Snow-White (1933) User Reviews

A great cartoon

[rbverhoef · 8/10 · 28 March 2004]

This cartoon starring Betty Boop as Snow White, also with elements from 'Sleeping Beauty', is funny from start to finish. It shows how the queen is no longer the fairest in the land, but Betty Boop. Even the mirror falls in love with her so Betty's head must be cut off. We know that it is not going to happen. This is where the part from 'Sleeping Beauty' arrives since she ends up in a block of ice, sliding right into the house of the seven dwarfs. They lift her up in her bed of ice and take her into a cave where the story gets the happy ending.

The whole things is put on music that sounds very familiar. It is great to watch. Not only funny but with nice animation as well, this is one of the better cartoons I have seen.

SNOW-WHITE {Short} (Dave Fleischer, 1933) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 11 January 2014]

Another of the Fleischer Studios' "Betty Boop" cartoons, here putting their mark on a beloved fairy-tale 4 years before this was immortalized by the rival Walt Disney Productions, which would be chosen for the company's first feature-length venture. Though we still get to hear Cab Calloway sing a tune (through the usually silent Koko!), thankfully, the idea that an animated short basically serve as a promo for the current musical hit was on its way out by this stage.

Here, Betty obviously fills the title role – arriving at the castle to visit her stepmother, the Evil Queen; when the latter's proverbial mirror states that the heroine is truly the fairest in the land, the older woman orders her beheading (taking a leaf out of "Alice In Wonderland"!). Incidentally, the Seven Dwarfs barely figure into this at all: Snow-White turns up on their doorstep already encased in ice! On the other hand, the Queen does get to dress up as an old hag…and, yet, the climax – as has become apparent from a number of Betty's 'vehicles' I checked out in quick succession – is typically set in a netherworld of sorts.

An Evil Stepmother and a Magic Mirror--Must be Snow White

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 27 December 2015]

Betty Boop was the signature of surrealism in her time. Here she goes to visit her evil stepmother/queen, who is caught up in asking her mirror who the fairest is. She is really quite ugly, but with no competition, the mirror pretty much caters to her vanity. Then Betty Boop shows up. The stepmother tells her minions to chop off her head. They pretend to but send her off to the dwarfs. Then all kinds of weird stuff begins to happen. The Queen is able to morph into all kinds of things and also has power over the transformation of others. Betty must depend on the forest animals and other creatures to keep her safe. Eventually the evil queen pursues with very strange results. What a mind to come up with some of this stuff.

Magical Kisses

[tedg · 8 January 2006]

You can't do much better in terms of pure, clever cinematic fun, than revisit these Betty Boops, the ones that mix Cab Calloway, ghouls and sexy Betty cavorting with demons. Hallucinogens, jazz, sex.

This isn't my favorite. I count that as "Old Man of the Mountain" of this same year. That one has more spooks, more sex (an attempted rape) and more jazz. This is much more complex, mixing in Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, all of which would be mined by Disney later.

What brought me back to this was seeing "Corpse Bride." It was brilliant, I thought, and drew heavily from the two "Skeleton Dance" cartoons and this little window into the underworld given to us by the Fleischers.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Decent Betty Boop

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 22 January 2016]

Trouble starts when the queen's magic mirror says Betty Boop is fairest. Cab Calloway sings "St. James Infirmary Blues." The part of the cartoon with the Snow White story is pretty decent, though nothing really all that amazing, either. It has the distinction, I believe, of beating Walt Disney to the story, though this film does not nearly do what Disney did.

I love how when Cab Calloway appears in Betty Boop cartoons, it is always weird and sort of spooky. Now, the one with "Minnie the Moocher" is by far the stranger of these two, but this has plenty of odd moments itself. There is another Cab Calloway cartoon, and I suspect he is every bit as weird in that.

Best of the Boop/Calloway collaborations

[froggy-34 · 10/10 · 14 June 2000]

This is a wonderful short humorous cartoon, predating the Disney feature inspired by the same folk-tale.

The Wicked Witch/Queen is jealous of Betty Boop's beauty, and orders Boop's execution. Guards Bimbo and Koko are too kind hearted to carry it out. As in "Minnie The Moocher", the scene shifts to a spooky cave where we are serenaded by the voice of Cab Calloway.

