Let’s go back to the early days, for a really great Bimbo short.
First of all, I think it’s worth noting that the whole “raiding the chicken house” trope is inextricably tied up with blackface minstrelsy. Of course, Bimbo being a canine, he comes at it from his own angle (not unlike Mr. Fox), but in 1930 the racist minstrel tradition would have been fresh in the minds of audiences.
On the other hand, the bit where Bimbo and the chicken switch heads and clothing is pure Fleischer craziness, with their usual touch of the uncanny (particularly when the chicken has Bimbo’s head but still makes chicken noises). Even when his head’s on the right body, though, Bimbo never speaks in this cartoon, which isn’t really the norm for him. It works here, though, putting the emphasis entirely on the song.
And what a song it is! In a cartoon this fun, made by Jewish animators no less, you can’t really take the hellfire-and-damnation lyrics seriously. In fact the song has the same sort of ironic winking quality as Fats Waller’s “Devil to Pay.” It seems to be largely a vehicle to subject to Bimbo to this round of surreal frights and tortures. And honestly I’m not even sure I can parse all the levels of intersecting cultural implications at play when, amid all the Christian ghosts condemning Bimbo for stealing food, a stereotypically Jewish ghost shrugs and says, “You needed it.”
As usual in these sorts of cartoons, the weirdness escalates until it reaches a frenzy. There’s a singing scythe, a scatting chicken, booty-dancing ghosts, and a trio of creatures I can only describe as angry crotches. As Bimbo runs away at the end, the faces of the monsters who taunt him take on a surprising level of grotesque detail, reminiscent of the work of Basil Wolverton (who must surely have been watching these sorts of cartoons in his formative years as an artist).
I think I’ve previously discussed the tendency of Fleischer cartoons not to have real endings in any narrative sense. For what it’s worth, this one is an exception. The ghosts and demons come to drag Bimbo to hell, and that’s just what they do.
After last week’s silent toon, I thought we could use another song and dance number. Here’s an early Bimbo-n-Betty, in which she still has dog ears is but is recognizably herself. Meanwhile he plays Mose, who might be a ghost, a thief, or maybe a robot. So mysterious!
The racy element of these cartoons becomes pretty blatant when Betty’s nightie is so frightened that it jumps right off of her (twice). On the other hand, the bit with the invisible shape under the sheet would be at home in a genuine horror movie (and probably has been in a few).
It’s the title song that really makes this cartoon stand out. Walter Doyle and his Orchestra released it as a record around the same time, and I can’t figure out which came first. It’s possible the Fleischers commissioned the song, but they may have just licensed it. In any case, it’s a perfect fit for the Fleischer style. There’s also an instrumental take on “St. James Infirmary,” which Mose dances to as he enters.
My other favorite bit is the swarm of flying goldfish that turns into caterpillar, which then plays the saxophone. There’s also a wonderful moment when Betty’s heart keeps jumping out of her chest, and then Mose’s heart (wearing a bandit mask!) pops out and steals it.
Before there was Betty Boop, Bimbo, or Mickey Mouse, there was Koko the Clown. Koko was originally created by tracing live-action footage of Dave Fleischer in a clown suit, just to see if it could be done. Within a couple of years he evolved into one of the first cartoon stars, paired with an extraordinarily nihilistic little dog named Fitz.
All the Koko cartoons began like this one, with Max Fleischer drawing Koko and his world in black ink (hence the “Out of the Inkwell” title). Koko and Fitz don’t come to life after they’re drawn, so much as they’re already alive from the moment the pen hits the paper, which is a strong statement about the power of animation, particularly for its early audiences.
I love the idea of coming upon a little building that contains Earth’s engine room, although it’s a little unsettling that it’s unattended (perhaps that was Friedrich Nietzsche’s doing). While Koko is content to play around with the weather, Fitz immediately sees this as his chance to finally end it all. The cute little puppy’s excitement at the prospect of bringing about the end of the world is my favorite aspect of this movie. There’s no explanation given; clearly that’s just the sort of dog this is.
