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Betty Boop's Funeral (Betty Boop in Snow White)
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Released
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May 28, 2020
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Running time
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11:52
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Link
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Video
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Doug: You know what I think of when I hear "Betty Boop"? Freaky-ass funerals!
(The title for the Betty Boop cartoon in question is shown: Betty Boop in Snow White, from 1933.)
Doug (vo): Betty Boop in Snow White was released in 1933, several years before Disney would do their version.
Doug: Both are animated classics, but for very different reasons. Let's take a look.
(The cartoon opens on a shot of a sashaying Betty Boop, with the following words displayed: "Featuring BETTY BOOP Assisted By BIMBO and KOKO".)
Background singers: Made of pen and ink...
Doug (vo): I'm happy to say several Betty Boop cartoons...
Doug: ...are getting a bit of a resurgence because not only of how beautifully animated they are, but because how weirdly dark some of them are. And you're gonna see this one and probably draw comparisons to...
(Cut to a shot of the title for the 1932 Talkartoon...)
Doug (vo): ...Minnie the Moocher.
(Footage is shown of this cartoon, emphasizing a walrus who sings and dances to the song in the style of singer/bandleader Cab Calloway.)
Doug (vo): That one is arguably a little bit more famous than this one...
(Cut to a clip of Calloway himself and his band as he dances in the exact same way.)
Doug (vo): ...then praised for using rotoscope with Cab Calloway.
Doug: Uh, rotoscope, if you don't know, is the art of mimicking or even tracing over live action...
Doug (vo): ...so the animation seems more real.
Doug: While that one is an amazing cartoon and we'll definitely talk about it at another date, I think this one is better.
(A clip of Snow White is shown.)
Doug (vo): There's a lot more creativity, a lot more surrealism, just as much going on in the background as in the foreground.
Doug: One of the reasons for that is because even though...
(The credits for this cartoon is shown, with Dave Fleischer, Max's brother, as director and Roland C. Crandall as animator.)
Doug (vo): ...[Dave] Fleischer is given credit for directing it, (the camera zooms in on Crandall's name) this is really Roland Crandall's cartoon.
Doug: Apparently, he had been with Fleischer Studios for several years, and, uh, they said, "You know what? Just do your own cartoon, do whatever you want," and so he took inspiration...
(Minnie the Moocher is shown again.)
Doug (vo): ...from what they did in Minnie the Moocher, and he combined it with...
Doug: ...his own...exercise in strange...
(Snow White is shown again, showing Koko the Clown, having been turned into a ghost, shapeshifting into a gold coin (worth $20) on a watch chain.)
Doug (vo): ...bizarre, dark weirdness that you see here, and I think he really took it to the next level...
Doug: ...to a point where this is often called one of the best cartoons ever made, and you'll see why.
(The cartoon begins as Betty enters the castle of a homely queen (who looks rather like Olive Oyl, oddly enough). It is snowing outside, with icicles hanging from the entrance. They curl up into little circles to let Betty pass. Inside are two guards, played by Bimbo and Koko the Clown. Inside, Betty spots an alarm clock and pulls on one of its legs, causing it to ring.)
Doug (vo): A fun bit you may or may not know is...
Doug: ...that Betty Boop wasn't always human. She was actually a dog originally.
(Footage is shown of Betty's debut appearance in the 1930 short Dizzy Dishes, in which she is shown as a slightly overweight dog.)
Doug (vo): And that's because, uh, I believe she was in a Bimbo cartoon. Bimbo was also a dog. They said it didn't make sense...
Doug: ...if Bimbo had a human, uh, girlfriend, so they originally drew her this way, and then they showed the pictures...
(A comparison shot of Betty is shown side by side: dog Betty in Dizzy Dishes and human Betty in Snow White.)
Doug (vo): ...side by side, and they looked at, you know, the attractive woman and the dog, and they said...
Doug: ..."The attractive woman makes more sense," so they went with that. And, uh, she just exploded. She became this huge, huge star, so...