The music and action mesh beautifully, keeping the momentum strong throughout. Watch carefully for a plethora of visual jokes to the sides and behind the action.

Unfortunately, most copies of this cartoon on video were taken from 1950s television prints, which cut off part of the frame.

This is perhaps as close to perfection as the Fleischer Studios achieved. A gem.

This Betty Boop cartoon has a higher rating than Disney's SNOW WHITE?!?!? Where's the justice in that?!

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 29 October 2008]

In 1937, Disney produced the ground-breaking full-length cartoon, SNOW WHITE. Four years earlier, Fleischer Studios made a short version of this classic tale and it starred, of all characters, Betty Boop. Now, for the average Betty Boop cartoon, SNOW-WHITE is a pretty good cartoon--but I would never confuse Betty Boop with great art! The animation, while decent for 1934, is incredibly poor compared to the Disney effort--yet miraculously the overall score for this short is higher than the great Disney film--even though SNOW WHITE is one of the best and most important films in animation history! The very cartoony black and white artwork is passable but shows little artistic flair and,...well,...it's only Betty Boop! About the only really interesting thing is a musical number performed by Koko the Clown and is actually sung by the great Cab Calloway.

An oddity, of course...but NOT in the same league as the Disney classic.

The Strangest Snow White You'l Ever See

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 2 March 2007]

This is another of those Betty Boop cartoons that feature two things: music and an insane storyline with wild visuals where crazy things happen one after the other. Back in the late '60s, we would have thought the cartoonists who made this had to be stoned. I say that because this is not any Snow White story you've ever seen. It's so strange, and it's almost hard to describe.

In one fairly long scene, we hear the voice of the great Cab Calloway while some ghostly spirit-like figure dances through some Dante's Infero/hello underground. It's really bizarre!

Earlier, we get the ugly queen talking several times to her "looking glass" (mirror) with dialog such as, "Am I the fairest in the place?"

The mirror answers, " If I was you, I'd hide my face!"

I'm telling you; these guys MUST have been on acid who wrote and drew some of these early Betty Boop cartoons! They are so wild, it's unbelievable.

There is no indication that the erstwhile title character of this version . . .

[cricket30 · 7/10 · 6 February 2020]

. . . of SNOW-WHITE--"Betty"--has any access at all to firearms. When a child is cooped up with an unstable step-parent prone to spewing out such invective as "Off with her head!!" it's incumbent upon a caring Society to insure that such young ones are packing heat at all times. IF an evil stepmother KNOWS that her princess daughter has an arsenal of shooting irons--preferably including several military-style assault rifles--safely tucked under her bed and pillow, it's far less likely that such jealous jerks will feel free to condemn their kid for such petty and frivolous reasons. Lacking so much as a trusty Derringer, Betty is seized by the nefarious Queen's henchmen and affixed to a tree to await her noggin lopping. Though she escapes the executioner's blade, this miraculous delivery from an involuntary pruning comes at the cost of being frozen into a block of ice! Betty could be spared ALL of this horrendous trauma IF her animators had possessed the foresight to equip her with some sort of a gat! So watch SNOW-WHITE, and then run out to show your support for BANGS (Broke Americans Need Gun Stamps)!

Stunning

[chowbok · 10/10 · 23 May 2002]

Most of this cartoon is top-notch Fleischer fare and definitely worth watching, but there's one part that makes it absolutely stand out: the darkly hypnotic scene where Koko the Clown sings an elegy in Cab Calloway's voice in the underworld while Betty Boop is marched down in her glass coffin by pallbearers. The first time I saw it, it was literally breathtaking; all conversation in the room stopped as soon as Calloway started singing, and we watched, hypnotized, as Koko turns into a skeleton and dances with Calloway's moves in Hell while skeleton fish fly through the air and skeleton humans play poker deep in the background. As good as cartoons get.

Just an incredible effort here! A great short and possibly the best Fleischer ever did!

