Is My Palm Read | |
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Directed by | Dave Fleischer |
Produced by | Max Fleischer Chase Gassert Dave Copeland |
Starring | Mae Questel Billy Murray |
Animation by | David Tendlar William Henning |
Color process | Black-and-white |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount Publix Corporation |
Release date |
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Running time | 7 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Is My Palm Read is a 1933 Pre-Code Fleischer Studios animated short film starring Betty Boop, and featuring Koko the Clown and Bimbo. [1]
Act One. A modestly dressed Betty visits the shop of an elderly, swami-like fortune teller named Professor Bimbo for some advice, but Bimbo is only interested in making time with Betty. Koko the Clown is the swami's assistant.
Act Two. Bimbo shows Betty images of herself in a crystal ball. After reliving her infancy, this vision of Betty is shipwrecked on a jungle island, where she loses her clothing and fashions a scanty "hula girl" bikini to cover herself. She sings the first few lines of the Irving Berlin song "All by Myself", before being abducted by evil ghosts (perhaps Poltergeists) who imprison her in a jungle cabin. Fortunately, she is rescued by a young, strong sailor, who just happened to be exploring the island on horseback.
Act Three. Back in the fortune teller's shop, Betty is horrified by the vision, but the "elderly" swami removes his fake beard and reveals himself to be the heroic sailor. A happy Betty embraces him lovingly, but their reunion is disrupted by the ghosts from the vision, who burst out of the crystal ball and chase the two through a time portal, back to the desert isle. The head ghost rips off Betty's dress to reveal the hula bikini. Betty and Bimbo escape from the ghosts by tricking them into running off a cliff into the sea. The short ends on an unresolved, but optimistic, cliffhanger.
This short was hand-colorized for a 1972 re-release. Colorized prints (mainly television prints) by Fred Ladd's Color Systems are missing several scenes, including three risqué "pre-Code" clips.
In the 1980s and 1990s, VHS editions usually restored the short to its original black and white appearance, but retained most or all of the above cuts.
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character designed by Grim Natwick at the request of Dave Fleischer. 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 mass merchandising.
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The most characteristic North American fashion trend from the 1930s to 1945 was attention at the shoulder, with butterfly sleeves and banjo sleeves, and exaggerated shoulder pads for both men and women by the 1940s. The period also saw the first widespread use of man-made fibers, especially rayon for dresses and viscose for linings and lingerie, and synthetic nylon stockings. The zipper became widely used. These essentially U.S. developments were echoed, in varying degrees, in Britain and Europe. Suntans became fashionable in the early 1930s, along with travel to the resorts along the Mediterranean, in the Bahamas, and on the east coast of Florida where one can acquire a tan, leading to new categories of clothes: white dinner jackets for men and beach pajamas, halter tops, and bare midriffs for women.
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