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.
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.
History. Alright, enough with the Echo and Fanfare. You're here for history, right, and not that boring crap you learned in high school. This stuff's actually interesting, like things you've never heard about the Civil War, cleopatra, automobiles, monopoly, the Black Plague and more Fascinating stories, interesting topics and some downright weird facts from the past. It's a new twist on some stories you may know and an interesting look at some things you may have never heard. So grab a beer, kick back and enjoy. Here's your host, smarticast.
Speaker 2:
Hello history enthusiasts, welcome back to another episode of Smarticast Tales History. I am your host, smarticast, accompanied by my co-host, phoenix. Hello, today we have a special treat for you all. We are diving deep into the captivating world of animation history, specifically focusing on Betty Boop and the world that she was made in. If you didn't know what a flapper was and how the world perceived them, well, you're gonna find out.
Speaker 3:
Yep, the first drinks I have, champagne, and to commemorate the awesomeness of the end of prohibition, which was around that time.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, shameful on them for prohibition. It was a terrible thing.
Speaker 3:
Well, and it didn't work because people were getting bootleg crap from everywhere and this is really good too, by the way. Oh, you got so much here Drinking.
Speaker 2:
I am. I forgot to go get the champagne. My bad, I made a mistake. I'm a human, so I made. I figured, since we're in the 20s, any kind of alcohol really would work. Hmm, I have cranberry juice and I have a bottle of apple crown. So that's what I did. I made a cranberry apple crown drink. I figured what they called it. I think they called it a whiskey sour. A whiskey sour? Okay, yep, I think on the crown Royal website it actually called it a crown, a crown berry, a crown berry and apple.
Speaker 3:
That's cute, I like that.
Speaker 2:
It's great really.
Speaker 3:
If you're drinking whiskey nothing's girly.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean, that's true, I guess.
Speaker 3:
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 reindeer for some reason. No, really, really.
Speaker 2:
I see it now yeah.
Speaker 3:
Reindeer.
Speaker 2:
I couldn't even really see it, so it still didn't make sense, Like why did I think it was reindeer? I don't know.
Speaker 3:
I had brandy earlier and now I'm having champagne. It's a fun Sunday.
Speaker 2:
Don't mix your liquors. That's what they say I've done it and I usually end up hacking up later, so Really, I'll eat something, even if I eat the rage that's hacking it up, not today, when I know this.
Speaker 3:
Probably not. No. Well, one thing you should know is that Betty Boop, the beloved animated character from the 1930s, was patterned after Helen Cain. Cain was a famous singer and actress at the time. Max Fleischer, one of Betty Boop's creators, wanted her to be a character of Cain's most well-known boop-boop-a-dupe line and characters. Cain did sue Fleischer over this and lost, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but it didn't go so well.
Speaker 2:
No, and Betty Boop, she did start out looking like an anthropomorphic dog-faced woman, right.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that's right she did For her first ten-tune appearances. Betty had droopy ears, jowls and some rather adorably stupid-looking puppy eyes. She ran around with her dog-like boyfriend named Bimbo, portraying the stereotypical flapper with more heart than brains. Eventually that changed, though, to think of flappers. I don't think I've actually went into detail about flappers, but flappers were women who wore much shorter skirts and had way looser morals, or Not a modern-day working girl, okay.
Speaker 2:
Well by bad.
Speaker 3:
They paved the way for what's going on now.
Speaker 2:
They paved the way for what's going on now. You're right, although that's not entirely true, because they were women like that in the 1800s. You know the Western Times too.
Speaker 3:
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
The name just changed. They tried to make it more sensible.
Speaker 3:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
Yes, so in 1933, in fact, while animation was still in its infancy and characters like Mickey Mouse and Popeye the Sailor were gaining popularity, Betty was beating Disney to the punch. Betty Boop made her debut in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, but in 1933 she was the first to play the beloved German character Snow White.
Speaker 3:
Speaking of which, you need to watch that. Just watch the little snip I told you about to the tail end. I'll watch it. Okay, that's crazy. How long was the runtime?
Speaker 2:
Well, I will tell you, I actually have it written down. It ran for seven minutes eight seconds and it's got a trippy scene. During the glass coffin bit, the evil queen turns into a dragon that chases Betty Bimbo and a clown friend named Coco Not the monkey, hmm.
Speaker 3:
I'm sorry, not the gorilla?
