Because there is a movement afoot to erase history, ☞ Black History Month and Women’s History Month were both canceled BUT NOT ON MY WATCH!
As an educator, I will not allow any of that to be canceled. I’m about to show you the genius of Fleischer Studios and their bright little star, Betty Boop. What a great way to reopen Black History Month and Women’s History Month. Fleischer’s animation touches on both those subjects, and more.
Cab Calloway starred in three Betty Boop cartoons:
- Minnie the Moocher (1932)
- Snow-White (1933)
- The Old Man of the Mountain (1933)
The flapper era was ending due to the depression, and the carefree attitude of the flappers was no longer in vogue. In spite of that, Max Fleischer created a very independent and charming, not to mention sexy little woman in the flapper tradition. Oh, she was vulnerable, of course, just like all women are because men can be brutes. Betty became a symbol of self-expression in a changing world around her.
At the same time, there was an explosion occurring in Harlem called the Harlem Renaissance. It was a golden age for African American culture that challenged stereotypes, producing great literature, art, theater, and music. Many white, middle class audiences had never heard jazz. For a lot of them, their first introduction to jazz was a Betty Boop cartoon. Heck, eight years later they’d hear a rabbit say, “What’s up doc?” (and audiences roared).
World War I
World War I put an end to a lot of momentum. Remember? An object in motion tends to stay in motion.
That is unless millions of human beings get together and stop it. That was World War I. The great stopper. The age or reason, the enlightenment, logic, science, were all supposed to pull us out of the mud and yet there we were, once again trudging through mud engaged in pointless and brutal slaughter.
Order? Proportion? Beauty? Gone. The war brought us Dadaism and Surrealism and a spurt of more Expressionism. T S Eliots wrote The Waste Land. Erich Maria Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front.
Black soldiers returned to disillusionment. They’d hoped their sacrifices would lead to more civil rights, and respect But as Fleischer points out in his cartoons, blacks weren’t even considered human. They existed to entertain and serve white people, but they weren’t human. So Fleisher turned Cab Calloway into a walrus, singing and dancing to Minnie the Moocher, a song that would take on a nuanced meaning in this eponymous Betty Boop short.
We don’t know much about Fleischer’s politics unless you consider the studio’s work as a whole. He had to be anti-fascist to make so damn many Superman cartoons. We do know he was a technical innovator.
In 1915 he invented the rotoscope.
Rotoscope: an animation technique that allows animators to trace over live-action footage, frame by frame. It changed animation forever, giving fluid movements to characters.
First they filmed live actors performing the stunts in the cartoon script. That film is projected onto a glass panel, allowing animators to trace the movements onto animation cels.
It was groundbreaking.
Another innovation that Fleischer just happened to be working on while filming these three cab Calloway cartoons was his stereoptical process. His team built miniature 3D sets, and they are placed on a turntable behind a glass plane, in layers. Just genius.
But before we can explain how this worked, first you need to learn a few terms so we’re on the same frequency. This is how a cartoon is created:
Directors and writers create the story. The animators or cartoonists create a story board. You can think of a story board as a, say, Doonesbury cartoon in the Sunday Funnies.
Were Garry Trudeau a cartoonist, this would be the story board, or blueprint, of the entire animation. And the hierarchy that creates every single frame (called a cel) goes like this:
- Key Animator: creates the main frames of movement, those most critical poses and actions.
- Inbetweeners: fill in the frames between key points making smooth transitions, and in the case of synchronizing movement with music, often employed is an artist with a music background. Music is math: 24 frames a second, 4/4 timing? 3/4 timing? This was something cartoon studios got down pat in the twenties. ‘
- Cel Artists or Painters: Cels are sheets of celluloid upon which the inbetweeners drew their frames. Now they have to be painted. And if you’ve ever wondered how cartoons appeared on the silver screen with no brushstrokes, it’s because they’re painted on the backside.
- Background Artists: These people create the backgrounds, and if you’re a cartoon lover, you know about great backgrounds and their variety of amazing color and design. For Fleischer’s 3D effect, his camera technicians were also background artists, and engineers.
The completed cells fit onto a glass, through which the background was shot. As you can see below, the background was layered. You already know that each frame of film was shot one at a time, but to create Fleischer’s 3D effect, the camera along with the drawing on the glass could move after a shot. And again, a lot of math and experience went into this process.
Here’s a video showing us how this worked:
Fleischer’s Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor (1936) was a huge success, and nominated for an Academy Award. Audiences were amazed by the groundbreaking 3D backgrounds, rivaling even Disney’s work in terms of innovation and ambition . . . though losing the Oscar to a Disney cartoon, The Country Cousin.
Here’s Minnie
Fleischer’s Minnie the Moocher is like a time capsule. We just dug it up and we can look back on a period of time. We often think, “How times have changed.” But have they? Rotoscoping it still used in animation, even CGI animation, along with 3D effects. Blacks still face racism and it’s going to get worse because attacks on DEI are attacks on experts and their expertise. Finally, we live in a country where a woman cannot get elected to the presidency because she is a woman.
The Time Capsule
Let’s dive into Minnie the Moocher, and see what Fleischer is telling us about that particular time in our history.
The song, Minnie the Moocher, was already famous when the eponymous short was released, but with a limited audience. Fleischer’s genius helped Calloway make a signature performance for millions of people who had never heard of Cab Calloway, never heard jazz, and knew nothing about “scat singing.” They just loved Betty.
Calloway’s genius had created a catchy call-and-response structure using whimsical lyrics.
Take a look at the song, and pay attention to the “Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi (hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi);’ the call being the first “words” and the response is in parentheses.
It wouldn’t be long before audiences were responding to his calls.
