Topic: Culture
Here’s a curious artifact from the distant past: a 1932 Betty Boop cartoon of Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher, complete with what appears to be a ghost-walrus doing much of the lead vocal, as well as an amazing opening clip of the very young Calloway himself doing an amazing snake-hips dance that would have been a prominent feature of his performances at the Cotton Club.
And note that Betty Boop’s father’s head turns into a phonograph cylinder player. Celluloid cylinders competed with flat discs through the 1910s, but the disc format won out. Edison sold its last cylinders in 1929, so by 1932 the cylinder would have been a symbol of obsolescence.