Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
In a live-action frame, Max Fleischer, as "Uncle Max", sits at his drawing board and draws Betty and Pudgy out of the inkwell. Betty is ready to perform, but Pudgy is tired and will not do his tricks. Betty takes the pen and draws herself a machine that will give him more pep: a contraption with a hopper, into which she pours a list of stimulating ingredients. Too many go in. The machine speeds Pudgy up, then Betty, then everything around them: the drawn city outside the window, a marching parade, the traffic, the clock on the wall and the painting hanging beside it all begin to race, and the cartoon accelerates toward chaos until Uncle Max's hand intervenes and the two performers are returned to the inkwell.
Why It Matters
- It is one of the last Out of the Inkwell films in the studio's original manner, with Max Fleischer himself on screen handling his drawn characters, a format he had begun in 1918 with Koko the Clown; the speeding-up machine is a good excuse for animation that quickens frame by frame until the whole world shakes.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States and is one of only two Betty Boop cartoons in which Fleischer appears, the other being Betty Boop's Rise to Fame. Otto Feuer, uncredited here, later animated the Superman series.
Notes and Trivia
- Joe Stultz, co-writer, moved to Warner Bros. and wrote for Frank Tashlin.
- The inkwell frame had been dropped from the regular series in 1929 and revived only for special occasions.
- See also: Betty Boop's Rise to Fame (1934), A Song a Day (1936), The Tantalizing Fly (1919).
