A fun example of one of the Fleischers’ Screen Songs, featuring Betty Boop, music by Rudy Vallee.
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Screen Song: Rudy Vallee Melodies (1932)
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Category Archives: Fleischer Studios
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Popeye the Sailor (1933)
Here is by far the most successful (in every way) example of Betty Boop crossing over with characters from the funny pages… the first Popeye cartoon!
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Betty Boop and the Little King (1936)
Here is a third Betty Boop cartoon guest starring a character from the funny pages… Otto Soglow’s Little King. Again, they have made a silent character from the funnies talk for no discernible reason.
You can read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database here.
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Betty Boop with Henry, the World’s Funniest American (1935)
Here’s another Betty Boop cartoon with a guest star from the funny pages… here with Carl Anderson’s Henry. Unlike the comic strip, for some reason they decided Henry should talk in the movie. A strange decision, as I don’t think it adds much to have him talk in the cartoon, or even to the storytelling… and it is certainly a big part of his comic strip’s appeal. Boy oh boy does Henry look wrong with a mouth. Come to think of it, boy does Henry look wrong.
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Betty Boop and Little Jimmy (1936)
Here’s a Betty Boop cartoon featuring Jimmy Swinnerton’s Little Jimmy (I’ll be presenting some Little Jimmy strips soon for your reading pleasure). Betty is using a vibrating belt machine to lose weight… I remember playing with one of these at some relative’s house as a kid. I don’t think anyone ever lost weight with one of these contraptions, and it would be a good bet that a lot of people met their chiropractors with their assistance. This cartoon also reveals the little known fact that laughing causes obesity, which explains why fat people are always so damned jolly.
Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database here.
THE CARTOON CRYPT: The Educated Fish (1937)
Here’s the first (and only other) cartoon featuring the Fleischer character Tommy Cod from the Small Fry cartoon I posted on Tuesday.
Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database here.
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Small Fry (1939)
I’ve had the song from this one stuck in my head since I watched it yesterday… another great cartoon from the Fleischers, featuring Tommy Cod. How they got the fish to smoke underwater, I have no idea.
THE CARTOON CRYPT: A Car-Tune Portrait (1937)
When I first saw this I thought it was a Fleischer satire of Disney’s Fantasia, but it actually came out three years before Fantasia (1940). I imagine Fantasia was already in some sort of production at that point, so it doesn’t seem unlikely it may have been a satire of the seemingly pretentious and grandiose idea of it at the time, I suppose. This came out before Snow White (1938), Pinocchio (1940), or any of the Disney Features, so the idea of a feature length cartoon probably seemed ridiculous to a lot of people at the time, let alone one that featured animation and classical music.
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Somewhere in Dreamland (1936)
Another Fleischer cartoon utilizing the rotograph. They use it very well here, having the mundane “real world” scenes take place in 2d, and the 3d scenes in Dreamland. The content seems atypical for a Fleischer cartoon… a sweet & cute little story, entirely free of violence and mayhem. Adult anxieties are present as usual for Fleischer cartoons, though… in this case an apparently single mother trying to support children in total poverty (from 1936, the depths of the Great Depression).
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Dancing on the Moon (1935)
Here’s a fun Fleischer Studios cartoon that makes great use of the Max Fleischer invention, the Rotograph… it is an early example of the technique, as the cartoon is from 1935 and the patent wasn’t filed until 1936. The Rotograph was a technique of building a miniature set on a turntable that could be rotated while shooting cels in front of it to make it appear that the 2d drawings were in a 3d space.
Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database here.