I Heard

I Heard (1933)

*** (out of 4)

A mining community works all day and when it's time to eat they travel to Betty Boop's cafe where all sorts of fun awaits. As with many of the Boop shorts, this one here features jazz musician Don Redman who contributes the score and a lot of the action is based around the music. Louis Armstrong and various others did this for the Betty Boop series and there's no question that the music certainly added a great entertainment value to an already fun character. Another highlight here is the actual animation, which is excellent as you'd expect and there are some very fun and creative sequences including a bit dealing with an elevator working its way through the underground tunnels. Betty is as delightful as ever and this is certainly one of the better shorts.

Many of the early Betty Boop cartoons are a lot like music videos. When they begin, they prominently feature a musical act of the day and you see live footage of them performing. Interestingly, the Fleischer Brothers Studio often featured black acts--bucking the usual trend at the time. Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington have been in these films and here we have a lesser-known but very talented Don Redman along with his orchestra providing the music.

The cartoon itself has a bit more plot than I expected. Bimbo, KoKo and many others work at the Never Mine mine--and Betty works at the café that feeds these guys. The first portion of the film is chock full of sight gags (making it very fast-paced fun) and the final portion is surreal--with Bimbo discovering some bomb-tossing ghosts in the mine!

This cartoon made me laugh several times--and that says it all. I especially liked the ending--dark but very funny.

This is another jazz-flavored Betty Boop cartoon. This time, the band leader whose song is the title of this short is named Don Redman, a now-obscure artist. This short basically takes place in a mine where the workers go through a shower that washes the coal off their clothes before going to Betty Boop's Tavern (or Betty Boop's Saloon according to the cartoon backdrop display that appears in the live-action credits when Redman and his Orchestra plays) and then after we hear Don's rendition of a song that mentions the leading cartoon character's name Betty herself performs with a chorus of mice coming out of the stairs she's singing in front of. Lots of other bizarre stuff happens but, as always in a Fleischer cartoon, it's hard to describe. Well, actually after the miners go through the shower head again, the coal dirt comes back on! And as always, the music and animation matches perfectly. So on that note, I recommend I Heard.

The Betty Boop cartoons are mostly a lot of fun to watch and good for historical value. Of which 'I Heard' is one of the best.

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style was often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation. The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her. The charm, sensuality and adorability factors are here and she's fun to watch.

Again, the animation is excellent with some wonderfully surreal images, the bit with the elevator particularly imaginative. It is smooth, meticulously detailed and well drawn, the black and white holding up beautifully. Every bit as good is the music, very infectious and upbeat, putting one in a great mood upon hearing it.

'I Heard' is very funny and like the animation wonderfully surreal (the elevator scene and the final solution being particularly good). The story is more eventful than most Betty Boop cartoons and is never dull and full of atmosphere. All the characters are great, and there is very little to complain about the voice acting either.

Overall, excellent cartoon and one of Betty's best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Another of the great jazz-scored Betty Boops, in this case, Don Redman singing "I Heard" with the cartoon sequence set in a saloon,a mine and a graveyard.

Redman isn't well known today. Imagine, if you will, Nat King Cole doing scat with a 'jungle music' background. Fast, furious and, like all the pre-code Boops, hilariously bizarre.