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Talkartoons is a series of 42 animated cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures from 1929 to 1932.^[1]

History

For the Fleischer brothers, the transition to sound was relatively easy. With the new contract with Paramount Pictures, and without the burden of Red Seal Pictures and Alfred Weiss, Max Fleischer was free to experiment with new, bold ideas. First he changed the name of the Ko-Ko Song Cartunes series to Screen Songs. Although the Screen Songs were successful, Fleischer felt that it wasn't enough; Walt Disney seemed to gain a great amount of fame through his sound cartoons as well. He decided to work with his brother, Dave on a new series of cartoons where the characters did more than just simply dance to the music of the "bouncing ball". The name for the new series was to be Talkartoons. When the idea was pitched to Paramount, they leaped at the opportunity.^[2]

The Talkartoons started out as one-shot cartoons. The first entry in the series was Noah's Lark, released on October 26, 1929. Although a Fleischer cartoon, it appeared to be patterned after the Aesop's Film Fables of Paul Terry. In it, a Farmer Al Falfa-esque Noah allows the animals of his ark to visit Luna Park. When he brings them back into the ship, the weight is so heavy that it sinks. In the end, Noah chases topless mermaids throughout the ocean waters. Lark has very few gray tones, due to employing the paper-cutout animation process utilized in the Screen Songs produced during the same time and the earlier Fleischer silent works. It also included copyright-free songs, mostly utilized from old 78-rpm's.

The series began to take a new direction, however, with the arrival of Max and Dave's brother, Lou Fleischer, whose skills in music and mathematics made a great impact at the studio. A dog named Bimbo gradually became the featured character of the series. The first cartoon that featured Bimbo was Hot Dog (1930),^[3] the first Fleischer cartoon to be animated on cels, and thus to employ a full range of greys. New animators such as Grim Natwick, Shamus Culhane, and Rudy Zamora began entering the Fleischer Studio, with new ideas that pushed the Talkartoons into a league of their own. Natwick especially had an off-beat style of animating that helped give the shorts more of a surreal quality. Perhaps his greatest contribution to the Talkartoons series and the Fleischer Studio was the creation of Betty Boop with Dizzy Dishes in 1930.

By late 1931, Betty Boop dominated the series. Koko the Clown was brought out of retirement from the silent days as a third character to Betty and Bimbo. By 1932, the series was at an inevitable end and instead, Betty Boop would be given her own series, with Bimbo and Koko as secondary characters.

Filmography

Dave Fleischer was the credited director on every cartoon produced by Fleischer Studios. Fleischer's actual duties were those of a film producer and creative supervisor, with the head animators doing much of the work assigned to animation directors in other studios. The head animator is the first animator listed.^[4] Credited animators are therefore listed for each short. Many of the shorts from 1931-32 don't have their animator credits listed, as they were cut when the shorts were sold to television and had their titles replaced.

