More Betty Boop & Pudgy
Betty Boop was originally created as Bimbo the Dog's girlfriend & she had the long ears of a French poodle for the first year or so of her life on film.
She later became a fully human, while Bimbo became more dog-like but still & all a talking, upright-walking, humanoid dog.
And there was always a tension between whether Bimbo was her pet living in a doghouse, or her friend & contemporary living pretty much the life of a human being like Betty herself.
In order for Betty to have an unambiguous "pet," the puppy Pudgy was created, & appeared with Betty in several cartoons that tended to be more about him than Betty.
He was created in the post-Code era when it was no longer easy to let Betty be sexy, & making her a babysitter with kids or pets made her safe for kids, in terms of censors' estimation.
 In Taking the Blame (1935) Betty comes home to a big greeting from Pudgy. She's brought him a surprise, & takes a cat out of a basket as his playmate.
As soon as she leaves the room, the cat, bigger than Pudgy, begins bullying him. When she comes back in the room, the cat's behaved. Betty even wrongly spanks Pudgy for barking at the cat, while the cat gets rewards, then beats up Pudgy when Betty's not watching.
The cat breaks stuff; Pudgy's blamed. Betty's just a really bad mom to the puppy, & Pudgy's reduced to cowering in the corner, apt to be punished no matter how good he is. Even when Pudgy saves the life of the goldfish, Betty misunderstands & throws Pudgy outside.
With Pudgy out of the house it becomes obvious he didn't do the next bad stuff the cat does. Unforgiving Betty takes a broom to the cat, abusing it into a state of ferocity, but it'll take the combined efforts of Pudgy & Betty to injure the cat sufficiently that it'll prefer to live a feral life.
Betty as animal abuser isn't all that much fun & this is a bad cartoon. Gimme the ragtime jazz Betty oh please.
Pudgy tickles Betty Boop with the tip of his tail, then sets out to play outside, in Little Nobody (1935). Pudgy figures out a way to throw a stick for himself to fetch, poor lonely guy.
The rich lady next door lets her haughty well-bred Pekinese lap dog outdoors, & Pudgy wants to play. As a pure bred who sticks her nose in the air, Pudgy's soon rejected.
The rich old lady shoos Pudgy home with insults, then sprays perfume on her pure breed to get the stink of commoner off her. Betty, too, will be treated like a nobody by the upper crust dog owner who probably thinks Bronx flappers like Betty drive property values down.
When moping Pudgy gets back to Betty, she sings, "Every little nobody is somebody to someone/ You're not just a nobody you're somebody to me." Slowly Pudgy's cute sad-face becomes a cute happy-face.
Meanwhile the Pekinese slides down a hillside into a stream & it's up to Pudgy to save the pure breed's life. He almost abandons her with a haughtiness imitating her own, but she whines & cries out so pitifully, he hurries to become her hero. Afterward, the upper & lower classes, dog & human alike, comingle as friends.
In More Pep (1936) Pudgy is allegedly a world-famous acrobatic dog, but when he comes out on stage, he can barely keep awake, being only a puppy after all. Yelled at (by the unseen narrator, Uncle Max, i.e., Max Fleischer) to "Hurry up, Pudgy!" the pup takes off running to his acrobatic equipment, but then falls sound asleep again.
Almost as an afterthought, Betty climbs out of Uncle Max's inkpot, laughing "You seem to be having trouble, Uncle Max!" Uncle Max suggests she come on stage & sing a song which will help Pudgy get through his act. "Oky-doke! That's easy!"
She climbs from the art table into the film frame & plays with the sleepy puppy, then sings "You Gotta Have Pep!" While singing she climbs out of the frame & grabs a drawing pen in order to add a few things to the stage. She draws a refrigerator & food processor, then climbs back in the frame & makes Pudgy an energy drink.
The food processor gets all peppy & leaps out the window, hopping over the tops of buildings, sprays some of its concoction on some marching soldiers (done with live action rather than animation), & the soldiers are suddenly super-speeded, as is everyone else the leaping food processor encounters.
Finally the food processor returns to the theater & sprays energy drink on Pudgy, who begins yapping like crazy & finishes his act at top speed. Then he & Betty climb back into the inkpot.
A cat is yowling on the fence, keeping Betty awake in Not Now (1936). She hops out of bed (pyjama'd from neck to ankles in the post-Code caroon).
