Betty Boop

Post by **Deco King** » April 21st, 2007, 11:28 am

As a collector of/dealer in Art Deco - when will Betty Boop that 30's vamp voiced by Mae Questel appear in a boxset of her classic shorts?

I have seen several cheap DVD's in supermarkets but no remastering had been done and her delightful period pieces deserve to be seen in pristine versions - I believe that there is a French boxset but do not know what quality this is?

Post by **Ben** » April 21st, 2007, 1:08 pm

The best thing ever put out was a two volume LaserDisc release which contained practically every Boop cartoon.

Richard Fleischer did the intos and, though the cartoons were not restored, they were remastered and looked the best I have seen them.

As I have those two sets, I've kept away from all the PD disc releases due to improper handling of the shorts.

Perhaps you could provide a link to the French set and I could tell you if it looks like it might be related to the LaserDisc issues...?

In the meantime, I haven't bought this but this looks like it could be a half-decent release. I have heard, though I could be getting this mixed up with another release, that Poor Cinderella - Betty's ONLY color cartoon - is presented in black and white, and I'm wary of that "5.1 audio" unless they also offer the original mono sound, but apart from that it's been getting good writeups, and who can argue with what works out to be a £10 total including postage to the UK?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MT ... UJ19G09P91

Post by **Deco King** » April 21st, 2007, 1:23 pm

Here is a link to the French Amazon website ( www.amazon.fr )

http://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=nb_ss_w/403- ... x=8&Go.y=5

Hope this will help you decide!

Post by **Ben** » April 21st, 2007, 1:31 pm

AArrghhh!! NOOO!!!

I saw these when I was out at the Disney Paris exhibition in October and wasn't tempted in the slightest!

Not only had I not heard of the distributor "Zylo", but the packaging reaked of a cheap PD release. That these are PAL issues, and therefore playing at the wrong speed, also put me off.

Betty's a big Boop in France, but even there she is not well represented on disc, like Tex Avery (a big hit there, but stay away from the French box set).

Though I guess it helps you say "no" to these things when you do have their execptional LaserDisc releases, I would stay away from these. Your best bet for Boop, at the moment, is the link above, though I did state a couple of potential issues with that one too.

The problem is that the Boops are all PD now, so no one wants to take it on themselves to produce nice restorations and have someone else make money off them! The only way they can take ownership is by doing a new mix, which screws with the intention of the cartoons and therefore is a useless release!

Ho-hum...

Post by **Deco King** » April 21st, 2007, 2:35 pm

The reason I started this thread was that I had seen on www.dvdtalk.com that a new Popeye set is due out later in the year around June /July time - so I foolishly expected a follow up Betty Boop set as they both hailed from the same Fleischer Studios!!

Post by **Ben** » April 21st, 2007, 2:55 pm

The Popeye set looks great.

The only reason he's stayed in copyright is because King Features Syndicate were very bullish with their rights.

I have no idea who "owns" Betty Boop at the moment (actually I do but I can't think of who they are!) but they didn't care enough to protect her cartoon outings.

Shame.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » April 21st, 2007, 6:42 pm

Ben wrote:The Popeye set looks great.

The only reason he's stayed in copyright is because King Features Syndicate were very bullish with their rights.

I have no idea who "owns" Betty Boop at the moment (actually I do but I can't think of who they are!) but they didn't care enough to protect her cartoon outings.

Shame.

Viacom/Paramount/Republic owns Betty Boop jointly with King Features. I'm pretty sure Jerry Beck said something to that effect a few years ago. Viacom actually owns most of the Fleischer shorts and ALL the features aside from Popeye, the characters that are now Harvey properties, and the Superman shorts which are ALL public domain.

Not all the Betty Boops are public domain. Only about 23-30 of them are PD, and there's well over 80 shorts that still exist that aren't PD. Prints of practically all the Betty Boop shorts have been found INCLUDING the 2-3 spin-off shorts that featured Betty's niece. A couple of private collectors found those in their film collections months after the Artisan Betty Boop VHS sets (same collection as the LD sets) came out. The Artisan collection was still fairly complete.

