In the 1930 cartoon Dizzy Dishes, legendary and pioneering animator Grim Natwick working at Fleischer Studios, took an anthropomorphic dog character, added female legs, and gave her a hairdo inspired by Helen Kane, a popular singer of the time. In doing this, Natwick became the first person to draw a character that would eventually become known as Betty Boop.
One of the most famous and enduring animated characters of all time made what many consider to be her debut ninety-five years ago this month in Max Fleischer’s “Talkartoon,” Dizzy Dishes. Betty looked quite different back then in this prototypical version and would evolve over the next several cartoons.
In a distinctly Fleischer anthropomorphic world, Dizzy Dishes (directed by Dave Fleischer) opens in a nightclub, where patrons are watching “flapper” cats dance on stage. The short then focuses on the character of Bimbo, a dog character and another Fleischer Studio player, also seen here in an early form that would change.
Bimbo (voiced by actor Billy Murray) is the overwhelmed and overworked chef in the nightclub, and he is trying to prepare a roast duck meal for an impatient Gorilla customer (William Costello).
It’s when Bimbo is bringing the meal to this customer that he encounters Betty singing “I Have to Have You” on stage. It’s in this song that Betty sings what would become her iconic “Boop-Oop-a-Doop!” line.
Bimbo is so taken that he joins in the act, making the Gorilla even more disgruntled. He grows so frustrated that he puts the utensils and plates together to form a makeshift sandwich and eats it. Bimbo and the roast duck both join in with the cats and dance on stage.
He winds up being a hit and is met with applause from the audience, but more frustration from the Gorilla, who proceeds to eat the table, and then chases Bimbo into the kitchen, where he demands his roast duck.
Bimbo tries desperately to throw together anything and proceeds to chop up almost everything in the kitchen, which then transforms into a model train that Bimbo rides out of the kitchen by crashing through the wall, at the conclusion.
Dizzy Dishes, from beginning to end, is very “Fleischer-esque,” with fluid animation provided by Natwick and Ted Sears, that creates a short that seems in constant motion (Bimbo’s flailing body as he serves customers and prepares the food is of particular note).
Adding to this are well-choreographed gags, such as the waiters all placing their orders in rhyme, as they one by one poke their heads into the kitchen.
Although she truly only has a cameo in Dizzy Dishes, it’s easy to see why Betty connected with audiences. Her very expressive animation, coupled with Margie Hines’ vocal performance, is truly scene-stealing.
Interestingly, singer Helen Kane, (whose all-around persona, as well as hairdo, was the major inspiration for Betty), filed a lawsuit against Fleischer and Paramount Studios, claiming that they had appropriated her singing style, specifically the phrase “Boop-Oop-a-Doop.”
The Fleischers went on to win the case, proving that a singer named Baby Esther had used “Boop-Oop-a-Doop” before Kane.
And, Betty went on to immense popularity. Her appearance developed over the years and through several other shorts, as she eventually dropped her floppy canine ears from Dizzy Dishes, transitioning into human form.
She became one of the Fleischers’ shining stars, appearing in ninety cartoon shorts from 1930 through 1939. Actress Mae Questel, known to many today as Aunt Bethany in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), began providing Betty’s voice in 1931. Margie Hines would return to voice Betty in 1938, when the Fleischers moved their Studio to Florida. Questel would then return to voice Betty through the years for various projects, including the character’s cameo in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Betty’s appearance in that film, even though she hadn’t been in the spotlight for some time, showed just how popular she remained since her debut in 1930. There has been no shortage of Betty Boop merchandise throughout the years, and she has been a steadfast part of pop culture for over nine decades.
Earlier this year, the character was also the centerpiece of the popular Boop! The Musical, which opened on Broadway in March and went on to earn three Tony Award nominations, including one for actress Jasmine Amy Rogers, who portrayed Betty on stage.
Like so many characters, Betty Boop’s debut in Dizzy Dishes in 1930 may have been modest, but ninety-five years later, it’s easy to see that her continued impact on audiences and fans has deservedly made her one of the beloved icons of animation.
Happy Birthday, Betty!
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
Betty Boop is 95? She sure doesn’t look it.
