Boop, Betty (Fictitious character)

Betty Boop is a cartoon character created by Max Fleischer. A precursor to the character, drawn by Grim Natwick, played a small role in the 1930 film Dizzy Dishes. Over time, and thanks to contributions from several Fleischer animators including Seymour Kneitel, Myron Waldman, Willard Bowsky and Bernie Wolf, that initial canine-inspired songstress evolved into the character we now know as Betty Boop. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She was featured in 90 theatrical cartoons between 1930 and 1939. She has also been featured in comic strips and prolific mass merchandising throughout the decades, and two television specials in the 1980s. In 2025, Boop! The Musical debuted on Broadway. A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, Betty Boop was described in a 1934 court case as "combin[ing] in appearance the childish with the sophisticated—a large round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button, framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a very small body of which perhaps the leading characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable". She was toned down in the mid-1930s as a result of the Hays Code to appear more modest, and has become one of the world's best-known and most popular cartoon characters.