[llltdesq · 10/10 · 31 July 2002]

Everything about this short is fantastic! The music is perfect, the animation is superb and quite darkly creepy in spots, the story is excellent and everything fits together like a seamless jigsaw puzzle. When Koko (voiced by Cab Calloway) sings "St. James Infirmary Blues", watch his movements. The animators captured Cab Calloway's movements perfectly here. Cab Calloway is caricatured in cartoons frequently in cartoons from others studios and is quite easily recognizable as Cab Calloway in them, but this is something completely different. The character is Koko, but the walk is Calloway and it works completely. Anyone who is a fan of both Koko and Cab Calloway (I may be the only one, although I hope not) will see both characters in one place at one time, a perfect blend without either dominating. That's hard to do under any circumstance. I bow humbly to genius. You have got to see this if you love cartoons! In print and available. The tape is worth it for this one short alone (although it's excellent and there are other great shorts here as well) and is most highly recommended!!!!!! A shot from the other end of the court at the buzzer and nothing but net!!

Forgettable take on the famous story

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 11 July 2015]

This is "Snow-White", the Betty Boop version. Maybe it's her most famous cartoon. She existed already a couple years when this one was made over 80 years ago. I guess the reason why this one here is so well-known is probably the popular material. However, I have to say this has nothing on the classic animated "Snow White" film that was done a couple years later. If the story wasn't so famous, you would not even understand most of it in here I am certain. There are some decent references, including the dwarfs, the evil step-mom or the glass coffin, but all in all it's just not enough. I may be slightly biased here as I have never been the greatest Betty Boop fan admittedly. The director is Dave Fleischer, quite a legend, in fact, and May Questel should also be known to people with an interest in early cartoons. But the best thing about this 7-minute black-and-white cartoon to me was Cab Calloway. Great singing voice really, but not enough to make this film worth a watch in my opinion. Not recommended.

Funniest Snow White ever

[Rectangular_businessman · 10/10 · 6 June 2012]

Only the Fleischer studios would be able to make a cartoon like this, showing all the magic and imaginativeness from the Golden Age of Animation.

There always have been several condensed versions of fairy tales, and several parodies as well, but none of those condensed versions or parodies were so wonderfully crazy as this one.

This short is funny, beautifully animated and incredibly strange and imaginative, taking a very well-know story from the perspective of the Fleischer Studios animations, being one of the fascinating animated shorts ever made.

There aren't cartoons like this anymore, and that's a shame.

10/10 (I would rate this with eleven stars if I could)

A Delicious Feat of Genius!

[roaringgulch · 10/10 · 5 July 2006]

In today's Politically Correct world, something like this is an absolute treasure; the sort of thing even the best of today's cartoons don't even approach. "St. James Infirmary Blues," what a great song; Cab Calloway, what a GREAT musician! The collective imagination of the artists who created the breathtaking imagery of happy skeletons laughing and playing games during the Great Depression's darkest year -- what a treat!

These cartoons were made for the general public and that included children. Funny how I never hear stories about cartoons such as this one leading to all variety of societal ills. A work of art such as this is timeless, as is all great art. What a pity it need probably be purchased in order to be appreciated -- no commercial television station in our plastic age of ready-made souls would dare air it. And that's a real shame.

Betty Boop's take on this classic fairy tale

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 10 July 2012]

Mention Snow White and everybody will immediately think of the Disney masterpiece; this version made four years earlier is much more surreal though... as one would expect from the Fleischer Brothers. Betty Boop appears as the eponymous Snow White and her regular sidekicks Bimbo and Koko appear as a pair of Knights who are ordered to chop of her head when the queen's magic mirror says that Snow White is the fairest in the land. It looks like she is doomed but they don't harm her. After a series of mishaps the end up in a cave, Betty in what appears to be an 'ice coffin'; the evil queen turns up and uses the mirror to turn Koko into a strange apparition that sings 'St, James Infirmary Blues'. Ultimately the mirror saves Betty and her friends and turns the queen into a hideous monster.

This was a very imaginative take on the Snow White story; cramming the whole tale into just seven minutes; including a musical interlude featuring the voice of the great Cab Callaway as Koko. While it is fairly funny the real enjoyment is seeing just how surreal it is... and Betty's Snow White might not be as well known as Disney's but I don't recall the latter's doing a rather sensual dance while tied to a tree! If you haven't seen this I'd definitely recommend checking it out; you might not think of Snow White in the same afterwards though!

Better than Disney! why? it's cool.

