Betty Boop Cartoon Collection Be Human

U | 7min | Animation, Comedy, Short | 20 November 1936 (USA)

Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising.

A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, Betty Boop was described in a 1934 court case as: "combin[ing] in appearance the childish with the sophisticated—a large round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button, framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a very small body of which perhaps the leading characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable". Despite having been toned down in the mid-1930s as a result of the Hays Code to appear more demure, she became one of the best-known and popular cartoon characters in the world.

Betty Boop made her first appearance on August 9, 1930, in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, the seventh installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. Although Clara Bow is often given credit as being the inspiration for Boop, some say she actually began as a caricature of singer Helen Kane, who performed in a style popular with many talented performers of the day, including black singer Baby Esther Jones.

Inspired by a popular performing style, but not by any one specific person, the character was actually originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle. Betty Boop appeared as a supporting character in ten cartoons as a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons, she was called "Nancy Lee" or "Nan McGrew"—derived from the 1930 Helen Kane film Dangerous Nan McGrew—usually serving as a girlfriend to studio star, Bimbo.

Within a year, Betty made the transition from an incidental human-canine breed to a completely human female character. While much credit has been given to Grim Natwick for helping to transform Max Fleischer's creation, her transition into the cute cartoon girl was also in part due to the work of Berny Wolf, Otto Feuer, Seymour Kneitel, "Doc" Crandall, Willard Bowsky, and James "Shamus" Culhane. By the release of Any Rags Betty Boop was forever established as a human character. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her black poodle nose became a girl's button-like nose.