The Mouth of Boop

There are times in the early Fleischer sound cartoons where characters talk but don’t move their mouths. Then you have the exact opposite in Dizzy Dishes (1930) when Betty Boop is singing on stage.

Here are some of the mouth shapes in close-up.



Grim Natwick and Ted Sears are the credited animators in this fun cartoon, with a cast including a dancing roast chicken (with no head).

Bessie the Animator

Buried in the “Coming and Going” column of Film Daily of July 13, 1936 is this item:

BESSIE MAES, animator connected with the Max Fleischer studios, went to Minneapolis last week to lecture on animated cartoons at the University of Minnesota summer session.

Research is bringing to light the women who animated cartoons in the Golden Age, including at Walt Disney. This post isn’t very scholarly but we’ll pass along a couple of stories from the Minneapolis newspapers of the day about her. Both were published July 8, 1936.

First, a bit of a set-up. It would appear she was seconded away from her drawing board, judging by a column in the Minneapolis Journal of April 1, 1936. It read, in part:

Take the case of Bessie Maes, who for years was on the art staff of Fleischer (Betty Boop) Studios, holding a position never before or since held by a woman . . . animated cartoonist.
The public’s demand for knowledge as to how animated cartoons are made was so great that Paramount decided to feature Bessie Maes in a program and put it on in their theatres. She was billed as a lecturer and staff representative. Some clubs, colleges and other organizations began to ask for the programs. Six months of each year was spent in “animated lecturing” at these places. Out of these busy days, some way or other time was squeezed out to draw the cartoons.

The Journal’s story on July 8:

Betty Boop Having Figure Worries, Says Cartoonist
Mrs. W. A. Hirschy Is Spending Summer at Home in City
Betty Boop's figure is causing her to worry and the poor girl is contemplating a salad-eating and rope-skipping campaign to reduce, according to Mrs. W. A. Hirschy, one of Betty's "bosses," who, with her husband, is spending the summer at the Minneapolis home of the Hirschys at 3510 Twenty-seventh avenue S.
Known professionally as Bessie Maes, Mrs. Hirschy is the only woman animated cartoonist in the world. She works for the Max Fleischer studios in New York City drawing Betty Boop and other cartoon characters for the screen.
Has Reason for Worries
"Betty's reason for worrying about her figure," explained Miss Maes, "is because fourth dimension pictures are fast being developed. Betty Boop has made one of these already. So, with the fourth dimension to think about, Betty has to keep an anxious eye on her calories."
Miss Maes is one of a staff of 230 artists, tracers, cameramen and other employees who work on cartoon comedies. It takes 15,000 separate pictures to make a one-reel cartoon and requires 10 full weeks of the staff's time. Artists draw as high as 350 separate pictures a day.
Pioneering at Cartooning
A diminutive, attractive blond with a small wee voice, Miss Maes is not unlike the Betty Boop she creates. She is a pioneer in animated cartoon work and proud of the fact she is the only woman in the world in this work.
She spoke before an audience of nearly 500 students in the music auditorium of the University of Minnesota yesterday, describing the work of making the cartoon comedies for the screen.

This is the version from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Animated Cartoons Visit City With Woman Creator
Only Feminine Artist in Films, Bessie Maes, Tells How They're Made.
Betty Boop gave her dress an extra saucy fillip in Minneapolis Tuesday under the approving eye of Popeye the Sailorman. Oswald the Rabbit looked on wonderingly, but Mickey Mouse was too busy making eyes at Minnie to pay much attention.
The person who brought about all these strange things was Bessie Maes, who believes she is the only woman animated cartoonist in the world. She gave an illustrated lecture Tuesday afternoon in the music auditorium at the University of Minnesota, but first she told something about how she comes to be in a class by herself.
The mental strain of preparing the hundreds on hundreds of pictures that go to make an animated cartoon has proved too much for most women, she said, adding that it bothers her less perhaps since she was in the animated cartoon business from the start.
She was ready to become a cartoonist just about the time the bright lads got the idea that there was a gold field to be captured by turning the comic strips into celluloid strips. And she's been in the business down through the days that saw Betty Boop develop into one of the major film stars. Popeye become the rage of the day, and Walt Disney take the show houses by storm with his Mickey Mouse creations. She has worked with most of the leading animated cartoonists, including Disney and Walt Lantz, the creator of Oswald the Rabbit.
She doesn't dare to have any favorites, she said, but admitted she has an especially soft spot in her heart for the husky Popeye.
In an average cartoon some 125 persons in a studio begin racing against time as soon as scenarists dump the light story on the producer's desk. Each of the cartoonists is allotted a number of the scenes, drawing the hundreds of pictures that take Mickey Mouse, for instance, through the act of sliding down a rain pipe. Then they are assembled, the necessary re-takes made. Women in the studio generally are used for tracing, washing celluloid and similar jobs.
Miss Maes’ husband, W. A. Hirschy, resides at 5510 Twenty-seventh avenue south.

What’s odd about this is Fleischer employed Lillian Friedman as an animator. How could Maes not know her?

Maes was born Elizabeth Mae Kelley on November 10, 1891. 1936 saw the death of her father, Josiah B. Kelley, in Maine. She evidently gave up employment in the Fleischer studio as she is in the Minneapolis directory in 1937. She had no job recorded in the 1940 or 1950 Census for the city.