Right now, the Artisan LD sets (3000 copies produced TOTAL for both LD sets) are the best quality Boops aside from 2 LDs that Leoonard Maltin helped produce eons ago. The problem with the official Boop collections (the Artisan releases) is that the shorts were DVNR'd. While that took care of the bulk of scratching on the films, it released a fair amount of the inklines on the animation. The computer cleaning codec couldn't tell the difference between scratches and thin inklines at times!

I've seen the same thing happen on "restored" Japanese animese DVDs produced for the US market including the Robotech remastered sets. The other thing poorly done DVNR does besides inkline erasure is that it produces "ghosting" of colors, too...

Post by **Deco King** » April 21st, 2007, 8:24 pm

This is better news at least there is a possibility that a Betty Boop compilation set will EVENTUALLY arrive!!

These movies offer unique look into pre Hays code sexuality, and I've always thought Betty had a similarity to my heroine Mae West, with a similarly knowing sexuality, which has modern echoes in the Simpsons, in that there are adult themes running throughou,t and they both ( Betty Boop and The Simpsons ) can be watched/viewed on several levels, as surreal cartoons and knowing innuendo /adult humour filled animated shorts!

Post by **Deco King** » November 25th, 2009, 3:32 pm

After the early Popeye animated shorts were released in a boxset , I had hoped that the other Fleischer star Betty Boop might have her own boxset , has anybody on here heard of any plans for such a set?

Post by **Ben** » November 25th, 2009, 3:45 pm

The issues are good old copyright again, I'm afraid!

The Boop shorts are in such a mess, with Republic being the last ones to claim ownership. Since then they've gone under, been bought out or the shorts have lapsed into the public domain meaning, like the Superman cartoons, anyone could put out a set, and indeed there are many already out there of varying quality.

Warner Bros now seems to have asserted some kind of "guardianship" over these cartoons, but whether that stretches to the Boop-opp-a-doop girl has not been clarified yet.

If you have an LD player, my best suggestion would be to locate the two excellent Betty Boop sets assembled by Republic with Richard Fleischer's approval and involvement. No supplements, but a very nice collection.

Post by **Deco King** » November 26th, 2009, 4:24 am

Thanks Ben , I already have the two Laserdisc Betty Boop boxsets but these days rarely view any of my laserdiscs , apparently I recall that there is at least one French Betty Boop set however I'm not sure of the quality.

Betty appeals to me as she was a great Art Deco cartoon character , and so risque rather like Mae West who is another heroine of mine!!

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » November 26th, 2009, 9:14 am

I don't think all the Betty Boop shorts are in the public domain.

Usually, it's the same 20 or 30 that get PD DVD releases.

Right now, I think it's more a matter of people not being aware of Boop's hidden popularity. She's a very marketable image and sells tons of T-shirts, calendars, mugs, and statues. I've got two of the Electric Tiki statues (B & W and red full-color) myself!

The problem with the LD sets -- and I own those, too -- is the DVNR. It erases part of the ink lines for the characters in practically all the shorts. There were also three shorts located AFTER the set was finished that should be included in a new set.

I hope this time the set goes in chronological order, too.

I know the original set archivist, Jerry Beck, was aware that not everybody wanted every single Boop short so he arranged them by topic. The vast majority of copies of the sets were sold on VHS back in the day over 12 years ago. Unfortunately, they were transferred that way to LD as well!

The shorts will have to be remastered for DVD to get the best image quality out of the prints. The question is when and by whom!!

Popeye was saved (for the moment) by WB. WB could come to Betty's rescue, too. Just hope they don't stop releases of Betty mid-stream like they seem to have for many of their animated properties (including Popeye after they finished the Fleischer shorts).

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Post by **Deco King** » November 26th, 2009, 9:24 am

Thank you George , and a Happy Thanksgiving to you too! Actually I'm in the UK so we don't celebrate Thanksgiving over here , however I'd love to come to the USA again and celebrate with some of my American friends!

