Betty Boop Meets Ethel Merman

Yes, while it wasn't meant for two megastars as big as Betty Boop and Ethel Merman to share scenes on the silver screen - that was simply not meant to be - the two showbiz icons did share billing in a few Fleischer Studio Screen Songs cartoons. The first was made in 1932 and released theatrically on May 20th of that year. Just follow the bouncing ball, dear readers.



Ms. Merman preceded her appearances in Fleischer cartoons by starring in a series of Paramount 1-reel musical shorts. The first features her bravura performance of "Sing, You Sinners." She did not appear in the extremely imaginative Fleischer Studios Talkartoon that also featured the song.













Knowing an up-and-coming performer when they saw one, Paramount and the Fleischer Studio featured Ms. Merman in three more Screen Song cartoons in 1932-1933.



Betty Boop was very much a featured player in both the Talkartoons and Screen Songs series, starting in 1930.



Our favorite of the group by far is Time On My Hands. Familiar with this song from Billie Holiday's 1940 version, we find that Ms. Merman also does a fine job interpreting those dreamy lyrics . . . "time on my hands - you in my arms."



And Betty Boop, as the mermaid, was never more charming.



After Song Shopping (1933), the last of the three Screen Song cartoons featuring Ethel Merman, in this case accompanied on piano by songwriter Johnny Green, the Paramount Pictures feature films unit cast the show-stopping vocalist in the Bing Crosby - Carole Lombard vehicle We're Not Dressing.



Betty Boop? Soon would be reduced to a pale and syrupy shadow of her former saucy self by rigid enforcement of the Production Code, which went into effect on July 1, 1934.

Follow The Bouncing Ball

By all means, forget your tribulations and sing along through this Fleischer Screen Song cartoon, Kitty From Kansas City, co-starring Betty Boop and Rudy Vallee.

One Great Psychotronic Fleischer Cartoon Deserves Another

Betty Boop's Museum (1932)

Ready for a cartoon starring horny statues and skeletons? Well, the skeletons are hornier in a 1934 Krazy Kat cartoon in which a gay skeleton, dancing with Napoleon, cops a feel on Nappy's rear - but this still fills the bill. One of those great inexplicable cartoon moments comes when a skeleton (with a Bluto voice) points at Betty and demands "SING!"

About that Krazy Kat cartoon. . . one of the perpetrators of that classic gag (maybe he animated it) was the great Manny Gould, a few years before contributing fabulous animation to Warner Brothers for. . . guess who, Bob Clampett!

Another Great Psychotronic Cartoon

This truly psychotronic (psychoactive?) cartoon, Betty Boop in Mask-A-Raid, epitomizes everything I love about the Fleischer Studio, circa 1930-1933.



I consider the part (at 2:43) when two "Mickey Rat" characters behind huge weird masks sing sublime gibberish right up there among the greatest moments in the history of world cinema.

Still More Psychotronic Cartoons By New York's Fleischer Studio

1932-Betty Boop - Sink or Swim (S.O.S.)
Uploaded by iToons

Psychotronic Cartoons, Exhibit B

Here's yet another amazing piece of work by the Fleischer Studio, Bimbo's Initiation (1931). If only we could be rewarded for our travails with a roomful of Betty Boops (dog ears or not)!



Although the cartoons got tamer and less risque as the 1930's progressed and the Production Code took effect in July 1934, the Fleischer Studio still periodically came up with wondrous, wildly imaginative and brilliant stuff, such as this tremendous futuristic cartoon about the 1939 New York World's Fair. The bit with the robot dance partners is one for the books.

Psychotronic Cartoons, Exhibit A

We slip a fair number of classic (and not-so-classic) cartoons into the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festivals. The early 30's work of New York's Fleischer Studio - surreal, macabre, bizarre and loaded with unabashed risqué humor, pre-Code style - remains the epitome of the "psychotronic" cartoon. Here's a good one: Silly Scandals (1931), uploaded by voiceman91.

This Fleischer classic could have been included among the Truly Obscure Animated Cartoons I have been posting, except for the appearance of Betty Boop, resplendent in her early 1930-1931 "dog ears" incarnation. Betty sings "You're Driving Me Crazy", a classic standard recorded in 1930 by the incredible Louis Armstrong and in the 40's by Peggy Lee. The song is also the cornerstone of a wonderful 1931 Screen Song cartoon. Clearly, somebody at Fleischer's was musically hip.

We concur with the audience of Fleischer cartoon animals: WE WANT BETTY! WE WANT BETTY!