Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
A theatre marquee announces Betty Boop in person, rated four and seven-eighths stars. Betty leaves Pudgy in her dressing room with orders to stay put and goes on to do her act: a song, then a set of impersonations, a Chinese man and an Italian organ-grinder, in the vaudeville dialect-comedy manner of the time. A kitten wanders into the dressing room, Pudgy gives chase, and the two tear out through the wings, across the stage behind Betty, into the orchestra pit and over the instruments, through the footlights and up the curtain ropes, until the audience is watching the dog and the cat and not the star. Betty, upstaged, gives in and takes her bow with Pudgy, who has stolen the show.
Why It Matters
- Betty on stage, in a long gown doing dialect impressions, is a snapshot of what vaudeville had become by 1937, and the backstage chase, with the kitten and the puppy through the orchestra pit, is Lillian Friedman and Myron Waldman's animation at its liveliest; it is the last film in which Betty performs an act of her own.
- The cartoon's US copyright lapsed through non-renewal. Most DVD releases cut the Chinese impersonation, so the version usually seen jumps from the song to the kitten in the dressing room, and the uncut original, with its period caricature, is now hard to find.
Notes and Trivia
- Frank Reynolds, the second voice, supplied the kitten and theatre sounds.
- The four-and-seven-eighths-star rating on the marquee is a dig at the newspaper critics' star systems.
- See also: Taking the Blame (1935), Pudgy Picks a Fight! (1937), Making Stars (1935).