Speaker 2:
No, there's a gorilla named Coco too, yeah.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, she died.
Speaker 2:
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 dude named Coco. Wait a minute, girl, it doesn't matter. It's during this scene that Cab Callaway, a famous jazz singer of the time, performs a song as Coco. In fact, Callaway was often invited to perform in the cartoons, especially after Betty lost her dog-like appearance and became a main character in Fletcher's Talk Tunes. It's important to note that Betty that during Betty's performance as Snow White, she was human.
Speaker 3:
Yep, that was after they had gotten rid of her doggy appearance and made her a 16-year-old body and a baby doll-faced person. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
I got you.
Speaker 3:
Oh, such a weird fetishizing kind of thing. What I was reading was just weird, anywho. Yeah, that happened after 10 appearances as a supporting character alongside a jazz orchestra, fleischer found that audiences were coming to the movies mostly to see Betty rather than Bimbo and Coco. So she quickly got an upgrade to full human status with the big baby doll head and eyes and curls, with the figure of a 16 year old girl. I did cover that, I forgot, sorry. Her dress was shorter and she was given a garter with a heart. Of course this was all part of the backdrop for making sexual jokes for grabby disgusting secondary characters.
Speaker 2:
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 things happened in Fleischer's tunes that were impractical and sometimes possibly grotesque, but, as his grandson has said, Fleischer's motto was if you can do it in real life, why animate? Of course, this was at a time when Hollywood didn't have much in the way of censors.
Speaker 3:
Because of the deficiencies, betty Boop and even poor Minnie Mouse were subject to harassment during that time. One episode saw Mickey stealing kisses from Minnie when she was adamant about not giving them. Though Minnie had issues with Bluto trying to take advantage of her that was hidden behind grand chases. Betty's encounters were much more obvious, but it wasn't as if Betty were unaware of her sex appeal. In fact, she used it to her advantage often enough in the earlier films.
Speaker 2:
Which brings us to the concept of a flapper. During the roaring twenties, flappers were women who were seeking a more elevated life in a man's world. They wanted to smoke, drink and have sex with a bandit like the men. It was a huge boom in the field of seeking equality between the sexes. Their skirts were shorter, all the way up to their knees, if you can believe it, but that was exactly what Fleischer wanted Betty Boop to be, not their knees.
Speaker 3:
Oh yeah, and you know what's even worse, what those hussies were rouging their knees? Oh yeah, I still to this day have no idea why that was a big deal, but apparently having rosy knees Showing your ankles.
Speaker 2:
Was like rosy knees. We don't talk about that, rosy knees.
Speaker 3:
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 something people really talked about in polite society, so I don't know if that was the actual implication or not.
Speaker 2:
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, but they probably didn't have vacuuming. Oh, she was vacuuming, all right, yeah, she was she was hoovering, for sure, oh man.
Speaker 3:
Oh my gosh. There's a flaw in that, though. Betty Boop might have been one of the most developed cartoon characters of the time, but she was never expected to be anything more than a humorous sex symbol. By 1935, her time was up. Due to scandals in Hollywood, public scrutiny saw many states enacting their own censorship laws.
Speaker 2:
Now it should be mentioned that the motion picture producers and distributors of America, mmpda, which was created in 1927, had made lists of don'ts and be careful for the industry to adhere to. This was the building blocks for the 1930 motion picture production code, which was commonly known as the Haze Code after MPPDAs President William H Hayes. The Haze Code further outlined how to approach subjects such as sex dancing, drugs, vulgarity and crime Dancing what kind of dancing?
Speaker 3:
are y'all doing out there? Oh, if you've seen any of those old black and white ones where they aren't talking, they're pretty dang raunchy. Yeah, oh, my gosh, some of them, you're kind of going.
Speaker 2:
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:
I'm pretty sure I'm seeing lots of nipples here from everybody.
Speaker 2:
A quote from the guidelines. Declared that excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces and justive postures and gestures are not to be shown. In another section where costumes were talked about. Insisted that there will be no indecent or undue exposure.
Speaker 3:
Cover the girls Cover up. Just saying. This led to a significant transformation in Betty Boop's character. Betty Boop's flapper image, along with her more risque and suggestive nature, was toned down to comply with the new regulations. Her hand lines were lengthened, hiding her trademark heart garter. Her persona became more wholesome and she was aged up. Her character was altered to be more wholesome and her plot lines followed a similar pattern. It marked the end of an era for the character.
