I love another sailor POPEYE: Who's the guy that won your heart OLIVE: It's Barnacle Bill the Sailor POPEYE: Who's the guy that thinks he's smart OLIVE: It's Barnacle Bill the Sailor POPEYE: Why, that false heart and flattering tongue He courts them all, both old and young He courts them all, but marries none Your Barnacle Bill the Sailor OLIVE: But he's strong and handsome, too But he's strong and handsome, too But he's strong and handsome, too My Barnacle Bill the Sailor POPEYE: I'll twist his toes and squeeze the nose Of Barnacle Bill the Sailor I'll mop the place with his false face The Barnacle Bill the Sailor I'll grab him by his dirty neck And when I'm through he'll be a wreck I'll sweep and smear and swab the deck With Barnacle Bill the Sailor OLIVE: Who's that knocking at my door Who's that knocking at my door Who's that knocking at my door Tell the fair young maiden BARNACLE BILL: It's only me from over the sea It's Barnacle Bill the Sailor I've come to take you away with me I'm Barnacle Bill the Sailor Hurry before you get me sore I'll rare and tear and rant and roar Hurry before I bust in the door It's Barnacle Bill the Sailor OLIVE: Here I come to let you in Here I come to let you in Here I come to let you in My Barnacle Bill the Sailor (Barnacle Bill and Popeye begin to fight) BILL: No one ever challenged me POPEYE: Says Barnacle Bill the Sailor BILL: I'm the terror of the sea POPEYE: Says Barnacle Bill the Sailor BILL: A fee and a fi and a fo and a fum Yo heave ho and a bottle of rum ?????? sailor, your day is done Oh, says Barnacle Bill the Sailor (Popeye eats his spinach and defeats Bill) OLIVE: Popeye, dear, I love you best Popeye, dear, I love you best Popeye, dear, I love you best When will we get married POPEYE: I've changed me mind so you can wed Your Barnacle Bill the Sailor You're nothing more than cabbage head Ev'ry dame's a selfish cat They only turn and leave ya flat Just the way ya did to that Poor Barnacle Bill the Sailor Goodbye!

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What you do while you're waiting (for something you REALLY want)

This was a pre-code 1930s cartoon, featuring a familiar player. . . who was soon to announce a new character. . .

Yes, it's true. . . Popeye rode piggyback on the sultry, near-nude Boopster until he convinced the world he was sexy enough to have a series of his own.

Very nice. . . but why does everyone keep bouncing up and down?

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Do animal hybrids exist? Ask Betty Boop

You can always tell I've run out of inspiration when I begin to post totally bizarre gifs.(Never mind that it's every day.) I seem to be obsessed with these tiny captured cartoons that repeat, and repeat, and repeat, without even having to click "play".

Betty Boop is still emblematic of the 1920s flapper/sexpot character, her pre-Code outfit leaving nothing to the imagination. Her dress is about the size of a postage stamp, and no one knew how the front stayed up (Max Fleischer's iron will, I guess - but I can imagine what the stag reel was like). She often flipped up her microscopic skirt to reveal garters, thigh, and (let's face it) ass.

But her first appearance in a bizarre thing called Dizzy Dishes begs the question: did anyone know who or what Betty Boop was supposed to be? She wasn't even named here, and maybe originally she was just a one-off. Certainly, she was so grotesque that no one would ever want to see her (or hear her - that screechy chalkboard voice) again.

Nevertheless, she was significantly remodelled in time for a return engagement, the mental-institution eyes toned down, the spiky head gradually getting bigger and bigger until it barely balanced on her slutty little body. Huge heads on tiny bodies remind us of dolls, or babies - an instinctive response. I think men secretly lusted after her.

Then came the Hollywood Code as enforced by the Hays Office, a repressive legion of decency that took all the fun out of the movies. Betty's hemline plunged, her neckline shot up, and she began to look increasingly matronly. Here she even pulls her apron down over her knees. Betty! What happened to the little sex fiend who flipped her skirt up in the animal cafe?

Later I think she sold war bonds or something, wearing plaid woolen skirts and brown Oxfords.

The fact is, Betty was originally a dog. Either that, or a human-dog hybrid (a phenomenon I explored in a previous post: FOUND: Cujo's Rogue DNA!). A hideous one, too, flirting shamelessly with that whatever-it-is who pushes his erection-like heart back into his chest. Those aren't earrings you see dangling from her head: they're EARS. Her snout pops in and out as she offers grotesque kisses and flaunts her canine cleavage. Just what were the animators trying to tell us here: that Betty was a bitch?

The odd thing is, her humanizing (or humanization) happened in stages. The flappy ears remained even as her face began to look more normal.  Eventually she graduated to long pendulous earrings that still look a lot like those fleshy flaps.

Perhaps some minute trace of dog genes lingered. I would hate to see her children.

(Post-post: I just noticed, in that third gif, that she isn't wearing any panties.)

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Out of the inkwell, into my dreams

Betty Boop - she's such a bitch

The cartoons I used to watch very early on Saturday mornings (I mean before the REAL cartoons came on, like Huckleberry Hound and Bullwinkle and Linus the Lion-Hearted) were way, way old. I mean, these barely had any talking in them, mostly just wacky music from some distant era, and I loved them.

