Betty Boop & Pudgy
Betty Boop's sexpot nature was no longer permissible after the Production Code of 1934 became enforced. Her skirt would lengthen; her exposed garter would disappear; & she would more & more frequently be depicted as a girlish homebody or babysitter, rather than the thrilling jazz singer formerly depicted on burlesque stages.
 And even while retaining top billing she would often be little more than a guest star in her own cartoons, which starred other characters entirely, notably her grandfather, Professor Grampy, but other characters as well, notably Junior over whom it appears Betty has guardianship.
We're never told how Betty ended up the guardian of a child, but as they're on first-name terms, Junior's probably not her own bastard son. In 1934 & 1935 there was a newspaper comic strip about Betty & she did have a baby brother, named Billy or Bubby, but this characer never appeared in the cartoons, & Junior is an entirely different boy.
Most likely he's her nephew but as he never calls her Aunt Betty perhaps just a cousin. Though who can be sure, bastard son is always a possibility, as no other parent seems ever to come to light.
When she got a puppy, however, Betty's second-banana position was established, & tales of Betty & Pudgy tended mainly to be about Pudgy. Sometimes episodes which purport to be about Betty Boop end up being about Junior's escapades with Pudgy.
As a Betty fan this direction for her character never thrilled me, but if one let's go of the lamentations for earlier cartoons as interesting to adults as to kids, the kiddy cartoons about the life of Pudgy definitely have their own vintage charms.
Betty sings the title song for Little Pal (1934), which runs in part: "I don't need the sunshine when I'm blue/ all I need is just a smile from you," sung to Pudgy the Puppy. She's dressed as maid with apron but is outdoors having a picnic with Pudgy.
Pudgy starts tearing up picnic supplies & food & making an awful mess until Betty starts with the cute fierce faces, & lightly spanks Pudgy. "Just for that, you go home!" Pudgy begs to stay, but Betty shoos him home.
Downcast & unhappy Pudgy is in for it now, when the dog catcher sees him. When Betty sees him being carted away, she runs to try to rescue, but he's locked up. She sings "Little Pal" with a much sadder intonation. Betty's seems awfully sweet in tears, but not very bright about getting her dog back.
It's up to the dogs to plan their own escape. Pudgy's running home fast as he can, but the horrid dog catcher is close behind. Finally Pudgy straggles back to Betty & slowly regains his happy face as Betty sings to him again. Pretty good for the post-garter Betty & excellent for Pudgy.
Post-code Betty is shown as a kitchen maid in Swat the Fly (1935) as this occuption can justify the short dress.
By adding an apron it's a French maid's outfit. She's baking in the kitchen while Pudgy the puppy tries to sleep. A fly starts pestering Pudgy & Betty.
It's apparently a biting blowfly as it wakes up Pudgy with quite a barking yelp.
 With instrumentation of "Shoo-fly don't bother me" on the soundtrack, Betty tries to get the fly with her batter-covered spoon. Pudgy tries to catch it or bite it.
Eventually Betty just starts wrecking the whole kitchen trying to get the fly, while Pudgy gets stuck in the dough being flung all around.
All the antics are very cute but one cannot help but lament the lack of jazz & Betty's garter. And if we were to look for psychological reasons for Betty messing up a kitchen no one but herself will be cleaning up later, maybe she was actually peeved at the kinds of roles she'd been getting.
One of the intruding characters of Betty's post-Code films is Junior, apparently her nephew, though it's fun to suppose he's her own bastard son from her wilder days of vaudeville.
In Baby Be Good (1935) Betty's babysitting Junior who misbehaves & doesn't want to go to sleep. He bounces on the bed to catch the center-light string then sets out after hours to cause mischief.
Giving in, Betty agrees to tell the brat a story, beginning with the song, "Once there was a little lad, just like you/ He was naughty he was bad, just like you."
 The story within the story features Junior in a feathered cap tying a can to the tail of a very unhappy Pudgy.
Betty appears as a flying fairy godmother in long star-speckled gown & sings, "That was a naughty thing to do/ How would you like it done to you?" Junior just laughs, so the fairy godmother swings her wand & disappears.
Junior breaks a hen's egg (unleashing a chick), chops down a cherry tree, muddies fresh hung laundry, & breaks the windows out of a greenhouse. The fairy returns, sings another verse about naughty boys, but Junior couldn't care less.
He shaves a sleeping man's head & teases a caged lion. But the lion escapes & runs after him. He begs the fairy to help him if he'll follow back along his route & correct all his misbehaviors. The film then runs backward to unshave the head, unbreak the windows, uncut the tree, undo the abuse to Pudgy, & so on. It's a great script if the purpose is saving animation time & cost.
Back in Betty's lap, Junior pretends not to have believed a word she said, but when he's obediently in his bed, he covers his head & shakes with terror. Betty winks us goodbye.
