![]() ![]() Grampy literally puts on his thinking cap (a mortarboard with a lightbulb on top), and invents a host of labor-saving devices: a cuckoo clock powered dishwasher, a combination bicycle and floor scrubber, and a player piano that folds laundry. Grampy shows up to take Betty out for a drive, but Betty can't leave until everything is tidy. ![]() She sings the title song while struggling with her chores. The house is a shambles, and Betty is not looking forward to cleaning up. House Cleaning Blues is a 1937 Fleischer Studios animated short film starring Betty Boop, and featuring Grampy.īetty wakes up after the morning after her birthday party. Beautiful animation though.Betty Boop: Grampy in "House Cleaning Blues" But I found, not terribly compelling story wise when compared to other animations around the same time. The superman films however were wonderful to behold. Imaginative yes, but also somewhat pointless. I don’t much care for what Disney does these days (bolt was pretty darn good however) but really, they’re the ones that were innovating at that time and really pushing animation as a respectable medium.įleischer was still just pumping out gag reels every year just to fill seats. A process Disney brought to the forefront and Max didn’t pick up for years. This is just a random Mickey short I found, this doesn’t include the silly symphonies which are generally fantastic.Įven compare it to the Three Little Pigs, done the very same year and in colour. It’s just there because that’s what got people into theaters.Ĭompare Max’s animations with the same animations done that very year by Disney and the difference is astounding. And adding in the song (while it is a completely fantastic song, don’t get me wrong) it has no real place in the animation or story. She freezes them all, finds out she’s the fairest… then turns into a dragon? There’s no reason for that except that they wanted a chase scene. The guards (her friends)throw away the stump, then fight it on the way down? and die or fall unconscious at the bottom? Why’s there even an exit for a grave? none of it makes sense, its all just there for the gag for a gag’s sake. Imaginative yes, for sure but it’s just nonsensical scene after nonsensical scene. The gags and simple ideas completely overrun the actual story. Fleichers animations were always clumsy and gag ridden. This is one of the very few times I think I’ll have to completely disagree with you though. This has been a great source of inspiration and knowledge and I wanna thank you for it. There is also a site devoted to the Betty Boop cartoons in general that makes them easier to browse (something the Archive is not the best for) and links to them both on the Archive and YouTube.įirst off, I love your blog. You can view it on the Animation Archive, where you can find a treasure trove of early animation (a good place to start is the Film Chest Vintage Cartoons collection). James Infirmary Blues, to which all manner of bizzare imagery is set. The piece, in fact, makes extensive use of the music of the great band leader Cab Calloway, often an integral feature of the Betty Boop cartoons, in this case a smashing rendition of St. Crandall, this 7 minute masterpiece takes our darling Betty (created by animator Grim Natwick) through the Snow White story.īut if Disney’s Snow White is a symphony (and it’s a wonderful milestone of animation), this is an improvisational jazz piece by players at the top of their form for inventiveness, exploration and animation “chops”. Directed by Dave Fleischer and animated by Roland C. This example, Betty Boop: Snow White, is one of the best. ![]() The backgrounds, at times surprisingly dark and strange, are filled with wonderful details that are easy to miss on first viewing. ![]() Characters, and logic, assume pretzel-like configurations.Īll of this is done with wit, style, imagination and wonderfully snappy drawing. The artists indulge in dream-like displays of the bizarre and wonderful. People, objects and animals bend, morph, disintegrate and reintegrate. Animators were delighting in the possibilities animated drawings presented, particularly in freedom from the restraints of physical laws and the conventions of formal narrative. These were cartoons done when animation as an art form and entertainment medium, while no longer in its infancy, was in its wide-eyed childhood, exploratory and robust with the heady enthusiasm of youth. A friend of mine recently reminded me of the amazing Fleischer Studios Betty Boop cartoons from the 1930’s (see my posts on Max Fleisher and the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons).īetty Boop, in her original incarnation, was sexy, surreal (in the accurate sense of that word), imaginative, beautifully done and entertaining on several levels. ![]()
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