There was something called Tarrytoons, early Warner Brothers cartoons called Merrie Melodies, very old Disney (I particularly remember "Bugs in Love"), and of course ancient Popeye, a figure so coarse and ugly he should have scared me. Not only was he smoking a pipe, one of his eyes really was popped out!

At the end of these antique Popeyes there was just a split-second glimpse of an inkwell, trademark of the animator Max Fleischer (video posted above). As a kid I used to wonder if I was imagining it, it was over so quick. I thought it was magical. Much later, when my kids and I got into the habit of taping bizarre old cartoons, we used to try to freeze-frame on it, usually with no success.

But before Popeye, even, there was Betty Boop, a frenetic little sexpot hallucinated by the Fleischer studio. These cartoons had a fever dream quality combined with non-stop, manic activity. The characters, as far as I could make out, were all animals, some of them very hard to identify. (And let's not get into that Goofy versus Pluto debate, and how a mouse could own a dog.) When they first brought out Betty Boop in the surreal Dizzy Dishes - she isn't even named but just sort of appears standing on a table - it all gets very strange, indeed.

 

It gets very strange because Betty has bulldog jowls,long pendulous ears, and a snout that keeps popping out grotesquely. Betty either has some sort of bizarre facial deformity, or else. . .

She's a dog.

A dog wearing garters and high heels. In other words, a bitch.

In subsequent cartoons the animators decided to turn her into a human being, making her flappy ears into earrings that still looked suspiciously canine. Mae Questel's squeaky voiceovers helped bring her decidedly flaky character into focus. 

People have come out with all sorts of boopery about this subject: how Betty reflected the morals and mores of the times, how her barely-there skirt (always showing at least one garter) and wispy top, which sometimes fell off altogether, illustrated the daring style and energy of the madcap twenties and early '30s. Turner Classics made a whole documentary about this, about pre-Code Hollywood and the racy, suggestive language and dress that was common in movies before Will Hays and the suffocating legion of "decency" (read: sexless repression) shut it all down.

You can see what happened to Betty over the years, and it's alarming: her barely-there dress evolves into a suffocating uniform, completely destroying her giggly, girlish flapper/vamp image. But the thing to remember about Betty is, she was a caricature right from the start.

If anyone had a head that size, for one thing, they'd bloody fall over. (Though note that the later Boop incarnation shows a head much more in proportion with her body.) Her huge eyes with their fans for lashes are almost scary. She's a sexpot who jumps out of an inkwell, but she might as well be jumping out of a cake at some LSD-inspired stag party. 

You have to ask yourself: was this character really created for children? Cartoons started off as general entertainment, a way of padding out the bill (you really got your money's worth in those days), usually shown with a movie feature or double-bill along with the newsreel and short subject. People had longer attention spans in those days and could stand to sit in a theatre for three or four hours.

If the movie was adult in nature, then - most likely - so were the cartoons. In the early 30s, this trampy little vamp ran around in her nearly-nothings, showing cleavage, having little "accidents" that tore her clothes away entirely so she had to dive behind something.
Meant for kids? Though it was hardly Fritz the Cat, I doubt it.

Somewhere along the line, maybe when TV came in, cartoons began to gravitate kidward and grow more tame. I never even saw most of the outrageous Boop cartoons I've found on YouTube: they must have been banned as unwholesome. Don't want innocent 8-year-old boys having fantasies about some trampy little tart!

Betty Boop Cartoon Banned For Drug Use 1934

This is all a little unbelievable, like most early cartoons. Not to mention a little nightmarish. At least Betty looks like a girl: in her first couple of appearances she was a dog with long ears and a snout that popped out from time to time. The animators didn't quite know what to do with her.

After a few episodes she became a sexpot. It's interesting to watch the evolution of her costumes: here, in pre-code Hollywood, she was so scantily clad that you occasionally caught flickers of bare breasts (a wardrobe malfunction, perhaps) and, in her saucily flipped-up hemline, the delta of Venus. By the mid-30s the censors had clamped down, and by wartime she looked like a no-nonsense Army nurse with twill jackets and skirts below the knee.

These were Max Fleischer cartoons, some of the strangest things ever made, and they evolved into Popeye which ran forever but also ran out of steam around the time of the war. Then they became patriotic bullshit and propaganda, and never quite recovered. I like the fact that these characters are all a little hideous, a little smudgy, and almost psychotic in their unpredictable behaviour. By the end they all get stoned, sucking up nitrous oxide like a dentist who has fallen off the rails.

Were cartoons really made for children? I don't think so. They were shown along with movies (there'd be a newsreel, a cartoon, a short subject, and the main feature: or perhaps two), later sent overseas to bolster the morale of the troops. The studios cranked out hundreds and even thousands of them: Disney and Warner Brothers were the big guns, but then you had weirdball Fleischer and, a little later, Bob Clampett with his bizarre puppets-brought-to-animated-life, Beany and Cecil.

This just gets more unbelievable as you watch. Maybe the animators WERE on something.

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Betty Boop Cartoon Banned For Drug Use 1934

This has to rate as the strangest cartoon I've ever seen. What were these guys smoking?