Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Betty lives next to a farm whose owner, a hulking brute voiced by Gus Wickie in his Bluto growl, abuses his animals: he beats his horse, kicks his dog, starves his pig and throws his cat, and Betty, watching from her window, is sickened and sings the title song, a plea for kindness. The animals cannot help themselves, so she calls on Grampy, who runs an animal welfare society of his own. Grampy's thinking cap produces a scheme: the farmer is lured into a machine that gives him the treatment he has given his animals, worked over, dunked and spun until he has learned the lesson, while the animals, freed and fed, look on. The farmer emerges chastened and the animals are left in peace, with Betty and Grampy approving.
Why It Matters
- It is the Betty Boop series' one message picture, an animal-cruelty tract with a villain drawn as a Bluto and a mechanical comeuppance, and it shows the post-Code Betty as a social conscience, a role the studio gave her more than once in 1935-37; Lillian Friedman's animation of the abused animals is affecting.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States and has been widely circulated, sometimes by animal welfare groups; it is also notable as a Grampy cartoon in which his inventions serve justice rather than fun, the only one of its kind.
Notes and Trivia
- Gus Wickie, Bluto's voice in the Popeye series, rarely appeared in other Fleischer films.
- The farmer's punishment machine resembles the ones Betty imagined for public pests in Judge for a Day.
- See also: Judge for a Day (1935), Grampy's Indoor Outing (1936), Making Friends (1936).