Once the world-ending lever is inevitably pulled, the apocalypse quickly descends. Koko has a fun bit of a business where he loses his head and temporarily borrows Satan’s, while Fitz hacks an anthropomorphic tree to death with an ax. That dog is hardcore, y’all. We soon discover that Fitz’s apocalypse is not limited to his and Koko’s paperbound cartoon world. A horrified Koko watches from the studio window as New York City crumbles, thanks to the kind of photo-collage animation that would be popularized by Terry Gilliam forty years later.
As cartoons about the Earth meeting a violent demise go, this one is a ton of fun. It doesn’t suffer a bit for being silent, as the characters spend most of the time stunned into silence, and the rest of the time it’s pretty clear what they’re saying: “Don’t pull that lever- the world will end!” “But I WANT the world to end!” Etc. In years to come, Fitz would evolve into Bimbo, trading in his nihilism for randiness, while Koko would become more of a bit player, with just an occasional Calloway-infused moment in the spotlight.
Since it’s Sci Fi Week, I thought we’d have a special Fleischer Friday and look at two cartoons that involve robots. These aren’t just any robots, though, these are transformers. Yes, fifty years before anyone had heard of Optimus Prime, Bimbo the Dog built his own Autobot.
It’s a nebulous sort of Bimbo who appears in this early cartoon, and his canine girlfriend isn’t even referred to as Betty. Still, it’s a fun little story, in which Bimbo uses his mechanical know-how to make up for his lack of pugilistic skill, using his car-turned-robot to win a prize fight against One-Round Mike, who bears a resemblance to Disney’s early villain, Pete. In terms of today’s science fiction, what Bimbo builds seems less like a robot than an Iron Man-esque power suit. That is, it doesn’t fight for him so much as he gets inside it and fights through it. It’s true that the “robot” has its own face and occasionally displays a personality, but so does every inanimate object in an early Fleischer cartoon. The important thing is that Bimbo and his robot win the fight, so he and proto-Betty can get married. Fortunately there’s no continuity in cartoons this old, so this marriage never comes up again (or perhaps it was annulled when Betty turned out to be human).
Meanwhile (nine years later) in Metropolis, Superman runs into some rather troublesome Decepticons.
Of course, the thing about these robots that causes Superman the most trouble is that Lois Lane decides to climb inside one of them. Always making the wise decisions, that Lois. This leads to a pretty standard battle with this installment’s mad scientist, who looks a bit like Tony Stark. I try my hardest not to apply logic to these old cartoons, but the question I can’t escape from is this: once you’ve invented flying robots, why would you use them to steal jewels? If it’s 1941 and you have the patent on flying, super-strong, semi-autonomous robots, I think you stand to make a greater fortune than even “50,000,000 Dollars of the World’s Rarest Gems” will get you on the black market. I guess that’s what makes this scientist “mad.” Probably what it comes down to is that, if you’re a mad scientist who builds some super-robots, you’re going to want them to fight Superman. That’s pretty much the best test they could possibly be put through. So, knowing that Superman is super-busy and won’t just come over and fight your robots because you ask nicely, the easiest thing to do is to have them steal some stuff in Metropolis. This guarantees that they’ll be put through the Superman test, free of charge. Unfortunately it’s a test that every robot so far has failed. Back to the drawing board, Dr. Mustachio.
The Fleischers’ first collaboration with Cab Calloway takes his most famous song and turns it into the vehicle that first makes Betty Boop a star.
This cartoon can be viewed as a sort of origin story for Betty- Boop Begins, if you will. In other cartoons we see her as an adult with her own place in the big city, but here she’s a teenage girl, living unhappily with her immigrant parents in a suburban house. They’re mean to her for refusing to eat her hasenpfeffer (which Wikipedia tells me is a rabbit stew thickened with the animal’s blood, so what American kid could blame her?), so she runs away with Bimbo. We don’t know what her previous fights with her parents were about, but we can assume her continual association with an anthropomorphic dog (who migh be her boyfriend) has probably come up.
