The Jazz Age was a time of short skirts, high heels and wild adventures-and even the animated cartoons got into the act. Betty Boop was the embodiment of a flapper from the 1920’s complete with bobbed curls, long eyelashes and a sassy garter belt peeking from her flippy skirt. She was the creation of a now almost forgotten animator named Max Fleischer.

Max Fleischer was an innovative artist who in many ways was the successor to the creative genius of Winsor McCay. Fleischer was a poor immigrant who came to New York with his family in 1887. He studied to be an artist and got a job as a cartoonist at a small Brooklyn newspaper. But Max was soon joining an old newspaper buddy who had started his own animation studio, John Randolph Bray. Continue reading Animated April: Betty Boop