Doug (vo): ...you're gonna see other characters in this, like, uh, Koko and, uh, like I said, Bimbo. It's very similar...
Doug: ...to, like, the Looney Tunes and Porky Pig. Porky used to be...
(A shot of Porky in his classic "That's all, folks" pose at the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon is shown.)
Doug (vo): ...the big star, but then...
(Cut to a Looney Tunes opening with Porky and Daffy Duck is shown.)
Doug (vo): ...Daffy came along...
(Now cut to another Looney Tunes opening, this one with Bugs Bunny.)
Doug (vo): ...and, uh, Bugs came along...
Doug: ...and they kind of became the big deal, and that's what happened with Betty Boop, so those characters are still there, but they didn't...
(The title is shown again: "Betty Boop Assisted by Bimbo and Koko".)
Doug (vo): ...usually star in their own cartoons at the time; it was mainly her.
Doug: And I think my favorite compromise is that they took her droopy ears...
(The dog and human versions of Betty are shown again.)
Doug (vo): ...in the original and they turned them into earrings. I thought...
Doug: ...that was such a clever workaround.
(Cut back to Snow White as Betty enters the castle of the Queen.)
Betty: (singing to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb") I wanna see my stepmama, stepmama...
Doug (vo): Now, so far, this is a mostly typical Betty Boop cartoon. Uh, back then, uh...
Doug: ...stories didn't need to be that concrete; they were more an excuse to do a lot of visual gags, uh, just to do everything in animation that you can't do in live-action.
Doug (vo): There's pros and cons to that. The cons are, you know, you want something that can be...
Doug: ...more dramatic. You want something that can be more realistic. Uh, when Disney did...
(Cut to a shot of...)
Doug (vo): ...The Three Little Pigs, it was celebrated for being something that had, like, distinct characteristics...
Doug: ...and it had a beginning, middle and end. It was one of those revolutionary cartoons, uh, that changed animation. But, uh, you do lose a little something here, too...
(As we cut back to Snow White, Betty meets her stepmother, the Queen, who is so displeased to see her that her face briefly turns into a frying pan, with eggs for her eyes.)
Doug (vo): ...because you can just totally explore, uh, the imagination and motion and shapes. There's just...
Doug: ...so much that can be explored when you have no limitations whatsoever.
Betty: (singing) I wanna see my stepmama...
(A pair of icicles hanging from the entryway come to life, with faces and all.)
Icicles: (singing) Her stepmama, the Queen.
Doug (vo): Case in point...
Doug: ...anything can talk in a Betty Boop cartoon. It doesn't matter what it is.
Doug (vo): In something like Three Little Pigs, that wouldn't make sense...
Doug: ...but here, you can do whatever you want.
(As Betty enters the castle, she steps on a rug, which has a pair of long johns sewn into it. A mouse (looking suspiciously like Mickey) smiles and removes one of its ears to tip it to her like a hat. The camera zooms in on the mouse.)
Doug (vo): Wow! That was a Disney lawsuit waiting to happen!
Doug: That wouldn't fly today.
(Betty walks up to her stepmother, who puts some oil on her magic mirror, a drop of which accidentally gets in Betty's eye.)
Doug (vo): Notice the background, too. We haven't really gotten to the dark stuff yet.
Doug: But I mean, just look at that chair.
(The camera zooms in on the Queen's throne, which clearly has a visible face on it.)
Doug (vo): That chair has a few face in there. Some of the sculptures in the background; this is...
Doug: ...much more detail in a cartoon like this than you would normally see.
Queen: (enraged) Off with her head!
(To illustrate her command, the Queen places her thumb in between her index and middle fingers, which turn into a pair of scissor blades, which cut off her thumb briefly. Koko and Bimbo reluctantly escort Betty away to be executed.)
Doug (vo): A lot of Betty Boop cartoons at the time definitely had kind of this edge to it, uh, not just from a...