Speaker 2:
Up to that point, betty Boop had been a circus performer, a race car driver and a presidential candidate she had had, which is a really funny episode, is it?
Speaker 3:
Oh yeah, I've seen most of the old ones.
Speaker 2:
She had had many jobs that were typically considered masculine, but in the mid-30s, in the middle of the Great Depression, men were growing increasingly worried that women were going to steal their jobs.
Speaker 2:
So Betty Boop and her friends changed yet again. She became domestic and demurrer, while Coco the Clown changed to Grampy, an eccentric adventurer who doted on his granddaughter, and Bimbo was changed into an adorable little puppy named Pudgy. So obviously that's proof that the censors couldn't stop Betty Boop from being an enduring figure in animation history. Some historians believe that the sanitized storylines, such as Betty Boop trying to wash a struggling Pudgy or keep up with a hotel full of demanding guests, made her increasingly boring to watch. Unfortunately, Fleischer's grandson felt the Hays Code was the beginning of the end for Betty Boop as well. He was quoted as saying A lot of the spirit went out of it, and I wouldn't be surprised if my grandfather had just said Well, you know what? We're not going to let you ruin her, we're just going to comply and then just move on, which explains the fizzling out of her movies and subsequent retirement in 1939.
Speaker 3:
Interestingly enough, the Fleischer's studio was shortly after acquired by Paramount. Betty Boop laid dormant and all but forgotten until all the pre 1950s shorts were sold to a television syndicate. She was still in the public eye for the next few decades thanks to merchandise and through scattershot cameos and cartoons, like you were saying in Popeye, right, yep. And in 1985, she had a CBS television special called the romance of Betty Boop. And let's not forget that she made a brief appearance in who framed Roger Rabbit, which is one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 2:
In case anyone is wondering, Sadly, that was her last appearance in cinema, but a family owned version of Fleischer Studios is keeping her image alive by continuing to update her along with the times. She's been a biker, a champion for recycling, she does yoga and even has a self help book, which is quite a bit more than her inspiration Ellen Kane was able to achieve during her lifetime in cinema.
Speaker 3:
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 and expressive, bobbed black hair that was curled, much like Betty's, and a toothy, dark lipped smile.
Speaker 2:
In May of 1932, kane filed an infringement lawsuit against Fleischer Studios for what she perceived as the unauthorized use of her image and style in creating Betty Boop. The legal battle that ensued only brought more attention to Betty Boop and cemented her status as the cultural icon. On the flip side of that, kane's popularity at Paramount had started to decline in the year before, tragically, betty's growing fame did nothing to help Kane's, and in 1934 she took her lawsuit to New York.
Speaker 3:
It did not go the way she had hoped, and when a theatrical manager was brought in as a witness, he testified that he had seen Kane watch a performance in 1928 by an African-American child going by the stage name of Baby Esther. She had done a similar performance to the one that Kane was known for, wearing a cute baby-styled outfit while singing in a babyish voice. He even went so far as to say that he had seen Cain go into Baby Esther's dressing room to speak with her.
Speaker 2:
There were other attempts by multiple sources during that trial that were trying to discredit Cain's claim. While a child who had played Baby Esther could not be found, the judge ruled that there was not enough evidence to prove that such a style of acting and singing was original to Cain. After the ruling, cain went on to try and hold out in the Hollywood industry, but by the 40s her act was dated and so she had to move on. At one point she did do a singing voiceover for Debbie Reynolds, who, in case you didn't know, is the mother of Carrie Fisher, aka Princess Leia.
Speaker 3:
One last little fact before we sign off, dear listeners, there have been many women 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:
I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:
You know the sweet little old lady. She wrapped her cat up as a present and said that the pledge of allegiance. Sorry, and said the pledge of allegiance instead of saying grace at dinner. That was Betty Boop during the Golden Age.
Speaker 2:
Wow, that's pretty cool. Cool fact, right? Yeah, that's pretty cool, yeah. Um well, that wraps up today's slightly out of character episode for Smarticast Tell's History. We hope that you enjoyed this journey into the world of animation and Betty Boop's wild and crazy history. If you have any historical questions or topics that you would like us to explore in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you for joining us, and if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. We will be back with more stories from the past. Until then, keep exploring.
Speaker 1:
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, and be sure to follow the show at facebookcom. Slash Smarticast Tell's History or just click the link in the show description. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.