Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Wiffle Piffle is a door-to-door salesman of useless gadgets, and he walks from house to house with both arms flapping as if in a breeze, turned away at every door. Betty is the first to listen. He promises woollen hammers and rubber nails, a sieve that never leaks and brand-new antiques, and she says, politely, "Nothing today, kind sir." Encouraged, he tries the side door, then the back door, and at last she lets him demonstrate: a mousetrap shaped like a wedge of cheese with a mechanical cat inside that slugs the mouse with a blackjack; a home version of the spot remover from Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions; a rocket that spins the laundry in the sink and then shoots out of the window to hang it up; and a "superheterodyne" vacuum cleaner so powerful it pulls the whiskers off a portrait. Switched to reverse, the vacuum blows the furniture over and blasts the piano through the wall. Betty sends him away, and he flaps off, unflappable, to the next house.
Why It Matters
- The gadgets are a reprise of the 1933 Crazy Inventions in a domestic key, and the vacuum cleaner in reverse is a fine piece of destruction; Wiffle's refrain and Betty's three polite refusals give the film a rhythm most of the late Betty Boops lack.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States and is often cited as the last of the Fleischer gadget comedies before Grampy was retired; Kate Wright, who shares the voice credit, was one of several women who filled in as Betty in the Miami years.
Notes and Trivia
- "Superheterodyne" was radio jargon of the day, applied to the vacuum for comic effect.
- The door-to-door salesman was a Depression fixture and a stock comic figure in 1930s film.
- See also: Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions (1933), Whoops! I'm a Cowboy (1937), The Impractical Joker (1937).