She yells at the cat to shut up & it sings "Not Now." Pudgy the puppy wakes up in his baby-basenet & runs outside to chase the cat. Alas the cat quite easily holds its own, hissing.
Despite swipes in the face, Pudgy keeps pursuing the black cat along the fence. Betty seeing the start of his adventure from the window worries Pudgy will get hurt.
 He does have some awfully close calls on the headlong chase across the cityscape streets & roofs, sometimes whimpering for fear, but never giving up.
As a rule, Pudgy isn't a talking dog, he's a real-acting puppy. But getting a deep scratch on his face, he touches the blood & says, "He pulled a knife on me!"
Now he's really in a fighting mood. THe cat may be stronger, but getting a good bite on that tail, Pudgy just about wins, until a dozen other black cats appear from the alleys to put him to flight.
Soon he's back happy in Betty's house. As so often the case, this is vastly more a Pudgy film than a Betty film.
Betty has a cool hobby, I was glad to find out. She raises pigeons. Pigeons are flying in a pleasant figure eight over the three-dimensional housetops in Training Pigeons (1936).
Betty Boop & Pudgy are standing on the roof of their home by a pigeon loft, & Betty's waving a flag to keep the pigeons exercised by flight, as otherwise these domesticated lazy bastards would just go to roost & get too fat & weak-winged to fly at all.
 When she stops waving the flag at them, seven of her eight pigeons go straight to roost, but the eighth is rather fond of being out. Pugdy having seen a picture of a bird dog looks up at the sky & takes a pointer's stance.
The pigeon begins to lead Pudgy on a merry & sometimes dangerous chase from one roof to another, while Betty yells impotently for Pudgy to come back. With a jazzy instrumentation of "A Hunting We Will Go" on the soundtrack, Pudgy is put through his gag paces pursuing the pigeon to very little success.
As with most Pudgy episodes, not much adult interest, & not much of Betty, but great stuff for kids, though the smallest kids might be horrified by how violent the rooster gets when Pudgy makes the mistake of grabbing its tail feathers. The story does have one of the funniest Pudgy punch-lines though.
The theater marquee promises "Betty Boop in Person!" Pudgy is helping her get ready in the dressing room. "You're on next Miss Boop!" someone calls through the door. So begins Pudgy Takes a Bow-Wow (1937).
She puts Pudgy to bed then heads out on stage in a long evening gown & sings "Down in Our Alley" about the city's lower classes.
Golly it's great to see her doing something meaningful in her own film, after way too much of Pudgy throughout the last leg of Betty's cartoon career.
 Betty is herself a representative of the city's joyful outcast, the Entertainer with a Capital E that she had been in her heyday before the awful Production Code of 1934 undermined her.
It's vaudeville & she performs a stereotype impersonation of a Chinese laundry boy, singing, "Let's go down & do a little washy/ Him have time for making love by goshy."
Putting on a false mustache, she does an impersonation of an Italian organ grinder, singing, "I'm a grinder, I'm a grinder, I'm a grinder all day," & praises spaghetti.
Meanwhile Pudgy has not stayed in bed. The sound of a cat rouses him & he gets out of Betty's room for a face-off with the cat. They fight right into the middle of Betty's stage, then realizing where they're at, they dance together until they're back in the wings to continue fighting.
They end up on stage again in a boxing match which entertains the audience no end, being quite the addition to Betty's act rather than ruining it. Not too bad for the Pudgy era!
In Pudgy Picks a Fight (1937), Betty has gotten a fox stole from I. Skinnem & U. Wearem Fine Furs.
Pudgy the pugilistic puppy wakes up from a nap & sees Betty praising & hugging a fox. After crying over the sense of rejection & Betty's unfaithfulness, he waits until she's out of the room & he attacks the stole. It's jaw accidentally snaps shut on Pudgy's tail, but eventually he's satisfied he's defeated the fox.
Not having realized he attacked only a fur, he listens for the fox's heartbeat, then is overcome with remorse for having killed something. He tries to give the stole a bone & when it won't wake up, he tries smelling salts & other curative efforts, but finally has to admit he killed the fox.
Haunted by guilit, Pudgy imagines himself hung for murder, or imprisoned. Every shadow seems to accuse him. He weeps & whines & prays, until Betty comes back & assures Pudgy the fox isn't alive. Kid stuff only.
