boop boop a doop

 Ever wonder where the character of Betty Boop came from?

 It's actually a pretty interesting story.

 Most people are surprised to learn that -- she -- was originally drawn as a human-like french poodle.

 Originally, she was supposed to be Bimbo the Dog's girlfriend-
-- in Fleischer studio cartoons like "Dizzy Dishes" (1930)

 Note the floppy dog ears and dog nose.....

As the character developed, the artist Grim Natwick,

a leading artist for the Fleischer Studio, started to model Betty more and more on the 1920's Hollywood starlet Helen Kane,

..... using her trademark baby doll looks and her high pitched "boop boop a doop" .

Gone were the poodle ears ....
... replaced by a curvy cuteness that was almost irresistable to movie audiences of the time.

The character, a cutesy-pie flapper girl still without a permanent name

( Nan McGrew, and Nancy Lee were two early choices... )

was featured in about 10 cartoon films, between 1930 and 1931... still mostly as Bimbo's girlfriend.


As you might imagine,

there were some legal tussling over the use of Kane's persona and catch phrase.

Eventually, Kane and King Features released a comic strip featuring "The Original Boop Boop A Doop Girl, by Helen Kane".

Fleischer Studios, meanwhile, was further developing Betty Boop in Sunday comic form as well as in films, claiming the character was based on the screen personna of Clara Bow, and not Kane.

( it's pretty obvious, though, that Kane was the real inspiration.)


Soon, Fleischer's Betty Boop comics had driven the Kane comic off the Sunday comics page altogether.



Betty was coming into her own....

 She was being featured in a cartoon series called "Talkartoons" -
and the ones with Betty were always the most popular ---

 so much so, that in 1932, Fleischer Studios crowned her "Queen of the Animated Screen",  and gave her own series.


 Despite the ongoing Great Depression, this Betty was very much a roaring twenties girl, and would remain so until the Hayes Office ushered in the motion picture code in 1934.

 
 Most of the female cartoon characters of the time were only marginally female -- but Betty was all girl - and happy to be so.

 She projected an open but innocent sexuality, and had broad appeal - with adults for the insinuated eroticism, and with kids who were too young to get the references and who enjoyed the character's youthful enthusiasm.

 She did a topless hula for Popeye in his first cartoon... dressed in only a grass skirt and a lei covering her breasts.

She even showed her cleavage occasionally- as in this shot from "Any Rags" (1933)....

again, quite innocently, of course.

She was leaning out the window, when her dress slips -- for two frames --

..... and then, she pulls her dress back up.

This would have come and gone so quickly that the viewer would not have known
whether he actually caught sight of her brassiere, or only thought he saw it.


 Still, pretty wild stuff for 1933.

Her virginity was tested several times by villains......

Once, in "Boop Oop a Doop", the ringmaster of a circus attempts to take advantage of Betty -- and she sings a song in distress----
"Don't Take My Boop Oop a Doop Away".

Luckily for Betty's Doop, Koko the Clown ( another frequent co-star ) rescues her at the last minute.


Alas,

Short skirted, low cut, garter wearing Betty would be replaced, in 1934, by a cleaned-up, more virtuous Betty mandated by the Hayes Office - film censors.

That version of Betty proved to be a less interesting character, and by 1939, Betty had made
her last cartoon..... that is--- aside from making a cameo appearance ( dressed in her original outfit ) in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", and a couple of meaningless TV specials.


The homage to Betty in Roger Rabbit points out the influence Betty has had on the world of cartoons.....

..... and her early-30's era fims have been translated into over 100 languages.

Check out this image by Japanese cartoonist Ozamu Tezuka in a fifties era "Astro Boy"

Note the wide eyes, and curled short hair.... 

 did the "King of Anime" --- and the whole genre of anime ---

 draw the very distinctive look of Anime characters directly from Betty Boop?


  hmmmmmmm???

 what do you think?

 Check out this video on the whole "Betty-too sexy for cartoons?" thing....