Minnie the Moocher
Folks, here’s a story ’bout Minnie the Moocher
She was a red hot hoochie-coocher
She was the roughest, toughest frail
But Minnie had a heart as big as a whaleHi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi (hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi)
Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho (ho-ho-ho-ho-ho)
Hee-de-hee-de-hee-de-hee (hee-de-hee-de-hee-de-hee)
Hey-ey-ey (hey-ey-ey)She messed around with a bloke named Smokey
She loved him though he was kokey
He took her down to Chinatown
And he showed her how to kick the gong aroundHi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi (hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi)
Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho (ho-ho-ho-ho-ho)
Hey-ey-ey (hey-ey-ey)
Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho (ho-ho-ho-ho-ho)She had a dream about the king of Sweden
He gave her things, that she was needin’
He gave her a home built of gold and steel
A diamond car, with the platinum wheelsHi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi (hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi)
Ho-di-ho-di-ho-di-oh (ho-di-ho-di-ho-di-oh)
Skip-a-bibby-goop-a-bibby-give-a-bibby, bubly-bop
(Skip-a-bibby-goop-a-bibby-give-a-bibby, bubly-bop)
Ah-brr-iggy, brr-iggy, brr-iggy, haw (ah-brr-iggy, brr-iggy, brr-iggy, haw)He gave her his townhouse and his racing horses
Each meal she ate was a dozen courses
She had a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes
She sat around and counted them all a million timesHi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi (hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi)
Oooh (ooh)
Hey-ey-ey (hey-ey-ey)
Oh-oh, oh-oh (oh-oh, oh-oh)Poor Min, poor Min, poor Min
The cartoon starts out in Betty’s home where she’s tired of the being told to eat; her parents are yelling at her to eat. Eat! She’s heard it all before, heck, she’s a tiny sexy gal and doesn’t want to put on weight. Dad turns into a phonograph — invented by Edison; using a black tube — playing the same thing over and over and over. And so our heroine runs away. She writes a note and runs away with Bimbo.
They wind up on a cave where a ghostly walrus appears and starts singing Minnie the Moocher. Again, making Calloway into a walrus was a pretty huge statement. Black people were not seen as human. The song, which has nothing to do with Betty, she’s just part of the audience, is about a red hot hoochie coocher. We all know what Moocher means; being a sexy dancer, dancing the hoochie coo, she collected gifts from her many admirers, and those gifts often included drugs. Her wild escapades reflected the rebellious and edgy spirit of the jazz era. One escapade brought her to Chinatown. “And he showed her how to kick the gong around.” Most of you will pick up on “smokey” and “kochy,” but the gong, in Chinatown, was opium. Our first drug laws started with opium, fueled by anti-Chinese sentiment, even though, ironically, many of those Chinese who came to America were fleeing the opium wars in China. It was the initial war on marijuana that was a direct attack on the Harlem Renaissance and jazz culture. We were warned about “negroes” passing joints to white kids. At the same time, marijuana was making black people “uppity.” They refused to drop their gaze when meeting a white person.
The song and short film both take place during a systematic race war cloaked in an anti-drug movement.
This song is also a cautionary tale. Minnie gets everything she wants, and counts her money, non stop, just counts and counts her nickels and dimes . . . because she’s stoned.
All that money, all her luxuries, and she’s still in a cage. And stoned.
And let me tell you a bit about the “cage.” [Excuse the digression but this is what educators do. Really. I could write a book called, The Art of Digression” and never touch on the subject.]
There are two famous experiments on this subject, so here you go:
The Cage
This idea of the “cage in which we live” refers to the “Rat Park” experiments conducted by psychologist Bruce Alexander in the late 1970s. These studies challenged traditional views on addiction. Here’s the gist:
In earlier experiments, rats placed in isolated cages were given two water bottles—one with plain water and another laced with drugs like heroin or cocaine. The rats almost always chose the drugged water, often to the point of overdosing. This led to the belief that drugs themselves were inherently addictive.
Alexander questioned this. He created “Rat Park,” a spacious, stimulating environment with plenty of food, toys, and other rats to socialize with. In this enriched setting, the rats largely ignored the drugged water, preferring plain water instead. Even when they tried the drugged water, they didn’t consume it compulsively or overdose.
The takeaway? Addiction isn’t just about the substance—it’s deeply tied to environment and social connection. When individuals (or rats) are isolated, stressed, or lack meaningful connections, they’re more likely to turn to substances. Conversely, a supportive, engaging environment can reduce the appeal of addictive behaviors.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-teach-us-about-addiction
The cartoon is truly Calloway’s to own. His dancing rotoscoped onto a walrus is genius in more ways than one. First it was groundbreaking, capturing his unique style and charisma while it introducing this legendary jazz musician to a much broader audience during a flourishing time for African American culture.
The nightmarish ghostly images reflect Minnie’s dissent Into a chaotic, dangerous world, paralleling Betty’s temptation, despair, and eventual redemption when she returns home.
For its time, it was groundbreaking, blending animation, music, and storytelling in a way that captivates audiences while delivering a layered message.
Sadly, during this time, Hollywood was starting to enforce the Hays Code and soon our sexy Betty had to don a longer dress. Her appeal soon declined and then crashed. Mae Questel, the “Boop Girl” had to find a new job. Fleischer kept her on to voice another character: Olive Oyl.
Now get this. As I’m writing this lil piece, I found a Betty Boop cartoon in which, despite her long gown, her sexuality is again furtively revealed:
A short entitled, Red Hot Mama from 1934 has Betty dressed in her nighty, and it’s length is to the floor, no longer showing her famous garter. But Fleischer used the background of flames to help see through that flimsy thing. [Everyone in Hollywood back then finagled ways to slip things past the censors. The greatest trick ever pulled off is written up here: Bug’s Bunny.]
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