Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Betty is baking a cake in her kitchen, with Pudgy underfoot, when a fly comes in through the window and settles on the batter. She swats at it and misses; it lands on Pudgy, on the flour, on her nose, on the cake, and every swing of the swatter hits something else, the crockery, the puppy, the cake itself. The fly, drawn with a smirk, dodges, buzzes and taunts. Betty abandons the swatter and starts throwing handfuls of dough, which stick to the walls, the ceiling and Pudgy, until the kitchen is coated. At last a lump of dough catches the fly flat on Pudgy's nose, and Betty stands triumphant in the ruins of her kitchen. The fly wriggles free and buzzes off, and the film ends on her face.
Why It Matters
- It is a single-gag cartoon, Betty against a fly for seven minutes, and the Fleischers keep it moving by making the fly a personality and the kitchen a casualty; the escalating mess, with the dough-throwing as the point of no return, is the kind of domestic slapstick the post-Code series turned to when Betty's nightlife was closed off.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States, and it is one of the earliest of the Betty-and-Pudgy household comedies that defined the series from 1935 to its end in 1939, with Pudgy as the innocent victim of every swing.
Notes and Trivia
- "Swat the Fly" was a public health slogan of the 1910s, when flies were blamed for typhoid.
- David Tendlar was one of the Fleischer studio's longest-serving animators, from 1931 to the Famous Studios years.
- See also: Stop That Noise (1935), Taking the Blame (1935), A Little Soap and Water (1935).