Let us hope at some point in the not too distant future , perhaps next year , we'll be able to sit down watch a Betty Boop boxset as we celebrate Thanksgiving with a glass of mulled wine!

Post by **Ben** » November 26th, 2009, 10:09 am

I never said all the shorts were now PD, just included that as part of the reasons no-one on any kind of quality level is touching them.

I agree a new definitive set should come out, but those rights are still an issue.

But did you ever really think WB was ever going to squeeze more out of Popeye than the Fleischer cartoons? It was clear that with the amount of Famous stuff already out there and the niche for these sets anyway, anything after Fleischer would simply not have sold in the numbers they needed to. It didn't help that many people, on the announcement of all the releases, said right there and then that they wouldn't buy after the Fleischers, and WB does read all that stuff and make decisions on it!

Personally, I'm hoping for Fleischer Features set from WB, with Gulliver and Mr Bug given proper restorations (or at least decent print remasterings), perhaps with the Gabby cartoons as an extra on the first disc, and a nice new Fleischer retrospective on the second disc. I can dream, can't I? Yep, just as much as I dream about a "Gene Kelly Dance & Animation" release that bunches in Invitation To The Dance and Jack And The Beanstalk together!

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » November 26th, 2009, 7:08 pm

Calm down, Ben!

I never said you said that all the shorts were PD... It's just the way you worded your original response that it sort of implied that.

As for copyrights, I'm no lawyer but from what I understand what's copyright for the US means buttkuss for the rest of the world. That's why some things like the 1960s Marvel Superheroes show have been released in the UK/Europe but still haven't shown up in a DVD set in the US. Likewise could be true for the Betty Boop shorts as well. Seems to have been the case for both Betty Boop and the Tex Avery MGM shorts DVD releases in Europe at any rate.

(Copyright law and video rights are sort of the like the mafia. You know the older mafia controls downtown and city council but the Southside is controlled other ethnic mob groups and the Northside is an uneasy co-existence amongst older and newer mob groups... IE, it's all a racket like it or not. Some videophiles just don't seem to understand that there's a general gentlemen's agreement about what gets released where in the world, at what time, and by whom.)

There's also the issue of music clearances and copyrights, too. I think Ray Pointer once wrote that copyrights to the music from both Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug were retained by Paramount but the company never seemed to be interested in controlling home video releases of either film... Both have now had at least 2-3 unofficial DVD releases now. Quality on the DVDs vary but the Winstar Gulliver and the Legend Films Mr. Bug (aka "Bugville") probably are the best copies of those films on the market.

Of course, we all want better quality prints of these films out on DVD. Convincing Paramount/Viacom of this seems to be the big sticking point. The company apparently isn't interested in promoting anything that hasn't been made within the past ten years or isn't popular on Nickelodeon and MTV. You notice they're promoting the heck out of both Spongebob and South Park but little to nothing's heard of their other non-live action shows....

Repeating something I wrote long ago on this site -- I remember seeing multiple prints and cels for Terrytoons (Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle) at the old Viacom Store in downtown Chicago (1998). A year later the Store closed. (Rent was too high in the ultra-corrupt city of Chicago and it was a niche store pursuing a niche crowd. Never seemed to find its place like the Disney and WB Studio Stores did.)

Sad thing is that I can't remember ever seeing video releases for any of the Terrytoons in spite of a ton of cels, posters, and T-shirts available for those characters.

The one bright spot is the upcoming Mighty Mouse DVD release next year. IF the Bakshi Mighty Mouse series hits a strong enough cult crowd there's always the possibility more of the classic theatrical shorts will be released later in another DVD set, too. Later releases still dependent on how will the newer TV show does, however.

Betty Boop

Betty Boop

Amazon France Website link for Betty Boop!!

Popeye set due out soon!!

Is there any chance of a Betty Boop Box Set anytime soon?