Pudgy the Puppy has set his alarm to go off at eight, so he can get Betty Boop up, in Riding the Rails (1938).
Betty hops out of bed in her pyjamas, dresses in a hurry, & heads off to work. She tells Pudgy to stay home & be a good little dog, but he has gotten it in his head to follow her to work.
Betty experiences a couple "crowded subway" gags but doesn't notice Pudgy at her feet. She gets off the subway but he's not quick enough. He's pursued by a mean conductor but escapes onto the rails, where he's soon hopelessly lost in the subway system, pursued by monstrous subway trains.
As a little kids' cartoon this would be unusually scary for a Pudgy adventure, but the terror isn't long sustained, for Pudgy finds his way home ahead of Betty, who has "a swell present for you," which turns out to be a toy train that chases him back into his bed.
The opening scene's background design for Chills & Thrills (1938) shows a hillside for the Snow Train & is quite attractive. This is a good episode, one of the few with Pudgy that permits both him & Betty to share an adventure, rather than Pudgy taking over.
Pudgy & Betty are racing to catch a train, but an appalling masher won't let Betty on unless he'll give her a kiss. She refuses so has to run to jump on the back of the departing train, then encourage Pudgy to hurry to get on too, helping him up with a wooden ski.
Apart from a little white fur around the hem & on her hat, Betty's not dressed for the cold, but seems warm enough. They reach the mountain resort, another attractive background design.
The awful masher will continue to be a problem, annoying Betty more because he's a bucktooth geek than for reasons of sexual harrassment.
Betty does some smoothly animated ice skating, rotoscoped over an actual skater, which is why it's so realistic. Pudgy's clumsier on the ice. The "Jingle Bells" soundtrack ain't much.
Pudgy goes off an icy waterfall & Betty, trying to save him, goes over as well. Bucktooth horny geek actually manages to save her & with his help she saves Pudgy during a wild ski ride down the mountain.
Betty had promised the bucktooth geek his lustfully sought kiss if they save Pudgy, but in the end the kiss he gets is from Pudgy.
 A tomcat in a mouse-shaped car runs a Mouse Eradicator business in Pudgy the Watchman (1938). The cat sneaks into Betty Boop's mansion & frightens her with a robot mouse so that she'll hire Al E. Cat to clear out the mice.
Pudgy had long befriended the mice in the basement. He pretends to guard against the mice but in reality they play together as the best of friends. Now Betty's got the mean cat on the job, & Pudgy's worried about his friends. This is a way better story than most Pudgy cartoons came up with!
Al catches a handful of the mice in no time & ties them up in what is known as a "rat king," i.e., a lot of rodents bound in a bundle by their own tails. Another he throws in a cage. Five he coats with shellac & sticks them to stuff. Life's a misery for the mousies.
But then Al finds the cider barrel & decides he needs a "cat nip." While he gets drunk the mouse ringleader escapes from the cage, liberates other mice, & now Al's too drunk to do a good job. He chases the mice upstairs where they never went when Pudgy was on the job, & they have a great time.
The cat's fired & Pudgy gets his old job back "forever & ever." He plays the piccolo for the mice & they sing along in tiny mousy voices back into their safe home in the basement. "You're just the best watchdog in the world!" enthuses Betty.
So sure, puppies are cute, but the Betty Boop cartoons co-starring Pudgy the Perpetual Puppy do get tiresome after awhile because they're so little about Betty. Pudgy has a fairly narrow personality.
Betty is planting a vegetable garden in Scared Crows (1939), but the crows are eating up the seed. Betty puts up a scarecrow & one of the crows bashes itself into a tree flying away, knocking itself out.
Guiltilly upset Betty brings the crow home & insists Pudgy keep an eye on it. But when Pudgy is napping, the crow lets the entire flock in the house.
They proceed to eat up everything in the kitchen leaving an awful mess. Pudgy tries to make them stop, but the crows have the upper hand & maltreat him in various ways before wrapping him in a blanket & tossing him outside, where Betty's working in the garden.
Betty climbs inside the scarecrow so it can "come to life" & it scares the bejabbers out of the crows. The animation of the scarecrow is old-school Fleischer from the Minnie the Moocher days, & so quite marvelous, but mainly (like other Pudgy episodes) it's just for little kids.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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