Dave Fleischer | Betty Boop's Penthouse / 1933 [animated cartoon]

from monster into pansy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Willard Bowsky (animator), Dave Fleischer (director) Betty Boop's Penthouse / 1933 [animated cartoon]

 

Mae Questel’s Betty Boop, as directed by Dave Fleischer, appears to have enjoyed relationships with gay men or, perhaps we should say, men whom she turns gay. She also becomes a rather noted cartoon drag performer of male figures, including politicians, presidents, and Maurice Chevalier.

     In Betty Boop’s Penthouse she gets the opportunity, faced with a Frankenstein monster-like creation from the experimental laboratories across the street of Bimbo the clown and his assistant Koko, to perform her wiles on the dangerous cat-made creation.

     Bimbo and Koko try out various chemical mixtures on their cat, a poor mouse endlessly running after a piece of cheese, and even themselves, ending in a racist moment when Bimbo finding himself in blackface created through one of the experiments, suddenly pulls away the mask which cries out, “Mammie!”

    Meanwhile, Betty is enjoying her penthouse, a life away from the all her men friends but close enough for the joy of city living, as she waters her flowers, a rose momentarily falling for a nearby flower until she realizes that he’s a pansy, dutifully pointing him out to her neighbors.

     Bimbo and Koko’s chemically changed cat, meanwhile, mixes up his own chemicals, accidently creating the monster, who spotting Betty across the way, tiptoes, like a circus acrobat, across the telephone line to reach Betty’s penthouse, suddenly rearing up behind her.

 

    With a few sprays from her bottle of perfume she turns the growling horror into a dancing male fairy who become becomes a full-out pansy, Betty giggling at his silly behavior.

     And we now know that it’s Betty Boop’s perfume that transforms a growling he-man into a faggot.

 

Los Angeles, October 24, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2023).