Betty Boop Exposed!

ENJOY this sneak peak at Betty Boop Exposed!

Betty Boop is known as the first, and one of the most - famous sex symbols on the animated screen. She was a symbol of the Depression era, a reminder of the more carefree days of Jazz Age flappers. Her popularity was drawn largely from adult audiences. The cartoons, while seemingly surrealistic - contained many sexual/psychological elements, particularly in the "Talkartoon" "Minnie the Moocher," - which featured Cab Calloway and his orchestra.

Be sure to visit our other Ms. Boop pages: Banned Cartoons, Image!

Minnie the Moocher, is perhaps the one cartoon that defined Betty's character as a teenager of a modern era at odds with the old world ways of her parents. Betty is at odds with her parents and runs away from home, only to get lost in a haunted cave with her boyfriend Bimbo. A ghostly walrus (rotoscoped from live-action footage of Calloway), sings Calloway's famous song "Minnie the Moocher," accompanied by several other ghosts and skeletons.

This haunting performance sends the frightened Betty and Bimbo back to the safety of home, sweet home. "Minnie the Moocher" served as a promotion for Calloway's subsequent stage appearances, and it also established Betty Boop as a cartoon star. The eight Talkartoons that followed all starred Betty, leading her into her own series beginning in 1932. With the release of Stopping the Show (August 1932), the Talkartoons were replaced by the Betty Boop series, which continued for the next seven years.

Betty Boop represented a sexualized woman. Other female cartoon characters of the same period, such as Minnie Mouse, displayed their underwear or bloomers regularly, suggesting children or comical characters, not fully defined in a woman's form. Many other cartoon girls were merely clones of their male co-stars with alterations in costume, the addition of eyelashes and a female voice. Betty Boop wore short dresses, high heels and a garter belt. Her breasts were suggested with a low, contoured bodice that showed cleavage.

In "Any Rags" she looks out the window and her dress momentarily falls down revealing her cleavage. In her cartoons, male characters tried to sneak peeks at her while she's changing or simply walking along minding her own business. In Betty Boop's "Bamboo Isle," she does the hula topless, wearing only a lei and a grass skirt, which she repeated in her cameo appearance in the first Popeye cartoon, Popeye the Sailor (1933). Her "Bamboo Isle" performance was also included in the short "Betty Boop's Rise to Fame," featuring a staged quasi-interview with studio head Max Fleischer.

There was however, a certain girlish quality to the character. She was drawn with a head bigger than normal for an adult but normal for a baby. This suggested the combination of girlishness and maturity many people saw in the flapper type which Betty Boop was supposed to represent. While compromises on Betty's virtue were always a challenge, the animators kept her pure and girl-like - on screen, anyway. The studio's 1931 Christmas card featured Betty in bed with Santa Claus, winking at the viewer. Also in 1931, the Talkartoons "The Bum Bandit" and "Dizzy Red Riding Hood" were given distinctly "impure" endings. Officially, Betty was only 16 years old according to a 1932 interview with Fleischer (although in "The Bum Bandit" she's portrayed as a married woman with many children and also has an adult woman's voice, not the standard "boop-boop-a-doop" voice).

Attempts to compromise her virginity were reflected in "Chess-Nuts" (1932) and most importantly, "Boop-Oop-A-Doop" (1932). In "Chess Nuts," the Black King goes into the house where Betty is and ties her up. When she rejects him, he pulls her out of the ropes, drags her off to the bedroom and says, "I will have you." The bed, however, runs away and Betty yells out the window for someone to help her. Bimbo comes to her rescue and she is saved before anything happens. In Boop-Oop-A-Doop , Betty is a high-wire performer in a circus. The villainous Ringmaster lusts for Betty as he watches her from below, singing "Do Something," a song previously performed by Helen Kane. As Betty returns to her tent, the Ringmaster follows her inside and sensually massages her legs, surrounds her and threatens her job if she doesn't submit.