Here’s the March 1936 issue of Fleischer’s Animated News, which boasts an attractive front cover of police officer Betty Boop drawn by Myron Waldman.
Among its highlights:
• Tintype bios of background artist Erich Schenck (1901-1955) and Beatrice Cypert (1906-1958).
• Gag cartoons by Warren Foster, George Hill, and Mike Maltese.
• Bluto makes a telephone call with the Devil, in a poem written by Sadie Klein.
•Reviews of Betty Boop and the Little King (de facto dir. Myron Waldman) and Talking Through My Heart (de facto dir. Tom Johnson).
Click the thumbnails to enlarge.
• Thanks to Jerry Beck and Bob Jaques for these rare production materials.
DEVON BAXTER is a film restoration artist, video editor, and animation researcher/writer currently residing in Pennsylvania. He also hosts a 
Holy heck, thank you Devon and friends for making obscure documentation like this accessible, I’m very happy a bit more in-depth documentation about these great New York studios are popping up. This stuff is like a godsend to maybe a couple dozen excelsior-nerds like me. It’s also very nice a good few studio women get a chance at the limelight here, too.
This is my first time reading about animator Bruce Blezard – a quick lookup says he apparently died in 1940 from an auto accident, so no wonder not much has popped up about him. Also my first time learning that William Gilmartin was a writer at the Fleischer studio in addition to a manager earlier on. Just a few summers ago in 1933, he was recruited as an assistant manager to Gene Rodemich at Van Beuren’s cartoon outfit, according to Film Daily. (Thanks Yowp and Internet Archive!)
That really is an attractive drawing of Betty Boop in a policewoman’s uniform, and it’s a shame that she was never cast in that role in any of her animated shorts. Perhaps, turnabout being fair play and all, she could have arrested Fearless Fred and hauled him in front of a judge. Or maybe she could have arrested Irving the Impractical Joker — but when she finally puts him in handcuffs, it turns out to be a couple of those novelty hands he always carries around with him, and he gets loose and runs away cackling. Or — no, wait, here’s a good one. Betty arrests Henry for his involvement in a juvenile gang; she offers him leniency if he’ll just give her the names of his accomplices… but Henry won’t talk!
I also like George Hill’s drawing of Marilynn Werner as a chorus girl, and I wish she had been given her own series of cartoons. Certainly the character would have had more potential than Wiffle Piffle, though I agree with Lillian Friedman’s review that “The Bill Posters” is a pretty funny cartoon.
Apart from a couple of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! paperbacks that I had when I was growing up, I haven’t read any of the books in the Fleischer lending library catalogue. But one of them is actually on my bookshelf: H. A. Guerber’s “Stories of the Familiar Operas”, or “Stories of Famous Operas”; I don’t know whether it’s a typo in the newsletter, or if the 1921 edition that I have was published under a variant title. It was previously owned by my mother, who would have bought it used sometime in the 1940s. I have to admit that I’ve never read it all the way through, as the synopses are rather verbose by today’s standards, and I’d rather just listen to the operas. Still, I hope that any Fleischer staff members who borrowed the book enjoyed it — and if anybody ever wants to borrow my copy, the answer is NO!