Doug: ...sexual angle, though they definitely did. You look at some of the older ones... man, there's stuff you couldn't get away with now. Uh, but just also this kind of this mean-spirited angle.
Doug (vo): Like, she could just say, "Off with her head," but you see her do the fingers, and the thumb falls off; it gets cut off.
Doug: I mean, it's such a grisly idea, but because anything can happen in this world, uh, if there's just this extreme freedom, uh, it really allows you to just go all out.
(Koko and Bimbo have tied Betty to a tree outside in the snow to execute her, but they can't go through with it and just leave her. Although it's not in Doug's video, Koko and Bimbo have tried to cover their tracks by throwing a stump into Betty's would-be grave, only to fall in themselves and knock themselves out upon landing. Meanwhile, Betty is still tied to the tree.)
Betty: Save me, save me, save me!
Doug (vo): Again, how does she get out of this situation? The tree saves her, 'cause everything's alive.
Doug: You're noticing this isn't anything especially dark.
(Having been freed by the tree she was tied to, Betty wanders around in the snow, but she trips and falls, rolling herself up into a snowball, which then passes through a wooden frame which cuts the ball into the shape of a flat box as it slides along.)
Doug: Again, it has a little bit of a mean edge to it; there's nothing super dark about it, but it's coming up.
(As the box with Betty in it slides down the hill, it falls into an icy lake, after which the box emerges with Betty encased in a block of ice like a coffin. The coffin slides up to the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs (with a sign helpfully explaining such). The Dwarfs watch as the coffin slides inside.)
Doug (vo): So here we are. We're almost halfway through the cartoon, and we're given the Seven Dwarves.
Doug: Again, story is just not a huge element here. And the way...
Doug (vo): ...she gets into this coffin, and she, quote-unquote, "dies", through...
Doug: ...the snowball becoming...
Doug (vo): ...a box, the box going into the water, the water [sic] becoming ice, the ice now becoming a coffin – I mean...
Doug: ...what a stream of consciousness that is! Uh, and again, when you're not held down by a... a story, you necessarily need to have a beginning, middle and end... uh, you can be allowed to do something this strange.
(In the cartoon, the Queen walks up to what she thinks is Betty's grave. She then holds up her magic mirror, which has a face and hands.)
Queen: Am I the fairest in the place?
Magic Mirror: (pointing to grave) If I were you, I'd hide my face.
(Suspicious, the Queen uses her mirror to dig up the snow covering the grave. Then she runs the mirror over herself, turning herself into a hideous witch. Then she sets the mirror under herself and uses it to lower herself into the grave like a flying carpet.)
Doug (vo): Wonderfully creative. I think that's a great example of...
Doug: ...just two very different styles. You'll get the transformation...
(Shots of the Disney version of Snow White are shown, depicting the Queen there transforming into the Witch there, which could not be presented more differently than the Fleischer version.)
Doug (vo): ...from the Disney version; it's big, it's huge, you got her hair turning gray, screaming and everything.
Doug: Here, she just takes that mirror...
(The scene of the Fleischer version is shown again of the Queen turning herself into the Witch there.)
Doug (vo): ...and puts it all through her body and becomes someone else. I mean, it's something that's...
Doug: ...super simple, but it's just as creative. It's two totally different styles, and they're really still... Even though they're very different, they're still wonderfully creative.
(The Queen, in her Witch form, reaches the bottom of the supposed grave. There, she lands on top of the heads of Koko and Bimbo. They come to, as "St. James Infirmary" plays, and Koko heads for the mystery cave (as per a helpful sign) where Betty has been taken.)
Koko (Cab Calloway): (singing) Folks, I'm goin' down to St. James Infirmary...
Doug (vo): So, here we go. This is where we get a lot of the Minnie the Moocher, uh, imagery...
Doug: ...and Cab Calloway now, uh, takes over singing. And it just comes right out of nowhere.
