Channel Frederator Blog

Yes, this 6-foot-4-inch Betty Boop statue is content and intact. That’s because I decided to spare you the sight of the famous decapitated Betty Boop statue now being auctioned off on Ebay. (That is, until the jump. I am sensitive to cartoon community standards!)

Anyway, back in 2005, someone made off with the statue of Betty Boop that sat outside of Cool and Eclectic Furniture in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She was found on the side of the road with her noggin missing-in-action. Despite national publicity and an appearance in the comic strip “Zippy the Pinhead”, her face was never found. (This link takes you to the Zippy strip.)

(Eerie coincidence: In the Betty Boop version of “Snow White”, the Queen orders Bimbo and Koko to behead Betty!)

The famous vandalized vixen is currently for sale on Ebay. CLICK HERE to bid!

Opening bid is $1299. It’s been up there a while and the price started at $1979.99 and keeps dropping so you may want to wait. If you’d like a headed Betty, the one above is available for $1099 .

Just last Friday, Cool and Eclectic Furniture got some more press as they reported the theft of an Elvis statue. (Hmmm…bad luck or publicity stunt?)

See the pathetic sight of headless Betty after the jump…

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If you don’t watch a lot of trashy Reality TV (I admit it, I do!) you probably missed last night’s episode of Sheer Genius, the hairstyling competition show on Bravo. Why post about it here? Because the challenge this week was to give your model a hairstyle based upon one of a select group of cartoon characters. The animated icons were: Wilma Flintstone, Betty Boop, Judy Jetson, Lucy from Peanuts, Jem, and Marge Simpson.

Here are three of the best interpretations: a Marge, a Betty, a Wilma, and a (Grown-Up) Lucy. Lucy won.

Strangely, they kept talking about capturing Lucy’s “innocence”, which is not exactly the first adjective that comes to mind (well, my mind) to describe this clever, high-strung, and rather manipulative young lady!

(Now if only Top Chef would have the Swedish Chef from the Muppets on as a guest judge!)

—Anne D. Bernstein

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Earlier this month, I blogged about Alex Budovsky’s music video for “Last Time at Clerkenwell” by The Real Tuesday Weld. At the time, I didn’t realize that Stephen Coates (the guy behind TRTW) was such a heavy duty fan of animation. The music video above is “The Show Must Go On” which was made by the small Brooklyn animation house Giant Squid Eye Productions. Giant Squid Eye is George Fort (director) and Monica Smith (producer). (Recently, George worked on backgrounds for over-the-top action fest Superjail—coming to Adult Swim this fall. And Monica was color key designer for Supernormal on CITV. A super coincidence?)

Of interest to animation history buffs is the new score Coates composed for Winsor McCay’s The Centaurs. The Centaurs was an unfinished animated film that only survives in fragments. McCay worked on it between 1918 and 1921. Most of the completed footage deteriorated due to poor storage. I think it’s really, really [Read more…]

Thanks to Boing Boing for bringing this Russian version of Winnie the Pooh, called Vinni Puh, to my attention. The state sponsored animation house Soyuzmultfilm crafted its own version of the Pooh tales back in the 1970s. They have their own distinctive style (I love the scribbly backgrounds) and the overall feeling is less delicate and more goofy than the E.H. Shepard interpretation we all know so well.

(By the way, it seems that Shepard ended up hating Pooh. Silly old bear!)

Thinking Pictures goes into detail about Russian interpretations of Pooh here. (Warning: It’s a brainy essay and uses words like Gemütlichkeit and Gemeinschaft. Mickey Mouse is apparently Gemeinschaft.)

And if you are hankering for more Soviet silliness, enjoy these additional Vinni Puh adventures:

Chapter Two (with subtitles)

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

—Anne D. Bernstein

On his blog, Ironic Sans, photographer David Friedman has undertaken an ongoing look at how Manhattan has been depicted in animation. “Animated Manhattan” is up to Part 20, and he’s covering all the bases: TV series set in The Big Apple (The Critic, MTV Downtown); famous cartoon characters paying a visit (Tom and Jerry, The Simpsons, Family Guy); feature films (Madagascar, An American Tail); and memorable independent shorts like Jimmy Picker’s 1983 Oscar-winning musical extravaganza Sundae in New York. (Ed Koch was born to be turned into a claymation character!)

For a bonus Picker Pick, here’s Earth Angel, where an alien falls in love with the Statue of Liberty and croons 50s style to his green gal:

For some behind-the-scenes with Plasticine, go here to watch a 20-minute doc of Picker’s appearance at the Quickdraw Animation Society in Canada.

—Anne D. Bernstein