Poor Cinderella

Poor Cinderella is a fine vehicle for beloved cartoon icon Betty Boop. By plucking our favorite Bronx flapper kewpie doll into the European fairy tale, the Fleischer’s found a way to breathe some life into the well-known story. While the Disney version remains the more widely watched version, Betty Boop’s does a few things much better.

Granted, Disney had Technicolor and an army of the best in the business, but Fleischer had ingenuity and the ability to play around with tone. The sequence here that introduces the fairy godmother does so in a much more ingenious and unique way. Whereas in Disney’s version she just magically materializes out of thin air, here a candle’s flame gains life, swirling around before transforming into the fairy godmother’s final form. It’s a limber and free bit of animation that is completely charming.

Cinderella’s transition from torn rags to haute couture is one of the crown jewels of Disney animation, and Betty Boop can’t compete, but she more than makes up for it in personality. Betty’s transition sees her torn clothes disappearing, indulging in her loopy, flamboyant sexuality as the garments reappear from the sexy lingerie outwards. Her giggles and squeals are endearing to me, crafting an actual persona to the normally thin-gruel role of the heroine. Not mention that this is a Cinderella with some oomph! Betty Boop’s outfit is fairly daring for a future princess, but one would expect nothing less from a creation such as her.

The grotesque way the mice and lizards change to horses and horsemen is a reminder that while Disney had the market cornered on state-of-the-art animation, his rivals produced work that has held up better by playing towards humor, crafting beloved characters, and indulging in drawings that didn’t rest on being pretty. Cinderella’s step-sisters are bratty and catty in Disney’s version, but they’re not the hulking grotesqueries of Betty Boop’s troubles, and the cartoon ends with them arguing until their faces turn blue and their voices hit a shrill tone that begins to resemble chirping. The prince seeing her at the ball and promptly getting beat over the head by a Cupid with a mallet is funny bit of cartoon violence. That gag feels like it wouldn’t be entirely out-of-place in one of the Looney Tunes parodies, to be honest.

(Poor Cinderella is in the public domain, and can be viewed online in full here.)