A bit of a classic for cute puppy imagery, though nothing original, in A Little Soap & Water (1935), Pudgy needs a bath, having gotten in the coal bucket. Betty sings a bathing tune "A Little Soap, A Little Water, & a Song."
Pudgy's awfully dirty; nevertheless, when he sees the doggy bath readied, he slinks away to hide under a chair.
There follows a chase scene with a few gags, Pudgy evading Betty for quite some while. He escapes from the tub halfway through his bath & the chase is resumed, this time with a slippery bar of soap defining the gags.
Finally she's able to keep him in the tub but he continues to misbehave. Once he's dried & cleaned with a bow on his head he heads right back to the coal.
Pudgy wildly upstages Betty in Happy You & Merry Me (1936). It starts with a mother cat trying to catch a fly, then her kitten wanders off to Betty's house,
Betty's singing at the piano. Pudgy changes the pages of the sheet music with his tail while sitting on the top of the upright. The kitten has found a box of candy & eats itself sick.
"Poor little thing!" says Betty & gives first aid to the kitten, which has a tummy ache, rapid heartbeat, & fever. Meanwhile mommy cat wakes from a nap & calls out miserably for, it sounds like, "Myron! Myron!"
 Pudgy rushes to the druggist with a note & gets some catnip for the kitten. Mommy cat catches a whiff of the catnip & isn't so miserable about losing Myron.
She giddily chases after Pudgy & the catnip. Pudgy stops to fight, but the cat's completely stoned & not interested in battle.
Pudgy gets home & the kitten recovers just as mom comes home & they're both just totally stoned.
It's a bit surprising the Production Code wackies didn't stifle stuff like this for promoting drugs, but I guess just about every kitty-owning household allows their pet its private stash.
Pudgy's outside the house playing with a ball in You're Not Built That Way (1936). A mean bulldog next door picks on Pudgy & almost makes him cry.
But instead of crying, he decides to imitate the bulldog, making a scary face & ripping up flowers in mock meanness.
Betty sees Pudgy copying the ornery dog & even growling at Betty. She sings him the title song "You're Not Built That Way," which has some charing lyrics: "What's come over you, acting like you do, trying to be tough? Why Pudgy, You're not built that way. And when somebody cute, tries to be brute, he may find it tough, if he's not built that way."
But Pudgy still wants to be mean. He jumps down & follows the bulldog playfully imitative. The bulldog frightens a cat, but when Pudgy tries it, the cat spanks him. There are a couple more "Pudgy fails to be tough" gags as he follows the bulldog about, including a pretty damned funny attempt to steal a frying hen from the meat market, but instead he gets his head stuck up its bum.
By the time he gets home, he's learned his lesson, as usual, & Betty sings him a final verse of the title song. I like Pudgy episodes better if Betty really gets to do something too, & here she sings an endearing song suited to Pudgy's personality.
Typical with Pudgy episodes,with Making Friends (1936) we get a bit of his owner Betty Boop up front, then it's all about Pudgy.
Betty's reading a book at her rural cabin. Pudgy is feeling neglected & lonesome. She sings to him "Go Out & Make Friends with the World," with lyrics like "You haven't got a permit/ to live like a hermit/ so go out & make friends with the world."
Out in the big wide world, Pudgy meets a squirrel & helps him crack nuts, so the squirrel likes him. He next befriends a bear cub in a tree (Pudgy's a great climber as it turns out) & saves the cub from falling after being stung, so the bear likes Pudgy too.
Next he encounters a dam-bulding beaver & saves a frog from drowning, which greatly amused the forest animals.
Betty meanwhile fell asleep on the porch when Pudgy leads all his new pals home & they all tear up the house, with clever rapid-fire mess-making gags. Another great episode for the kiddies but of very little consequence for Betty fans.
For We Did It (1936), Betty ties Pudgy to the steam pipes to keep him out of mischief while she goes on errands. Betty's three kittens seemed to be sound asleep in their basket, but they were only pretending to be asleep. As soon as Betty's gone they begin wrecking the house & Pudgy being tied up can't stop them.
One gag involves a kitten very boldly & with great pride walking in & out of the open mouth of the bear-rug. When the teeth clamp down imprisoning the kitten, it mews pathetically. So Pudgy slips his collar to to save the kitten, which immediately heads off to get in more trouble attacking the cuckoo clock.
Naughty kitten gags continue one after another until Betty gets home & sees the mess. Not only does Pudgy get blamed, he even gets spanked.
The kittens, having been saved from sundry catastrophes, are so sad to see Pudgy hit that they sing together, "We did it. We did it. Our heads are bowed in shame. We're sorry for the harm we've done, but we were having so much fun."
Pudgy acts hard to to placate until he gets a big ice cream which he shares with the kittens. This one's way off the end of the cute-o-meter.
