Fleischer Friday: Snow White
Now it’s time for Fleischer Friday, in which I inflict on you my irrational love of 86-year-old cartoons we watch and discuss a classic of early animation. This week, one of the best ever, the Betty Boop version of Snow White:
The first thing you notice in this cartoon is that it doesn’t really succeed in telling the story of Snow White. It certainly starts out like it intends to, but once Betty-as-Snow escapes beheading, things go off in a different direction. The dwarves are barely there at all, only serving as seven identical pallbearers for the frozen Boop. Betty’s usual supporting cast of Bimbo the Dog and Koko the Clown are given much more prominent roles as the Wicked Queen’s guards, who are won over by Snow White’s beauty.
The Queen herself bears more than a passing resemblance to Olive Oyl, who she predates as an animated character by three and a half months. Both characters, as well as Betty Boop herself, are voiced by the spectacularly talented Mae Questel. The Queen is the focus of several of those great Fleischer Studios sight gags, such as when her angry face turns into a frying pan, and when she decapitates her thumb. The Magic Mirror is also put to good use. I’m particularly fond of the bit at the end where he blows the Queen a raspberry, and his tongue turns into a honking goose.
Obviously, we can’t discuss this cartoon without talking about Cab Calloway and his version of the Saint James Infirmary Blues, which dominates the second half of the short. These early Fleischer cartoons frequently served as the equivalent of music videos for popular artists of the day, and Calloway was their most perfectly matched collaborator in this regard. Like the Fleischers, Calloway had a reputation for outrageousness and an unmistakable style. He doesn’t just lend Koko his voice, but also his distinctive dance moves, which would have been immediately recognizable to audiences of the time.
It’s when Koko starts singing that the cartoon completely departs from the traditional Snow White story, and I can imagine how someone who’s invested in narrative structure might object to that. The thing is, though, even in 1933, before Walt Disney got into the feature film business, everyone already knew the story and how it was supposed to end. So rather than trying to squeeze that whole story into seven minutes, the Fleischers take it in a totally new direction. There’s no boring WASPy Prince in this version, just a sad clown with a distinctly African American voice beneath his painted-on whiteface- a far more interesting suitor for our New York Jewish flapper princess. And while so many stories end with a kiss, how many others end with a dog pulling a dragon inside-out?