No.	Film	Original release date	Credited animators	Notes
1929
1	Noah's Lark	October 26	No animators credited	First Talkartoon.
1930
No.	Film	Original release date	Credited animators	Notes
2	Marriage Wows	January 12	No animators credited	UCLA has nitrate elements on this title, therefore is not a lost cartoon. Working title: Wedding Belles^[5]
3	Radio Riot	February 10	No animators credited	The bedtime story broadcast at the end was written by Yip Harburg.
4	Hot Dog	March 29	No animators credited	First appearance of Bimbo (as yet unnamed). First Fleischer cartoon to feature gray tones. First Fleischer cartoon to be scored by Lou Fleischer. Utilizes a recording of "Saint Louis Blues" by Eddie Peabody within the soundtrack.
5	Fire Bugs	May 9	Ted Sears Grim Natwick	A Bimbo cartoon (though he is still unnamed). First Fleischer cartoon to credit animators.
6	Wise Flies	July 14	Willard Bowsky Ted Sears	Utilizes a recording of "Some of These Days" by Eddie Peabody within the soundtrack. Uncredited animator: Grim Natwick
7	Dizzy Dishes	August 9	Grim Natwick Ted Sears	A Bimbo cartoon. First appearance of Betty Boop (though she and Bimbo are both unnamed). First appearance of a new title card design that would remain through the series. Officially released on Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Volume 2.
8	Barnacle Bill	August 25	Rudy Zamora Seymour Kneitel	A Bimbo and Betty cartoon, featuring them in the (named) roles of Barnacle Bill and Nancy Lee. Uncredited animator: Grim Natwick
9	Swing You Sinners!	September 22	Ted Sears Willard Bowsky	A Bimbo cartoon (though he is still unnamed). Includes caricature of Jewish comedian Max Davidson. Uncredited animators: Grim Natwick, Jimmie Culhane
10	Grand Uproar	October 12	Seymour Kneitel Al Eugster	A Bimbo cartoon (though he is still unnamed).
11	Sky Scraping	November 1	Ted Sears Willard Bowsky	A Bimbo cartoon, naming him in the title card; from here onward, he is usually named.
12	Up to Mars	November 23	Rudy Zamora Jimmie Culhane	A Bimbo cartoon.
13	Accordion Joe	December 12	Ted Sears Grim Natwick	A Bimbo and Betty cartoon (though Betty is still unnamed). Some sources incorrectly label this as a 1929 release.
14	Mysterious Mose	December 27	Willard Bowsky Ted Sears	A Bimbo and Betty cartoon (though Betty is still unnamed). Uncredited animator: Grim Natwick
1931
No.	Film	Original release date	Credited animators	Notes
15	Ace of Spades	January 6	Rudy Zamora Al Eugster	A Bimbo cartoon. Television materials exist as with most of the other Talkartoons, but prints are more scarce.
16	Tree Saps	January 19	Grim Natwick Ted Sears	A Bimbo cartoon.
17	Teacher's Pest	February 7	Grim Natwick Seymour Kneitel	A Bimbo and Betty cartoon (though Betty, who only appears briefly, is still unnamed).
18	The Cow's Husband	March 14	Jimmie Culhane R. Eggeman	A Bimbo cartoon. The bull's dance was rotoscoped.
19	The Bum Bandit	April 6	Willard Bowsky Al Eugster	A Bimbo and Betty cartoon (though Betty is named "Dangerous Nan McGrew"). First time Betty Boop is seen with her slender physique. Uncredited animator: Grim Natwick
20	The Male Man	April 24	Ted Sears Seymour Kneitel	A Bimbo cartoon. Uncredited animator: Grim Natwick
21	Twenty Legs Under the Sea	May 5	Willard Bowsky Tom Bonfiglio	A Bimbo cartoon.
22	Silly Scandals	May 23	Unknown	A Bimbo and Betty cartoon. First time Betty is named, though only as "Betty" (no surname given).
23	The Herring Murder Case	June 24	Unknown	A Bimbo cartoon. First time Bimbo is animated in his most familiar design. First sound cartoon appearance of Koko the Clown.
24	Bimbo's Initiation	July 27	Unknown	A Bimbo and Betty cartoon. Placed at #37 in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons. Officially released on Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Volume 2.
25	Bimbo's Express	August 22	Unknown	A Bimbo and Betty cartoon (formally billed as such in the titles, still giving Betty no surname).
26	Minding the Baby	September 28	Jimmie Culhane Bernard Wolf	A Betty and Bimbo cartoon (first time Betty's full name appears in the titles, stylized as "Betty-Boop").
27	In the Shade of the Old Apple Sauce	October 19	Unknown	A Bimbo cartoon. Not to be confused with the 1929 similarly-titled Screen Song, In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree. Lost cartoon.
28	Mask-A-Raid	November 9	Unknown	A Betty and Bimbo cartoon. The first Talkartoon to put the director and animator credits on a separate title card. First time Betty is depicted as a human, with her dog ears replaced by hoop earrings.
29	Jack and the Beanstalk	November 22	Roland Crandall Sam Stimson	A Betty and Bimbo cartoon. Final time Betty Boop is depicted as a dog.
30	Dizzy Red Riding Hood	December 12	Unknown	A Betty and Bimbo cartoon.
1932
No.	Film	Original release date	Credited animators	Notes
31	Any Rags?	January 5	Willard Bowsky Thomas Bonfiglio	A Betty, Bimbo and Koko cartoon. The surviving master negative has the original opening title card intact.
32	Boop-Oop-a-Doop	January 16	Unknown	A Betty, Bimbo and Koko cartoon. First use of the song "Sweet Betty", which would become the theme song for the Betty Boop series. Officially released on Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Volume 2.
33	The Robot	February 8	Unknown	A Bimbo cartoon, seemingly held over from earlier production (Bimbo appears in a primitive design; Bimbo's girlfriend is largely a generic one-off, but drawn as Betty in some close-ups that look to have been added later).
34	Minnie the Moocher	February 28	Willard Bowsky Ralph Somerville	A Betty, Bimbo and (briefly) Koko cartoon. Music performed by Cab Calloway and his orchestra. This short contains the earliest known footage of him and his orchestra performing. The walrus' dancing is rotoscoped from footage of Calloway himself. Sometimes seen with a refilmed TV title card; transfers with original titles were featured on some on 1980s video compilations. Named #20 in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons. Officially released on Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Volume 3.
35	Swim or Sink	March 13	Seymour Knitel Bernard Wolf	A Betty, Bimbo and Koko cartoon. The original title cards likely animated the short's title; the later, commonly seen TV title card is taken from a single frame of the original, captured at a point where the title reads just "S O S".
36	Crazy Town	March 26	James H. Culhane David Tendlar	A Betty and Bimbo cartoon. Contains special live-action title cards.
37	The Dancing Fool	April 6	Seymour Kneitel Bernard Wolf	A Betty, Bimbo and Koko cartoon.
38	Chess-Nuts	April 18	James H. Culhane William Henning	A Betty, Bimbo and Koko cartoon. Officially released on Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Volume 1.
39	A-Hunting We Will Go	May 3	Alfred Eugster Rudolph Eggeman	A Betty, Bimbo and Koko cartoon.
40	Hide and Seek	May 14	Roland Crandall	A Bimbo cartoon, seemingly held over from earlier production (Bimbo appears in a primitive design; Bimbo's girlfriend is a generic one-off).
41	Admission Free	June 10	Thomas Johnson Rudolph Eggeman	A Betty, Bimbo and Koko cartoon.
42	The Betty Boop Limited	July 18	Willard Bowsky Thomas Bonfiglio	A Betty, Bimbo and Koko cartoon. Final Talkartoon. Officially released on Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Volume 2.

References

Sources

Leslie Cabarga, The Fleischer Story (Da Capo Press, 1988)
Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (Penguin Books, 1987)

Notes

^ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. p. 142. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
^ Fleischer, Richard (2005). Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution. The University Press of Kentucky. pp. 49–50. ISBN 0-8131-2355-0.
^ Pointer, Ray (2017). The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer: American Animation Pioneer. McFarland. p. 66. ISBN 9781476663678.
^ Culhane, Shamus (1986). Talking Animals and Other People. New York: Da Capo Press. Pg. 40-41
^ "Marriage Wows (Wedding Belles) (1930) - Talkartoons Theatrical Cartoon Series". Bcdb.com. Archived from the original on June 28, 2013. Retrieved 2017-01-08.