Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character designed by Grim Natwick at the request of Max Fleischer. She was featured in 90 theatrical cartoons between and A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper , Betty Boop was described in a court case as "combin[ing] in appearance the childish with the sophisticatedβa large round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button, framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a very small body of which perhaps the leading characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable".
Betty Boop made her first appearance in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes , released on August 9, , the seventh installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. Inspired by a popular performing style, the character was originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle. Within a year, Betty made the transition from an incidental human-canine breed to a completely human female character. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings , and her black poodle nose became a girl's button-like nose.
Betty was first voiced by Margie Hines. Today, Betty is voiced by Cindy Robinson since Although Betty's first name was assumed to have been established in the Screen Songs cartoon Betty Co-ed , this "Betty" is a different character, which the official Betty Boop website describes as a "prototype" of Betty Boop. At least 12 Screen Songs cartoons featured Betty Boop or a similar character. Betty Boop was the star of the Talkartoons by and was given her own series that same year, beginning with Stopping the Show.
From that point on, she was crowned "The Queen of the Animated Screen". The series was popular throughout the s. Since the character was created by an Austrian Jew and eventually voiced by a Jewish actress, Mae Questel, animation fans sometimes try to pinpoint various aspects that hint at Betty's Jewishness. The Talkartoon Minnie the Moocher featured the only appearance of Betty's parents: a strict immigrant couple, who get upset that Betty does not want to eat the traditional German foods hasenpfeffer rabbit stew and sauerbraten.
Benjamin Ivry of Forward says that any of this evidence is ambiguous, as these are not kosher foods, and the accents of the parents are comical German accents, rather than Jewish. Betty appeared in the first "Color Classic" cartoon Poor Cinderella , her only theatrical color appearance in In the film, she was depicted with red hair as opposed to her typical black hair. The Betty Boop films were revived after Paramount sold them for syndication in The original Betty Boop cartoons were made in black and white.
