Friday, 23 September 2022

The Fairest in the Land?

The wicked queen demands to know from her magic mirror who the fairest in the land is now that Betty Boop is enclosed in a cake of ice. The Fleischers show wonderful imagination by not having the mirror give the old Bronx cheer. Instead a bird comes out of the mirror’s mouth and does it. The queen vibrates in two drawings.



The mirror collapses and explodes, with the smoke turning the queen into a beast.



Snow-White (1933) has got to be one of the greatest cartoons of all time. Cab Calloway’s singing, loads of morphing gags that never stop, the brilliant background during the “St. James Infirmary Blues” scene. To think only a few years later, Betty’s cartoons were handed over to a hyperactive puppy.
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3 comments:

  1. Pete Hale23 September 2022 at 16:34

    Magic mirror in my hand
    Who's the fairest in the land

    You're the fairest in the land
    You're the fairest in the land

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hans Christian Brando25 September 2022 at 08:20

    If the Fleischer cartoons could have continued to evolve along these lines (jazzy surrealism), the history of animation would have been a lot richer and more lively.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yowp26 September 2022 at 03:32

    You're right. From this to Pudgy? Yikes.

    ReplyDelete