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8. The addition of sound to the Fleischer cartoons
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Richard Fleischer 49 8 The addition of sound to the Fleischer cartoons also brought another addition to the roster of Fleischer brothers working at the studio. A highly talented, dedicated musician, my Uncle Lou was a perfect fit as head of the Music Department. Since the cartoons now contained wall-to-wall music, Lou became one of the busiest and most valuable men in the company. Even though other producers’ cartoons already had sound tracks, they didn’t actually “talk.” There was music, to be sure, but the cartoon characters made grunts, groans, or strangling sounds. Max decided to make cartoons that actually said words. This new series would be called Talkartoons. Paramount became so excited by the idea that it took out a trade-paper advertisement that read: “Paramount TALKARTOONS are something entirely new and entirely different from anything ever seen and heard before. For the first time cartoons will be actual talking pictures. . . .” 50 Out of the Inkwell With the albatross of Red Seal Pictures off his back, the weight of Alfred Weiss off his feet, and the fresh air of the new Paramount deal in his lungs, Max began to reconceive Fleischer Studios.To differentiate the new regime from the old, he changed the name of the highly successful but newly sound-embellished Song Car-Tunes to Screen Songs. The musical bouncing ball cartoons became an astounding, wildly successful, runaway hit. Ko-Ko, as happens to most older movie stars, was pushed off center stage by a new Walt Disney character called Mickey Mouse. Max’s answer to this threat was to replace Ko-Ko’s small mischievous dog, Fitz, with another canny canine. This was a much tougher, cigar-chewing, somewhat lecherous, piano-playing jazz hound named Bimbo (after my pet dog), meant to be Mickey’s competition and complete opposite. Unfortunately, by the time the sixth Talkartoon, the 1930 Dizzy Dishes, went into production, it was clear that even Bimbo’s big feet weren’t filling Mickey’s shoes. There was something missing—a love interest. And that was when Max came up with his greatest creation of all, Betty Boop. The script for Dizzy Dishes called for a female entertainer to play opposite Bimbo. Since Bimbo was a dog, Max devised a character that was half dog and half human female. In its first appearance, the character was nameless, but what a character it was—gross, ugly, with an enormous, bouncy behind. However, it did have round, saucer-like eyes and shapely feminine legs. The executives at Paramount flipped for the dog-lady and wanted more films made with her. Max was delighted to oblige and made her the lead in every cartoon. But Max immediately began to work with his animators on refining the character. The dog-like features didn’t last very long. The flabby mouth began [18.232.187.47] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:44 GMT) Richard Fleischer 51 to look human, the dog snout became a little dot of a nose, and the gross figure became very sexy, with a tiny waist and a very human bosom. By her ninth picture, Minding the Baby, the character had lost her dog ears, acquiring in their place hoop earrings , and come to look completely human. Minding the Baby also marks the first time the character was given a name—Betty Boop—and, with that picture, the Talkartoon series was renamed the Betty Boop series. Once more, Max Fleischer had a genuine, honest-to-God hit on his hands. Betty epitomized the Jazz Age. Max had the top jazz artists of the time appear in her cartoons, figures such as Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong. A host of other great entertainers also joined the fun, among them Ethel Merman and Rudy Vallee. Without question, Max’s Screen Songs and Talkartoon/Betty Boop series were the forefathers of the then distant MTV. Merchandising took off with Betty Boop dolls, clothes, dishes, fan clubs, you name it. The character had her own daily comic strip and a Sunday strip as well. The Bamberger Broadcasting System carried a weekly fifteen-minute coast-to-coast Betty Boop radio show called Betty Boop Fables.The whole world, it seemed, had fallen in love with Betty Boop. Several squeaky female voices were tried out in the early Betty Boops, but none seemed exactly right. The voice needed to be squeaky, but it also needed to be cute and sexy, to sing, to do good line readings, and...