Some great Max Fleischer restorations have been appearing online recently, and their newly anachronistic, skateboard-clean crispness seems even weirder to me than the flickering murk I grew up with, back when Dad used to project these cartoons for us onto the wall of his study. Fleischer would often rotoscope - ie, trace footage of - live performers whenever he wanted his characters to do something more than bob or run, or pull bits of themselves off, but I'm pretty sure nightclub legend Cab Calloway was the first rotoscoped celebrity. His first teaming with Betty Boop was as The Old Man of the Mountains, a feral impregnator chasing the former dog (those earrings were originally spaniel ears) who breaks off mid-chase, as obligingly does Boop, into an unmotivated song and dance, which is where the rotoscoping comes in, Cab Calloway's unmistakable moves even less grounded than usual across the scrolling cartoon backdrop, pretty much inventing the moonwalk.
I assume the structure of staged assault alternating with song and dance
was a staple of cabaret at the time. It can't have come from nowhere. You can watch it here. The cartoon opens with live footage of Calloway and his band very similar to the clip above, but not identical, so I don't where that comes from; it looks too good to have been shot simply for research though. Anyway, below is the sequence I know best - and one that did make it onto the Vulture's list - from Betty Boop in Snow White. Calloway is now Boop's ally, a clown who steps through a mirror and turns into a ghost to mourn our heroine who dies halfway. If any of this is new to you, Happy Halloween!
No comments:
Post a Comment