The song “I Have to Have You”, sung by Betty in her film debut, was introduced in the 1929 Paramount musical “Pointed Heels”, in which Helen Kane sings it to Skeets Gallagher — twice, no less: first at a rather sedate tempo without a single boop-oop-a-doop; then, at the end, in a jazzy up-tempo version, boop-a-dooping all over the place, while wearing a very skimpy babydoll outfit. Watching “Pointed Heels” today, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Kane’s lawsuit against Max Fleischer might have had some merit after all. Kane’s other song in the film, “Ain’tcha”, would later be sung by Betty in her 1932 cartoon “The Betty Boop Limited”, by which time she had attained her familiar, fully human form.
Last year I bought THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BETTY BOOP: THE 100-YEAR HISTORY OF AN ANIMATED ICON (2024) by Peter Benjaminson, which I cannot recommend due to its many factual errors, omissions, misquotes, and other flaws. Still, for better or worse, it is, to date, the only book devoted entirely to the queen of the animated screen, and there’s no gainsaying the author’s love for the subject.
Another book that I can recommend is Richard Fleischer’s memoir OUT OF THE INKWELL: MAX FLEISCHER AND THE ANIMATION REVOLUTION (2005), containing many details of Fleischer family history not previously recorded in print. Richard notes that Max testified under oath in two lawsuits that he was the sole creator of Betty Boop, though he also acknowledged the contributions of other artists to her development, including not only Grim Natwick but also Ted Sears, Seymour Kneitel, Roland Crandall, and Willard Bowsky. Apparently Natwick never claimed to have created Betty before Max Fleischer passed away in 1972.
The Betty Boop merchandising juggernaut launched in the 1930s shows no sign of abating. The Johnson Smith Company, a mail-order novelty retailer whose catalog was heavily advertised in the back pages of comic books (and which was the pride of my home town in Michigan before it pulled up stakes and relocated to Florida in the ’80s), put out a catalog called “Betty’s Attic”, devoted to nostalgia items; Betty Boop merchandise outnumbered all the rest by a hefty margin. A cafe in my neighbourhood is decorated with Betty Boop memorabilia, including a very cool statue, at least a metre tall, of Betty in a waitress’s outfit and carrying a hamburger on a tray. I might go there more often if the food were as appealing as the decor, but at least the place is open on Mondays, when most other cafes are closed.
Here’s hoping that Betty will continue to win new fans (with a wink!) as she approaches her second century.
I never in my life wanted to watch a broadway show, but I did kind of want to see Boop! The musical. Now I’m waiting for the soundtrack to come out.
By all means check out pages 371-386 of Keith Scott’s CARTOON VOICES OF THE GOLDEN AGE 1930-70 volume 1 for essential Boop knowledge. I’m assuming Bonnie Poe is the actress who provided Betty Boop voices to several very enjoyable Van Beuren Tom & Jerry cartoons (PIANO TOONERS, TIGHT ROPE TRICKS).
Another bad break that cost the Fleischers: Their biggest success was Popeye, and since it was licensed I’m guessing they got precious little from all the merchandising. That money would have gone to Hearst and (one hopes) artist Segar. The studio only had the actual rentals on the shorts, which no matter how popular would be a fraction of the cheapest B feature’s take. Contrast to Disney, for whom those additional income streams meant survival. He admitted he got into features because even collecting licensing fees, there simply wasn’t enough money to grow.
Betty, their biggest homegrown star, was the last of the flappers. Even without the code forcing her into matronly costumes and sanitized adventures, she belonged to a moment in time — along with the old rubbery anything-goes style, as the whole industry chased Disney and Warner.
They tried to save her (and the merchandising) much as Walt saved approved-but-duller Mickey, making her straight man to newer, funnier characters. But Grampy and Pudgy never caught on like Donald Duck and Goofy. And there were multiple one-shots teaming Betty with other licensed comic strip characters, which would have led back to the Popeye problem of no additional revenue. For whatever reason, the Fleischers never quite nailed the landing with new stars (Casper and the what became the Harveytoons bunch came after they lost the studio).
Betty lingered as a diminishing B&W presence on television, her merchandising glory likewise fading until years enough had passed to make her a campy icon. Robert Crumb and other underground cartoonists played with the original Fleischer style, and Betty became more visible, at least as an inspiration. For the last generation or two she’s better known as a design, with merchandise items themed to the 40s and even the 50s.
