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Description: |
Origins
Betty Boop was the first female flapper cartoon. She made her first appearance on August 9, 1930 in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, the sixth installment more...in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. She was little like her soon-to-be-famous self, however. Grim Natwick, a veteran animator of both Walt Disney's and Ub Iwerks' studios, was largely responsible for creating the character, which he modeled on Helen Kane, a singer and contract player at Paramount Pictures, the studio that distributed Fleischer's cartoons. In keeping with common practice, Natwick made his new character an animal, in this case, a French poodle. Beginning with this cartoon, the character's voice was performed by several different voice actresses until Mae Questel got the role, in 1931, and kept it for the rest of the series.
Natwick himself later conceded that Betty's original look was quite ugly. The animator redesigned her in 1932 to be recognizably human in the cartoon Any Rags. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her poodle fur became a bob haircut. She appeared in ten cartoons as a supporting character, a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons she was called "Nancy Lee" and "Nan McGrew". She usually served as studio star Bimbo's girlfriend. She was not officially christened "Betty Boop" until the 1932 short Stopping the Show that same year. This was also the first cartoon to be officially part of the Betty Boop series and not a Talkartoon.
Although some claim that Betty's first name was established in the 1931 Screen Songs cartoon Betty Co-ed, this "Betty" was, in truth, an entirely different character. Though the song itself may have led to Betty's eventual christening, any references to Betty Co-ed as a Betty Boop vehicle have been made in error. (The official Betty Boop website describes the titular character as a "prototype" of Betty.) In all, there were at least 12 Screen Songs cartoons that featured either Betty Boop or a similar character. less
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