BETTY BOOP IN COLOR MOVIE
BETTY BOOP IN COLOR SERIES

BETTY BOOP IN COLOR MOVIE

(Or was it Carmela consulting his Movie Guide on an episode of The Sopranos?) Perhaps the pinnacle of his career was his appearance in a now-classic episode of South Park. He has been the recipient of awards from the American Society of Cinematographers, the Telluride Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, and San Diego’s Comic-Con International.

BETTY BOOP IN COLOR SERIES

He hosted and co-produced the popular Walt Disney Treasures DVD series and has appeared on innumerable television programs and documentaries. He served two terms as President of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, is a voting member of the National Film Registry, and was appointed by the Librarian of Congress to sit on the Board of Directors of the National Film Preservation Foundation. His books include The 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, The Great Movie Comedians, The Disney Films, The Art of the Cinematographer, Movie Comedy Teams, The Great American Broadcast, and Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia. He teaches at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and appears regularly on Reelz Channel and Turner Classic Movies. He is best known for his widely-used reference work Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and its companion volume Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide, now in its third edition, as well as his thirty-year run on television’s Entertainment Tonight. Leonard Maltin is one of the world’s most respected film critics and historians. Or you can watch Poor Cinderella in its entirety on YouTube. You can enjoy all the Color Classics on a DVD set from VCI Entertainment called Somewhere inĭreamland. Today, I appreciate what the studio was trying to do…even if it isn’t a complete success. When I was a kid and first saw Poor Cinderella on television, I was annoyed that it was essentially serious I wanted the usual funny Fleischer fare I’d come to expect. The process was also featured in an episode of Paramount’s Popular Science short-subject series in 1939, which you can see HERE. Click Link 1 and Link 2 to see original article. Lest this go unnoticed, Paramount added these words at the very start of the piece under its mountain logo: “Patent pending for Special Processes used in this production.” The unusual technique was later revealed in an issue of Popular Mechanics. Clear cels featuring cartoon characters were suspended in the midst of cardboard and paper- mache backdrops, placing them in a multi-plane environment. Three-dimensional sets, a technique that predated Disney’s celebrated multiplane camera. Where Poor Cinderella does stand out is its use of Fleischer’s revolutionary use of live-action (I actually prefer the 1932 Betty Boop Snow White, which is one of the most bizarre cartoons ever made.) Yet director Dave Fleischer wasn’t willing to abandon his off-the-wall sense of comedy, as you’ll see in a variety of throwaway gags. And while the skills of the studio animators weren’t up to Disney’s, they tried their best to dress up this short. Oddly, the powers-that-were decided not to use Betty’s normal voice (Mae Questel) but replace it with a mellower singer. It’s an odd, hybrid cartoon: on the one hand, it tells the classic fairy tale, with all the expected ingredients (in just ten minutes’ time), and spotlights an original song that was even published in sheet-music form. Because Disney secured exclusive use of the new three-strip Technicolor process for three years, in return for taking a chance on it, Fleischer had to make do with the older two-color process, but Poor Cinderella is still pretty lavish by Max’s standards. Encouraged, no doubt, by his distributor (Paramount Pictures), Fleischer embarked on a series of “Color Classics” that were intended to rival Disney’s award-winning Silly Symphonies. Short called Poor Cinderella starring the great Betty Boop.

Years before Walt Disney made his classic Cinderella…in fact, three years before he unveiled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, his competitor Max Fleischer produced an elaborate musical cartoon

Betty boop in color