In Ding Dong Doggie (1937), a dalmation fire dog at the nearby fire station wins the doting admiration of Pudgy the puppy, who emulates the grown dog's proud walk, & sprinkles chocolate pudding on his back to get dalmation spots, & wears a bowl upside down on his head for a firehat.
"So, you want to be a firedog?" says Betty, refusing to let him go out. But while Betty's reading a book, Pudgy sneaks off at the sound of the fire engine's bell. The dalmation helps Pudgy onto the back of the truck, & it's off to the fire they go.
Pudgy runs into the burning house with the dalmation. The dalmation comes out carrying a cat in his mouth. Pudgy is carried out by two kittens. Several more gags follow with Pudgy inside the house attacked by mean-spirited flames running around after him & giving him a beating & burning his behind.
When he runs home, even though Betty gives him a spanking, Pudgy loves it because the fire was so awful.
For The Foxy Hunter (1937), Pudgy the pup & Betty's nephew or bastard Junior are playing duck-hunters. The boy with a pop-gun shoots a duck-headed candy tray & Pudgy goes growing at the fallen prey. The little boy is voiced by Mae Questel, the same woman who voices Pudgy's owner Betty Boop.
Next they shoot a little statue of a deer. Together they pile up a lot of prey until the boy starts wanting to be a real hunting. Junior leaves a note: "Dere Betty. We're going hunting for wild animals." It's signed "Junior & Pudgy."
"Oh, the little rascals! If they aren't always getting into mischief." Then Betty sees the various things the hunters broke while "hunting" & she lays plans to teach them a lesson.
Meanwhile Junior hits a rabbit with his popgun, which hurts the rabbit but it's not a real gun, so the rabbit beats up Pudgy. The next target Pudgy finds for Junior is a bird in its nest, but the chick has has its own popgun & fires back.
Treating a row of ducklings like a shooting gallery, the momma duck turns on Junior & Pudgy & scares the hell out of them. Betty lets the duck give both Pudgy & Junior a spanking, while she holds them down.
It's not a very good cartoon overall, unless perhaps you're a tiny kid who finds generic child Junior interesting.
Now here's one I rather like. There's a brand new musical arrangement of Betty Boop's ragtime theme played behind the opening credits of Pudgy in the Swing School (1938). The theme song has very cute voices going "Bodda-bomp-bomp, bomp-bomp."
Clearly the Fleischers were still investing in Betty's character in 1938 or they wouldn't've spent the money on the new arrangement. Nevertheless, she'd be discontinued a year later.
Betty runs a music school for animals in a rural setting. The children in her class are a baby elephant, baby giraff, a piglet, turtle, hippo, poodle, & a late-arriving Pudgy the puppy with a bouquet of flowers in his teeth for Betty. A wide array of gags with animals playing pianos & singing are shown, but Pudgy just howls like a dog.
"That will never do, Pudgy!" scolds teacher Betty, & they all start again from the top, with a new set of gags ending again with Pudgy's unmusical howling.
Betty says, "I'll give you one more chance," then prays, "I hope I hope I hope." The whole class sings a "La La" song, & Pudgy again blows it.
The whole class is laughing at Pudgy & even the cute girl pup he has a crush on laughs. Betty wacks Pudgy with a ruler & makes him sit in the corner with a dunce cap, which seems awfully mean just because he can't sing. He sits there crying, & the girl puppy just so pities him, as well she might.
The pretty puppy sneaks up to the dunce stool & sits with Pudgy, giving him a big kiss. Suddenly Pudgy leaps into a za-zoo swing dance & scat tune which gets the whole schoolroom jumpin' & Betty dancing & singing, "Don't stop! Don't stop!"
Pretty good for a Pudgy episode, but Betty's penchant for spanking the innocent little guy is pretty lousy of her.
During her last year as a cartoon film star, Betty Boop just had to get used to being upstaged by Pudgy the Puppy, Betty playing second fiddle in her own vehicles.
My Friend the Monkey (1939) from her very last year as a star goes one further having both Pudgy & an organ grinder's baby monkey both upstaging Betty.
Betty calls to the organ grinder's monkey, asking if he can dance for a dime. The grinder changes to a swing beat & the monkey does a wonderful scat performance then climbs up to the window to get his dime. While in Betty's home the "little jitter monkey" is introduced to Pudgy
Pudgy's at first jealous, but soon warms to the monkey. Betty tells them she has to go out, & when she comes back she may have a surprise for them if they're good. Betty goes outside to try to buy the monkey for two dollars, though the organ grinder wants three.
Meanwhile the bulk of the rest of the cartoon is the monkey & puppy playing at first cutely, but the monkey gets increasingly violent & destructive. Unimaginative gags mar this episode which relies exclusively on the cuteness of the design for Pudgy & the Jitter Monkey.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
|
