Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Short Synopsis
At a busy nightclub restaurant, four flapper cats sing "Crazy Town". Bimbo, the Fleischers' dog star, is a waiter. A huge, hungry gorilla orders roast duck, and Bimbo runs to the kitchen and prepares it. As he carries it back across the floor, he spots a singer on stage, a dog with long floppy ears, a high squeaky voice and a curl of hair, and he falls in love on the spot. He forgets the gorilla entirely and dances on stage with her, using the roast duck as a partner. The gorilla, still waiting and now furious, comes after him, and Bimbo makes his getaway on a little wooden train.
Why It Matters
- The film is packed with the Fleischer studio's surreal, nightclub energy: a cook who turns dancer, a duck carcass that joins the act, and a restaurant where everything moves to jazz. Grim Natwick's singing dog, with her baby voice and swaying hips, steals the film in a few seconds of screen time.
- That singer is the first appearance of the character who became Betty Boop. Here she is still a poodle and a caricature of the singer Helen Kane, with the "boop-oop-a-doop" style of the time; by 1932 the floppy ears had become hoop earrings and she was a human woman, the most famous female cartoon star of the decade.
Notes and Trivia
- In this first appearance she is voiced by Margie Hines. Several actresses voiced her over the next years, Mae Questel most famously.
- Kane later sued Fleischer and Paramount, claiming Betty Boop was based on her; she lost the case in 1934.
- It entered the U.S. public domain on 1 January 2026.
- See also: Minnie the Moocher (1932).