A Visit to the Grim Natwick Betty Boop Festival

Betty Boop Festival Poster

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

I attended the first annual Grim Natwick/Betty Boop Festival yesterday in Wisconsin Rapids. Natwick, the main animator of both the original Fleischer Studios' Betty Boop character and then of Disney's Snow White, was born and raised in this small central Wisconsin municipality. In honor of their most famous resident as well as Betty's 80th birthday (August 9th), the entire town threw a party. Here's what I saw...

Image (right) via Betty Boop Festival website.

A youthful Grim Natwick.

Natwick info pamphlets; Ms. Boop cardboard standups.

Natwick character design from the very first BB cartoon Dizzy Dishes (1930). Patterned after singer Helen Kane.

At the heart of the fest was the Grim Natwick artwork collection on loan from the non-profit ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archives. Also "on loan" from the Archives was its director Stephen Worth who gave talks and tours throughout the weekend.

Stephen Worth leading a discussion on the Natwick animation collection.

The story of Bimbo the dog and his new girlfriend as shared by Stephen Worth...

In 1930, Bimbo the dog was the star character at Fleischer Studios. Director Dave Fleischer asked Grim to design a girlfriend for Bimbo in the upcoming short Barnacle Bill. Natwick went to work and created the design sheet (below). When Fleischer returned, he saw that Grim had simply "retooled" the Helen Kane character from the previous short Dizzy Dishes. The director argued, 'Bimbo is a dog. Don't you think he ought to have a dog girlfriend?"

Natwick quickly drew a dog body on the sheet with the Helen Kane head and asked,

"Would you rather have this?" He circled the dog.
"Or this..., " he pointed to the human form, "as Bimbo's girlfriend?"

Fleischer gave in and thus was born a character soon to become a bigger star than Bimbo would ever be.

Character design from BB cartoon Barnacle Bill (1930).
NOTE: Photo has been manipulated from color to grayscale for ease of viewing. 
The actual drawing paper shows yellowing from age.

"A dog or this?"

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Yes, it was the "Betty Boop" Festival, but I was interested to see drawings from Natwick's entire career, especially those from his Disney period. Below is a Snow White animation rough...

Natwick Snow White animation rough, close-ups.

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The festival also included screenings of Betty Boop shorts, other films by Grim Natwick, animated treasures from the ASIFA Hollywood archives, and special showings of Nina Paley's Betty Boop-ish Sita Sings the Blues. My wife Ti and I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Nina whose animation art was on display throughout the day.

Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues artwork.

And now, here's a rather racy Barnacle Bill with his new girlfriend...

Fleischer Studios - Gulliver's Travels

The development of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was first disclosed to the world by Walt himself via the New York Times in June of 1934. This was also the year that Max and Dave Fleischer had wanted to counter Walt Disney's announcement and begin work on their own animated feature at their New York-based Fleischer Studios. Their aspirations were thwarted, however, by the Paramount suits who refused to support and distribute anything other than the Fleischer short cartoons.

Yet, with the massive success of Disney's Snow White premiere in 1937, the Fleischers finally got the green light in the spring of 1938. Grim Natwick, the main animator on Disney's Snow White character, returned to the Fleischer Studios to be a part of this feature. Working for the Fleischers was nothing new for Natwick as he was the original animator of their Betty Boop series back in the early thirties.

On December 22, 1939, Paramount Pictures released Fleischer Studios' Gulliver's Travels, and like Snow White, it turned out to be a box-office success. The film is now in public domain.

Watch the entire film below.

Video courtesy of the Internet Archive

Fleischer Studios - Betty Boop as Snow White

Around 1915, Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope technique where live-action film movement is traced frame by frame to create lifelike animations. Max and his brother Dave developed their first character, Koko the Clown using this method, and in 1921, founded Out of the Inkwell Films (later Fleischer Studios). The studio became well known for its human characters (as opposed to the anthropomorphized mice, cats, dogs, ducks and pigs of the other animation rivals). In its prime, the Fleischers--with characters like Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman--were the only serious competition for Walt Disney.

In 1933, the Fleischers produced their own version of Snow White featuring Ms. Boop as the, um, "princess" and a song, Saint James Infirmary Blues, sung by Cab Calloway. The real artistic talent behind this film was not, however, Natwick or the Fleischer brothers, but rather animator Roland Crandall.

Dave Fleischer was credited as director, although virtually all the animation was done by Roland Crandall. Crandall received the opportunity to make Snow White on his own as a reward for his several years of devotion to the Fleischer studio, and the resulting film is considered both his masterwork and an important milestone of The Golden Age of American animation. "Snow White" took Crandall 6 months to do.

The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 1994 it was voted #19 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. The film is now in public domain. Source: Wikipedia

Watch the film below.


Video courtesy of the Internet Archive

It's interesting to note that it was 1934 when Grim Natwick went to work for Walt Disney as the primary animator of his Snow White character. But four years earlier, Natwick was actually employed by the Fleischer's as the original top animator of Betty Boop.