(Koko, dancing like Cab Calloway, follows after the Seven Dwarfs as they carry Betty's coffin over their heads.)
Doug (vo): And nothing here really, uh, tips it off. Again, that's part of the fun. There's this unpredictability that...
Doug: ...the cartoon can just go anywhere in not just visuals, but tone as well.
Doug (vo): And this is where the rotoscope starts. You can tell the way he [Koko]'s moving now is very different. It feels more fluid, it feels like there's a lot more motion to it...
Doug: ...a lot more frames to it.
Doug (vo): And this is really why I like this one more than Minnie the Moocher.
(The camera zooms in on the background, which is full of grotesque imagery that illustrate what Calloway-cum-Koko is singing.)
Doug (vo): Look at this background! There are tons of faces back there, and you would miss them if you weren't paying attention. There's so much crazy imagery.
Doug: And if you look closer, you can always see, like, a new face. You can see, like, a new image back there. But in the foreground...
Doug (vo): ...you have this wonderful animation of, uh, Koko here dancing.
Doug: That was, again, taken from Cab Calloway.
Koko: (singing) ...this wide world over...
(The Queen, in her witch disguise, rubs her mirror and then runs it over Koko's body, turning him into a ghost-like... thing with long legs coming almost up to his head, while his arms are almost sticking out of his head. Nevertheless, he keeps going, singing and dancing.)
Doug (vo): I love this thing. I love this thing! I love how it moves realistic, but it's not given the proper, uh, proportion that a person usually does.
Doug: You know, yes, you have legs and you have arms, but the arms (holds hands up close to his head) are up here, and the gap of the legs goes all the way up to, like, your chin, and then the eyes are a lot bigger. It's something where when you have...
(Cut to a clip of the walrus from Minnie the Moocher, dancing on his tail, also like Calloway as he sings the titular song there.)
Doug (vo): ...the walrus, it's like, yes, that's exaggerated, too, but it looks more human.
Doug: (gesturing toward the Koko ghost) That? That doesn't look like...
Doug (vo): ...anything I've ever seen. Same with the pictures in the background. Look at those things! Those are just... Any one of these background characters could be an album cover.
Doug: I mean, they look that great.
Doug (vo): Look at those things. Look at those things! Give any of those things a cartoon, I'd watch it.
(The Koko ghost twists his legs around and around, forming a chain. His head, meanwhile, turns into a coin worth $20.)
Koko: (singing) Put a $20 gold piece on...
Doug (vo): A lot of you are probably familiar with, uh, Cuphead. (A shot of Cala Maria from Cuphead appears in the corner.) Cuphead took a lot from Betty Boop...
Doug: ...where right down to Cab Calloway. (A shot of another character, King Dice, who is also based on Calloway, appears in the corner.) There's a character that's very, very similar to him as well.
Doug (vo): The way the background moves as well, because in the context of the cartoon, is the ground moving? Is the background moving? You know, how does it work?
Doug: Uh, it's not only very dreamlike, but, uh, they keep coming up with different images...
Doug (vo): ...and different characters and different faces, and it's something they don't have to do. Just, uh, the ghost there dancing...
Doug: ...is enough; that'd be entertaining enough. They even put, like...
Doug (vo): ...little owls and witches' heads and stuff flying like that.
Doug: But having those different images in the background just elevates this to a new level. There's just always something new to see.
(In the cartoon, the Queen uses her mirror to turn the Koko ghost and Bimbo into statues, while Betty remains trapped in her coffin. The Queen then uses the mirror to remove her witch disguise and revert back to her royal state.)
Queen: (singing) Magic mirror in my hand, now who's the fairest in the land?
Doug (vo): If the Queen, by the way, sounds very similar to, uh, Betty Boop...
Doug: ...it's because it's the same voice actress...
(As the cartoon continues, a shot of Mae Questel, the voice of Betty and the Queen (and later, Olive Oyl in the Popeye cartoons), appears in the corner.)
