Stopping the Show (1932)

Stopping the Show Review

Stopping the Show is a 1932 animated short film from the Betty Boop series. It is a slight, but charming early Betty Boop cartoon.

Betty Boop appears on stage in a vaudeville theater. Her act consists of imitations of real-life singers, including Helen Kane, Fanny Brice and Maurice Chevalier. This wasn’t the first Betty Boop short as she did appear in some previous Talkartoons and Screen Songs shorts, but this is the very first cartoon in her own series. Overall, it’s a solid one, but it would undoubtedly prove to be dated for most people today.

I certainly heard about Helen Kane and Fanny Brice, but I don’t know enough about them, so these imitations did not do much for me. Betty’s take on Maurice Chevalier, a classic early 30s actor whom I definitely know a lot about, is a pretty good one. It’s not particularly funny, but it’s charming and seeing Betty Boop in a male suit was quite iconic. The short is basically all vaudeville acts with these animals in the audience clapping enthusiastically, so it did feel slimly plotted and quite repetitive. But it does have that early 30s score, tone and very strong animation that appealed to me.

Stopping the Show isn’t the best Betty Boop short out there, but it’s a perfectly solid first entry. It’s thinly plotted, but quite charming.

My Rating – 3.4