Minnie the Moocher

This is a Betty Boop cartoon, though it starts with a bit of footage of Cab Calloway and his orchestra. Calloway's song "Minnie the Moocher" is set to life using Betty, her friend Bimbo and an odd assortment of ghosts, though I really would have much preferred to actually just watch and listen to Calloway sing this song live--since it is very easy to like and quite funny (and a bit radical with its reference to cocaine). However, as a cartoon, it's a very strange thing indeed as I really don't know who the audience for this Pre-Code nightmare would be! After all, it is really scary and so younger kids would be terrified by it and the drug references, if the parents noticed, would really turn them off as well, as it's NOT good child fare! Interesting, well animated but too bizarre, this one is great for adults who want to see just how subversive Betty could be in her wild Pre-Code days.

Minnie the Moocher (1932)

*** (out of 4)

Betty Boop gets yelled at by her parents so her and Bimbo decide to run away. They don't get too far when they run into a group of ghosts. The big highlight of this short is that Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra play a big part in it. The film opens up to a Calloway song and showing him do a dance and then once we get to the ghosts they are basically dancing to his music. We also see the main ghost dancing like Calloway was at the start of the picture. If you're a fan of the Betty Boop shorts then you'll certainly enjoy this one as there are some funny jokes throughout and the animation is extremely good. Another highlight are the actual ghosts that look quite good and there's no question that the music is excellent.

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.

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.