Talkartoons



Talkartoons is the name of a series of 42 animated cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures between 1929 and 1932. It is a sister series to the Fleischer's successful Screen Songs cartoons. Betty Boop got her start in this series, which quickly made her the star of them and, circa 1932, became Betty's own standalone series altogether.

A quick history of the series can be found on this article, courtesy of The Other Wiki.

1929

 * Noah's Lark: October 25, 1929

1930

 * Marriage Wows: Jan 8, 1930
 * Radio Riot: Feb 13, 1930
 * Hot Dog: March 29: Debut of Bimbo the Dog.
 * Fire Bugs: May 9
 * Wise Flies: July 18
 * Dizzy Dishes: August 9, The first appearance of Betty Boop.
 * Barnacle Bill: Aug 31
 * Swing You Sinners! Sept 24
 * Grand Uproar Oct. 3
 * Sky Scraping Nov 1
 * Up to Mars Nov 20
 * Accordian Joe Dec 12
 * Mysterious Mose Dec 26.

1931

 * Ace of Spades Jan 16
 * Tree Saps Feb 3
 * Teacher's Pests Feb 7
 * The Cow's Husband March 13
 * The Bum Bandit: April 3
 * The Male Man April 24
 * Twenty Legs Under the Sea May 5
 * Silly Scandals: May 23
 * The Herring Murder Case June 26
 * Bimbo's Initiation: July 24
 * Bimbo's Express August 22
 * Minding the Baby Sept 26
 * In the Shade of the Old Apple Sauce October 16
 * Mask-A-Raid Nov 7
 * Jack and the Beanstalk Nov 21
 * Dizzy Red Riding Hood Dec 12

1932

 * Any Rags? Jan 2
 * Boop-Oop-a-Doop
 * The Robot Feb 5
 * Minnie the Moocher Feb 26
 * Swim or Sink (S.O.S.) March 11
 * Crazy Town March 25
 * The Dancing Fool April 8
 * Chess-Nuts April 13
 * A Hunting We Will Go April 29
 * Hide and Seek May 26
 * Admission Free June 10
 * The Betty Boop Limited

Tropes:

 * Art Evolution: The earliest shorts had a stiff, paper cut-out like feeling to the animation, a holdover from the Fleischers work on their Out of the Inkwell cartoons. This was immediately done away with as soon as they got Grim Natwick on board the staff, who helped beef up the animation of the Fleischer cartoons considerably.
 * Animation Bump: Some parts of the shorts would feature backgrounds that were animated in perspective, a fairly challenging feat to do for an animator.
 * Carnivore Confusion: Humanlike spiders who want to eat the equally humanlike flies in "Wise Flies".
 * Construction Is Awesome: Demonstrated in "Sky Scraping".
 * Deranged Animation: Typical of the Fleischers work, some of these shorts are just plain nutty, especially compared to Disney's product from around the same time.
 * Expy: Bimbo is an expy of the earlier Max Fleischer cartoon dog Fitz, from Out of the Inkwell.
 * Follow the Leader: The series was obviously made to cash in the sound cartoon craze kicked off by Steamboat Willie and the Silly Symphonies shorts. Fortunately, the Fleischers still stuck to their surreal, newspaper cartoon-esque roots in these cartoons, unlike what came later down the road.
 * Mickey Mousing: Prevalent, as it was in early sound cartoons.