Doug (vo): ...Mae Questel, (pronounces it "Quest-el") I think is how you say her name? And she was acting all the way to the very end.
Doug: In fact, you probably recognize her as the aunt from...
(Cut to a shot of Aunt Bethany, Questel's character from...)
Doug (vo): ...National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
(Cut back to the cartoon as the magic mirror confirms that the Queen is the fairest in the land before giving her a Bronx cheer that causes the mirror to explode in her hand. The explosion reverts Koko and Bimbo back to normal and frees Betty from her coffin, but it also turns the Queen into a horny-faced dragon. Betty and her friends flee for their lives from the Queen's new dragon form. The dragon gives chase.)
Doug (vo): And she turns into a monster, because of course she does. And of course, the monster isn't gonna look like anything you've ever seen before.
Doug: Who the hell would design that?!
(To a shrill sting, the dragon turns to the camera, its face filling up almost the entire screen, and lets out a snarling roar. Then it chases Betty and her friends.)
Doug (vo): Again, a lot of Cuphead inspiration here.
Doug: I mean, (imitates leaning in close to the camera) the face going towards the camera. I mean, that's something...
Doug (vo): ...a lot of bosses in the game do. I mean, this design just looks like a monster you'd fight in Cuphead.
Doug: So again, just a lot of great inspiration.
(As Betty and her friends reach the cave entrance, Bimbo suddenly stops and turns to face the dragon. Just as it's about to devour him, Bimbo grabs the dragon's tongue and pulls on it so hard that he actually turns the monster inside out, revealing its skeleton. It turns tail and runs away.)
Doug: (wide-eyed, shakes head) Definitely would not see something like that today! (chuckles)
Doug (vo): Yeah, I know what our cute, cuddly character will do: you grab her tongue and pulls her insides out and so her skeleton's on the outside!
Doug: (shaking head) It won't frighten the children at all! They'll love it! They'll absolutely love it!
(And the cartoon ends rather abruptly with Betty and her friends dancing together in a circle outside in the snow. Betty giggles. The cartoon irises out and then fades in on a "The End" card, followed by the Paramount logo.)
Doug (vo): And again, it ends very quickly because they really don't care about the happy ending.
Doug: (gives a double thumbs-up) They're like, "And everybody's okay? Okay, whatever." They wanted to spend to spend all that time...
Doug (vo): ...on the backgrounds, on the singing, on the animation, on the dark imagery...
Doug: ...and... I really think it's fantastic. I think the motion in this amazing, that the creativity is just stellar.
Doug (vo): Uh, I think because it just goes from one weird, dark thing to another.
Doug: And it kind of comes out of nowhere, too. Like, even though the first half...
Doug (vo): ...has, like I said, this edge to it, uh, the second half just goes... out-of-nowhere dark!
Doug: I mean, you would not predict that the second half of this cartoon was gonna be...
Doug (vo): ...like the first half was suggesting. You wouldn't even look at that second half and think of "Snow White". You never would! Even though it's something where there's not really...
Doug: ...a beginning, middle and end, like a lot of cartoons have, uh, that I also think is very much a positive...
Doug (vo): ...because you can just go wherever the animation leads you, wherever the tone leads, wherever the shapes lead you...
Doug: ...wherever the shadows lead you. Uh, and I think that's just a wonderful way to be super creative and open up the mind and just sort of see where it can venture.
(Cut to a clip of the walrus in Minnie the Moocher.)
Doug (vo): So, even though Minnie the Moocher has, uh, very similar elements, and was the first one to kind of do this style, especially in a Betty Boop cartoon...
Doug: ...uh, with the rotoscope and the dark imagery and such, uh, I really think this one takes it to a new level...
Doug (vo): ...and it just has so much more going on in the backgrounds and the foregrounds, with what you can do with shapes...
Doug: ...with what you can do with movement.
Doug (vo): I just really think there's an abundance of...
Doug: ...morbid creativity that has little to no limitations.