Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
A pig in a business suit pastes up a sign, "Girl Wanted, Top Floor, Female Preferred", and walks off with the ladder strolling behind him. Betty answers it along with a crowd of other applicants. Asked what she can do, she sings that she cannot type or take dictation but has other qualities to offer; the boss drops the rest of the applicants through a trapdoor and hires her on the spot. Betty likes her job until the boss begins chasing her round the desk. Frightened, she screams for help, and the police arrive in force, trying ladders, battering rams and finally machine guns, with which they whittle the skyscraper down floor by floor. Behind the window shade Betty and her boss appear in silhouette, apparently struggling; when the shade goes up they are locked in an embrace. "Fresh!" says Betty, and pulls it down again.
Why It Matters
- The ending, in which the heroine turns out to be enjoying the harassment the police have come to stop, is the kind of joke that made Betty Boop a target of the Hays Office, and the film is often cited as the pre-Code series at its most knowing; the gag of the police destroying the building to reach the top floor is a fine piece of escalation.
- It is a rare Betty Boop voiced by Little Ann Little, one of several actresses who played Betty before Mae Questel became the fixed voice. The Depression job queue outside the office is a period detail the series rarely offered.
Notes and Trivia
- Little Ann Little toured as Betty Boop in person, booping at theatre appearances.
- The pig boss is one of the last animal characters to lead a Betty Boop cartoon before the human cast took over.
- See also: Betty Boop, M.D. (1932), Boop-Oop-a-Doop (1932), Is My Palm Read (1933).