Maes’ husband, William Amerland Hirschy, passed away in 1980. Maes died in Lake City, Minnesota on Oct. 21, 1981.

(Late Tralfaz bulletin: I mentioned "research" above. I was thinking about Mindy Johnson's efforts to find information about women in animation in the theatrical days. After putting up this post, she sent a note saying she is working on a book with Bessie's story. I look forward to her important research to dispel myths. Find out more at this link).

An Appetite For Music

The Fleischer Screen Song Come Take a Trip in My Airship (1930) doesn’t start out with a trip or an airship. A piano is delivered to the apartment of a female cat. The two kiss when it arrives outside her window.

Later, during the song portion, the cat accompanies herself on the piano. A heckling mouse shows up.



The cat tries to grab the mouse, but only succeeds in collapsing the piano, with the keys flying off and the cat twirling backwards against a wall.



The mouse plays the keys like a xylophone. The cat kicks it out of the frame. Somehow, this causes the keys to fly backward, where they are swallowed by the piano.



The piano resumes its normal form and the cat resumes playing and singing.



If any cartoons need restoration, it’s the early Fleischer Talkartoons and Screen Songs. They’re full of imagination and odd gags.

Incidentally, the Motion Picture News of June 14, 1930 insists the cat is Krazy Kat. Well, the cat is female (falsetto) and wears a ribbon.

Billy Murray is heard introducing the song; another plus.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Now You're Talking

Although Felix the Cat is my favourite silent film star, the work of the Fleischer studio in that era is creative and enjoyable.

I’m not referring just to the entertainment films, but advertising ones as well.

In My Merry Oldsmobile (1932) from the sound era is probably the best known, but the studio made several others. A number were for A. T. & T. Finding His Voice (1929) is a sound cartoon, but before that came the silent Now You’re Talking (1927), following the Out-of-the-Inkwell formula of live action interspersed with animation.

It’s a basic phone manners short; the Bell system made these for more than three decades. This one stars an abused candlestick phone. A very good piano score has been added.

Fight Club Popeye

Popeye was invincible after eating spinach, so the Fleischer staff found ways to make it backfire.

In Can You Take It (1934), Popeye leaps into a Fleischer version of the fight club and (non-twisker) punches the guy to his right. The fighters are in a circle and fall like dominoes. But the force of the punch is so strong, Popeye gets knocked down, too.



He punches the guy on his left. Same result.



Finally, Popeye hits on a solution by hitting the wooden floor with his fist. Perspective animation follows.



The music in the background is “You’ve Got to Be a Football Hero,” though there are no footballs in sight. Myron Waldman and Tom Johnson get the rotating screen credits. The cartoon was made when Bonnie Poe was playing Olive Oyl.

What Happens When a Tree Eats Spinach

Spinach doesn’t just work on “hu-mings” in the Popeye cartoons. In Strong to the Finich (1934), the sailor demonstrates to the sick-of-eating-spinachk kids living at Olive Oyl’s Health Farm for Children that it gives vitaliky to just about anything.

In one scene, Popeye pours it into a hole of an anaemic-looking tree.



Being a Fleischer cartoon, the tree sprouts a mouth (and teeth) and begins chewing.



The tree begins to grow.



It sprouts leaves. And since “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree” is playing in the background, apples begin to grow.



Wait a minute! The apples become pears.



The pears become pineapples.



Finally, some of the pears become bananas.



It’s on to the next gag.

This is one of the cartoons with a low-voiced Olive played by Bonnie Poe. Red Pepper Sam (aka William Costello) is Popeye.



Much like an Our Gang comedy, there’s a black kid. This is likely meant to be inclusive; all the children are equal in this. He doesn’t talk like Amos ‘n’ Andy, and he’s not the subject of ridicule (like being slow or afraid of ghosts).

Seymour Kneitel was the de facto director of the short, with Doc Crandall also getting an animation credit.

The Fish That Went to Bed in Song

Imaginative visual gags are part of what makes the Screen Songs created at the Fleischer studio in the early 1930s so much fun to watch.

Here are just a few examples from Show Me the Way to Go Home (1932). We start with a goldfish in a bowl in a saloon. He jumps into a glass of booze.

As the background male quartet work their way through the song, the fish becomes drunk, jumps onto the top of the glass, yells “Whoopee!” and then leaps out of the scene.



The fish stands in for the usual Fleischer bouncing ball for the theatre audience to sing along. Each time the fish lands on a lyric word, hands pointing “the way to go home” sprout up. There are seven words in the line. Six of the hands form pairs and shake. The seventh picks up the fish and throws him out of the scene.



The fish staggers across the next line of words. There’s a swirl. It forms a bowl. A pillow and blanket appear and the fish enacts the words “I want to go to bed.”



There are other imaginative treatments of the words as well.

Some of the Screen Songs feature live-action footage of Paramount stars (on the East Coast), including Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and Ethel Merman. This one does not, but it has angular footage of a live-action drunk. It’s very clever. I wish these Screen Songs were on TV when I was a kid instead of the weak Famous Studio versions with the same mixed chorus.

There are no credits available for the cartoon, but the old man drawn in one of the scenes reminds me of a figure in a Shamus Culhane Christmas card. Culhane was soon off to the West Coast and Ub Iwerks.