Dave Fleischer | Any Rags? / 1932 [animated cartoon]

a big bag full of love

by Douglas Messerli

William Bowsky and Thomas Goodson (animation), Dave Fleischer (director) Any Rags? / 1932 [animated cartoon]

 

This cartoon, featuring a 1902 ragtime song for line dancers, was made when Bimbo and Betty were still a couple, whose best friend was Koko the Clown.

    Bimbo is a rag collector in this work, a long lost figure who used to wander the streets begging for old clothes, bit and pieces of fabrics, or anything else the tenant-dwellers might wish to dispose of. As usual Margie Hines provides Betty Boop’s memorable voice.

     Bimbo as rag picker clearly isn’t very picky, grabbing up anything he can, including stripping the clothes off of many of the people he passes, including a vagrant male, who is distraught for having had Bimbo take off his pants. At another point, a housewife sending unwanted possessions his way through the tenant-dwellers clothesline finds herself riding caught up in the line whereupon Bimbo strips her as well, something that in pre-code films was still comically possible.

     In one case, a wife tries to rid her husband of his old clothes, which as fast as she puts out for the ragpicker, he pulls back to wear for a few more years.

     Finally, an entire barrage of bowls, bottles, and buckets fall from the heavens, clonking out Bimbo so that he imagines he’s dead and gone to a better world, led on by a jazz playing angel where nearly all the neighbors now put things out on their ledges, including Betty, a cow who delivers presents him with can of milk, and even a fish presenting up a can of sardines, all for the garbage man.

     Betty, however, has nothing to give him, as her dress keeps dropping to expose her frilly bra. Finally, she does toss down a full bag which Bimbo tosses into his cart, which now attracts an entire chase of feral cats.

     Bimbo now moves on, himself playing a jazz trumpet rendition of the “any rags” song, one of the hep cats joining in.

     Several animal figures are now gathered into a group waiting for Bimbo to arrive and auction off his daily haul. Koko the Clown here plays a sissy man who, shouts out “75 dearie,” purchasing a statuette of Atlas holding up the world.

     Finally, Betty herself pops up out of one of the bags that goes for 99 cents, Bimbo awarding her a kiss as all the bits of furniture and junk join in a dance, the two B’s rolling off in the cart, which overturns to create a house replete with all the goods left over, including a dog returning home to Betty, now the happy housewife.

 

Los Angeles, November 13, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).