Dizzy Dishes USA, NR, 6 m, 1930
Dizzy Dishes, the
third Bimbo cartoon from the Fleischers’ “Talkartoon” series to be
released in 1930, is a crude, nonsensical item, but it’s notable for
containing the first appearance (inauspicious as it may be) of Betty Boop, who
was conceived here by Grim Natwick as some sort of cross between Helen Kane and
a French poodle. Most of the traits that we now associate with Ms. Boop are
already in place (the oversized noggin, the spit curls, the little black dress),
but her feminine wiles are undermined by some revolting canine characteristics
that would remain part of her design for another two years. Though her face
would be liberated from that unfortunate black button nose when she made Silly Scandals in 1931, the long, floppy ears (which look not unlike
the stretched lobes of a Dyak beauty queen) would stay put until artist Willard
Bowsky turned them into hoop earrings for 1932’s Any Rags? In Dizzy Dishes,
Ms. Boop plays a cabaret singer, and it’s a little disconcerting to see a
snout extend from her face whenever she holds a note. Worse, her shapely bod
doesn’t appear to be supported by a skeleton—it’s yielding and stretchy
like Gumby’s. At the seedy dinner theater where she shakes her shimmy,
Ms. Boop (reportedly voiced here by Margie Hines, though it sounds like Mae
Questel to me) follows a feline dance company with a winning ditty that features
a line that would go on to become her signature: “Boop-oop-a-doop.” When the
joint’s overworked cook/busboy/waiter, played by Bimbo (who would also evolve
into a much cuter character down the line), catches sight of her, he becomes
immediately smitten and forgets all about the patrons. One of those patrons, a
gorilla the size of The Thing, has been waiting since Christ’s crucifixion for
Bimbo to deliver his order of roast duck, but Bimbo’s too busy cutting a rug
with the duck on stage to tend to the ape’s growling tum-tum. The oversized
simian becomes so famished that he eats the cutlery, the dishes, and the table.
Still hungry, he goes after Bimbo, demanding that the besotted pooch fill his
pie hole instead of making googly eyes at the night’s entertainment. And soon
we’re in the middle of a full-on, blood-splattered melee, but Bimbo avoids
getting his spindly ass smooshed by the wrecking balls the gorilla has for fists
by hurriedly building a tiny electric train from scratch and choo-chooing away.
The Fleischers’ guiding philosophy behind their “Talkartoons” must have
been “anything goes.” October 10, 2008 “Dizzy Dishes” Review. © Copyright 2008 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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