There was a lot of activity in the 80s. There were two animated specials: 1985’s “Romance of Betty Boop” was a parody of 30s movies had nothing to do with the toons, or even Betty herself beyond her character design. The same year brought a Betty Boop balloon to the Macy’s parade. In 1989 “Betty Boop’s Hollywood Mystery” was a game attempt to place Betty, Kooo and Bimbo back in a classically surreal Fleischer world. The 80s also featured “Betty Boop and Felix”, a short-lived comic strip pairing the two icons as a typical career girl and her non-verbal pet.
There was a short-lived franchise of Betty Boop’s Diners, the first in San Francisco in 2006. I remember one announced for the upscale Valley Fair mall in San Jose; it was decorated with bigger-than-life paintings of Betty and was “COMING SOON” for many months. When it finally opened — briefly — all the Betty Boop branding was gone and it was a generic 50s theme restaurant. Evidently a few Betty Boop eateries exist today, maybe or maybe not survivors of the chain.
I like the surreal gags in Dizzy Dishes, such as Bimbo’s hat and the German dog’s severed nose growing hands and legs.
Betty Boop goes into public domain next year. I wonder what her first slasher picture will be about?
I may be alone on this, but I’m getting sick and tired of people waiting for something getting PD, which is way more complicated than that for some cases (such as the fact that a trademark name never expires).
Dunno if you are alone or not with that opinion, but based on the slasher flicks with Mickey, Minnie, Pooh and Popeye, it is not as complicated as you might think.
Rather disappointing the musical just ended despite some Tony Award nominations. And I was hoping it would be highlighted in this year’s Macys parade broadcast.
By some weird stroke of luck, a shop by my place was selling a couple of Betty Boop DVDs which contained a paltry 4 shorts per disk using the old UM&M prints with sporadic, almost useless narrations in Japanese.
The fundamental issue with Betty Boop is that the Fleischer brothers never really figured out what to do with her that differentiated her from the other Fleischer characters. Popeye does everything that the other Fleischer entities do, but far far better. It is fun to watch Betty or Grampy create some kind of improvised contraption or invention, but Popeye just punches these things into existence. The things that Betty does in her shorts are also what Grampy or Pudgy do. It is interesting to watch her dance, but by the time the censors insisted on cleaning up Betty those kind of musical shorts were dreadfully passe. The conflicts in Betty shorts eventually rely on the viewer’s concern for Betty’s well-being, but Olive Oyl is a better victim in the Popeye shorts.
Betty never seems as threatened as Popeye or Olive even when the actions that occur in Betty shorts are practically the same. As a comedic figure, she is not a good “heavy.” She is too straight-laced and doesn’t sell the problems that occur in a way that is particularly compelling. Popeye and Olive Oyl get really abused to hell in their shorts, Betty mostly doesn’t. Betty, for a lack of a better explanation, has too much dignity AND too much of the audience’s esteem to pull off the comedy that happens around her. She isn’t unlikable enough to enjoy her suffering and she isn’t waifish enough to empathize with.
The best example I can give for this is commonplace in modern smartphone ads. You know those games you see everywhere where a young woman is trying to survive in a dilapidated shack in the middle of what looks to be the frozen tundra? That is kind of how Betty’s conflicts are portrayed. They aren’t a good vehicle for animated comedy. They are just kind of sad.
Betty needed a specific kind of heavy co-star to take the abuse or be the threatened object in the shorts, but most of the episodes where they attempt this the heavy is not that put upon. Perhaps a boyfriend who is sympathetic enough to root for. Maybe Betty has a brother or less flightly sister who tries to protect her. Perhaps Betty is a naive chaos agent who gets people into trouble.
Criticism aside, Betty is an amazing character, but she was very poorly utilized for most of her lifetime. I hope the musical give some zest to her popularity.
The voice of the character ordering the roast duck is Billy Murray, not William Costello. All the voices for this cartoon are provided by Murray and his then partner, Walter Scanlan (Van Brunt); they were a popular radio and recording team at the time.
Just as Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a famous essay titled “A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse” for Natural History magazine to mark the 50th anniversary of “Steamboat Willie”, there is also a scholarly discussion of Betty Boop in PATTERNS OF HUMAN GROWTH by Barry A. Bogin, a textbook now in its third edition from Cambridge University Press. I was very gratified to see a citation for it on Betty’s Wikipedia page, as I took Professor Bogin’s physical anthropology class as an undergraduate and enjoyed it very much.