Things get really crazy when they set out on the road, though. Taking refuge in a cave, they’re accosted by the ghost of a walrus who sings in Cab Calloway’s voice, along with an assortment of ghosts, cats, and witches. I don’t know why Calloway is a walrus, and I really wish I did. There weren’t a ton of people clamoring to interview animators in the early 1930′s, and there’s no record of anyone asking about that choice. Did somebody just think it would look cool? Did they ask Calloway what animal he’d like to be? Did his flailing dance remind someone of flippers?
One of my favorite things about this cartoon is how easily the use of the song can be read two different ways, depending on your level of understanding of Jazz Age slang. “Minnie the Moocher” is about a girl who gets mixed up in drugs, and ends up living out her life in an opium den, hallucinating that she’s the consort of the King of Sweden. But if you’re unfamiliar with phrases like “kick the gong around,” it just sounds like nonsense. So to anyone who’s clued in, this is a cartoon about a girl who runs aways from home, hears a cautionary tale from some scary characters about what happens to girls out on the streets, and runs back to her parents, scared straight. To anyone not in the know, on the other hand, it’s a cartoon about a girl who runs away, encounters some spooky ghosts who sing a nonsense song, and runs back to her parents to hide. Either version works, but there’s an extra layer of meaning for those who were hip enough to follow it (or, for today’s viewers, for those of us who are big enough nerds to be fluent in hipster slang from 80 years ago).
Let’s go back a little farther than last week. This one came out in 1931, when Betty Boop was still a supporting player (and a dog), and Bimbo was the real star.
Before we get started, I feel like I need to address the issue of Bimbo’s name. It seems weird now to name a male dog “Bimbo,” but in the early 20th Century, the term was basically a gender neutral synonym for “fool,” and in fact usually referred to men (the feminine version was “bimbette”). So a male cartoon dog named Bimbo made just as much sense as one named Goofy, although Bimbo did come first.
But enough semantics- let’s get right down to the point: There is a lot of butt-slapping in this cartoon. Seriously, a ton. It’s a major theme, as is booty dancing. All in all, it’s very butt-centric. There’s even a stationary bike that slaps your ass as you ride it. And for some reason, Bimbo rides it for a pretty long time.
The whole thing is apparently an attempt to initiate Bimbo into some sort of secret society, who meet underground and wear burning candles atop their heads (which, as uniforms go, is pretty awesome). We never learn if he’s been specifically chosen, or if they do this to everyone who Mickey Mouse’s wicked little brother tricks into falling into their hole.
The real point, of course, is to put Bimbo through as many surreal and spooky scenarios as the animators can dream up, in rapid succession. Gravity stops making sense, characters appear from where there was no room for them (like inside a light fixture), and Bimbo’s shadow is decapitated (and then does a nifty little dance). There’s even a cameo appearance from a skeleton, who speaks his single line into a telephone, just like Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall.
As it turns out, the only thing that can persuade Bimbo to join is his libido, but fortunately Betty is there to aid in that persuasion. To audiences used to more recent (post-Hays Code) cartoons, the undisguised lust in Bimbo’s eyes (and grin) is probably more shocking than the violence. And then there’s the butt-slapping.
Unsettling elements aside, this is an amazing cartoon. The animation is smooth and clean, especially for the time. The story is simple, but it never loses its momentum. The character designs are gorgeous, too. Betty Boop isn’t quite fully formed yet, but this is when Bimbo found the look he would keep. It’s quite an iconic look, too. Even if you’ve never seen a Bimbo cartoon, if you’ve seen any sort of tribute to early animation (whether it’s the first appearance of Itchy in that “Simpsons” episode, or the Warners on “Animaniacs”) that first scene of Bimbo strolling down the street is bound to look strangely familiar.
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?
