Minnie the Moocher

Everything works here-the song, "Minnie the Moocher" goes hand in glove with the character of Betty Boop, the music and the animation are a wonderful fit, Cab Calloway has just the right flair to pull it all together, it all works splendidly and gives the viewer a treat for both eyes and ears. Betty Boop was animation's answer to Clara Bow, the "It" Girl and the early shorts were more risque and playful than the later ones, after The Code took effect. An excellent short, in print and available. Well worth seeing. Most highly recommended.

Minnie the Moocher is essentially a music video for Cab Calloway's titular song, the '30s equivalent of Michael Jackson's Thriller, a featurette with a story to go with the song. It begins with live action footage of Calloway strutting his stuff in front of his Cotton Club Orchestra, but quickly turns into an animated tale featuring sexy cartoon babe Betty Boop, who runs away from home with her lover Bimbo, only to be haunted by singing ghosts in a spooky forest.

While perhaps not quite as demented as Bimbo's Initiation (1931), this cartoon still features its fair share of freaky visuals, from Betty's father's head turning into a gramophone, to Max Fleischer's regular character Koko the clown emerging from an inkwell, to the walrus ghost who mimics Calloway's dance moves, to the bizarre skeleton cat and its kittens, and so much more in-between. The animation is top notch for the day, with lots of lovely detail (check out the backgrounds, which feature fang like stalactites and skulls), while the music, it goes without saying, is superb. If you love animation, then you simply must check this out (and Bimbo's Initiation, which I think is even better).

The Betty Boop cartoon 'Minnie the Moocher' has an advantage: at least the second half is entertaining whether you like the cartoon itself or not since Cab Calloway's famous song with the same name plays there. Before the cartoon starts we see the real Calloway doing one of his dance moves, another little thing to make sure you probably will enjoy this. The story deals with Betty's parents being mad at her causing her to run away with Bimbo. After they have left they enter a forest where ghosts and other scary creatures all dance on "Minnie the Moocher".

This cartoon is very nice. The Calloway part is terrific with some inventive animation that fits the music perfectly. I also liked the last moments when Betty and Bimbo have escaped the scary forest where the happy ending is found in quite a funny way. If you like Betty Boop cartoons this one is not to be missed. If you normally don't, this could be a nice surprise.

Fleischer Studios and Disney Studios had a sort of friendly rivalry in animated cartoon shorts in the early 1930s. Headed by Max Fleischer, his company was releasing more daring animation that bordered on the surreal. But Fleischer Studios didn't have Mickey as its star attraction. The studio did, however, contain in its repertoire the flapper female character Betty Boop. Introduced on the screen in 1930 as the human version of a dog to her canine boyfriend, Bimbo, Betty took on a full human appearance in January 1932 in "Any Rags?" Her most famous cartoon for the year, though, was released a month later in February 1932's "Minnie the Moocher," featuring the first film appearance of singer Cab Calloway and his Orchestra. Deep into the cartoon, the ghosts dancing before Betty and her friend Bimbo mimic Calloway's movements in the opening credits. The Fleischer's used the tracing technique of rotoscoping to accurately draw a parallel between Calloway's movements and those of Bimbo's. Calloway had sold over one million copies of his 1931 jazz song, 'Minnie the Moocher.' The Betty Boop cartoon is named after the Calloway hit, with its scat ad-libbed lyrics providing a unique listening and viewing experience.

Betty Boop, the "Jazz Baby" flapper, was the ideal character to introduce to national audiences African-American musicians performing their jazz numbers. Musicians Louis Armstrong and Don Redman followed in Calloway's footsteps in later Betty Boop cartoons. Showcasing black musicians was a gamble for Max and his younger brother Dave Fleischer, knowing those cartoons wouldn't be shown in the Deep South theaters. In "Minnie the Moocher," the studio played homage to its very first cartoon character the brothers introduced in 1924, Ko-Ko the Clown, kicking off their 'Out of the Inkwell Films' series. The clown appears, of all places, in an inkwell. Betty is writing a 'good-bye' note to her parents before she runs away with Bimbo, and pulls out Ko-Ko when she dips her pen into the ink container.

The poll by 1,000 animators who voted for 50 of the Greatest ever Cartoons ranked "Minnie the Moocher" as number 20, proving the popularity and ingeniousness of Betty Boop was unique in cartoon land and as an historic figure in animation.

The first part of the film shows us a younger Betty Boop than we're used to seeing in the Fleischer Brothers cartoons.

Betty is a girl in her early/mid teens, being nagged to tears by her immigrant parents. Betty sings the 1911 Von Tilzer number "They Always Pick On Me". Notice how the animator attends to such details as the bouncing of Betty's breasts on the staircase-- such details would soon be suppressed in USA animation by the Hayes Code.

This is the first of 3 Fleischer cartoons with Cab Calloway featured on the soundtrack. They proved popular-- and Calloway used them as advertising, having the cartoons shown in theaters of towns the week before his travelling band would arrive.

"Minnie The Moocher" is good, as is the last of the series "The Old Man of the Mountain", but Betty Boop's "Snow White" is the best of all.