[waldorf-t-flywheel · 9/10 · 28 February 2009]

This is a classic example of cool animation. you can not get animation like this anymore, apparently it scares children, but how i do long for the sight of Betty Boop being carried in a frozen coffin by 7 dwarfs into a tunnel. it just works! for many, the Fleischer's aren't their cup of tea (not making sense, not the best animation, creepy) but for me, the animation is fun and inventive and is far more intelligent than Disney's work which i find un-stimulating at times and can drag. fair enough, they embellish the story a tad but, to be fair, they only had ten minutes and they still managed to produce innovations (the dancing, singing, transformed coco the clown has his dancemoves roto-scoped from Cab Calloway's dancing, roto-scoping was invented by them).

But, what i believe sets this out as a true gem among gems is Cab Calloway. A man with a voice that just blows me away and adds real depth to an almost over-covered song. the music is enthralling, the animation entertaining and the end product, magical. please, find this on you tube.

Betty Boop as Snow White

[zardoz-13 · 10/10 · 2 January 2014]

This black & white cartoon appeared far before Disney released its version of "Snow White," and it shares little in common with it aside from the the witch with her mirror and the dwarfs. Betty Boop is the eponymous character, and she is a sexy little thing in a black mini-skirt. Roland C. Crandel's animation gives new meaning to surreal. Dave Fleischer directed it, and he took liberties from the original Grimm's fairy tales. If you remember, Fleischer was responsible for the Oscar nominated "Superman" cartoons. Everything gets off on the wrong foot when the Queen learns from her mirror (this is the same mirror that comes to life and shines her snout like a shoe-shine boy) that she is the fairest in the land--that is--until Betty arrives. Interestingly enough, the mirror resembles an African-American singer Cab Calloway. The imagination that went into this brief but memorable seven minute short is nothing short of amazing. There is symbolism to spare here and so many sight gags that you'll have to watch it a dozen times before you can appreciate all of them. Consider, for example, all the skeletons that appear in the background during the last three minutes.

Narratively, Betty Boop visits the Queen's castle in search of her step-mama. When she approaches the Queen, Her Highness sticks her face through her magic mirror as if it were a hoop and her head transforms into a skillet with two fried eyes as she ogles Betty. No sooner has the Queen laid eyes on Betty than she commands her armor-wearing guards that she wants Betty decapitated. The next scene shows Betty tied to a tree while KoKo sharpens his ax. Betty's mournful song distracts KoKo enough that he grins his ax into powder. He shoves his grindstone tool into a huge hole in the ground and his partner Bimbo thrusts a reluctant tree stump into the hole after it. The two of them plunge into the hole with the unwieldy stump, but wind up far beneath the cliff where the hole comes out. Meantime, the tree that Betty is tied to sprouts arms and releases the little vixen. Poor Betty trips up in the snow and ends up in a giant snow ball that rolls into a frozen pond. She emerges in a transparent ice coffin and slides up to the Seven Dwarfs. The heavily bearded dwarfs serve as pall-bearers and take her to the Mystery Cave with skis on their feet. Back near the tree, the Queen sees the garter belt that the tree placed on the spot where KoKo and his friend plunged into the hole. The magic mirror doesn't tell the Queen what she wants to hear and she scoops the snow off the entrance to the hole and steps through her mirror, transforming herself into the witch. She rides the mirror like a broom down to the end of the hole and KoKo and his canine pal follow her. At this point, KoKo warbles a tune but it is really Cab Calloway singing "St. James Infirmary Blues." Truly, this cartoon qualifies as the most unusual rendition of Snow White ever seen!

Marvel at the animation done to "St. James Infirmary" on Fleischer's Snow-White

[tavm · 9/10 · 8 February 2008]

If there's a unique classic moment in a Fleischer cartoon, it has to be the "St. James Infirmary" number recorded by Cab Calloway as enacted by Koko the Clown who during this number has the evil Queen place her mirror through him and turns him into, I guess, some ghoul that does some great Calloway steps due to the rotoscoping that was done here. And then to turn into a chain and then into a bottle that starts to pour into a shot glass. How awesome was that! Most of the other stuff involving Betty and Bimbo were pretty entertaining but nothing here compares to the sequence I just mentioned. So on that note, Max Fleischer's Snow-White is definitely recommended.

"If I was you, I'd hide your face"

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 27 November 2016]

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.

The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her. The charm, sensuality and adorability factors are here and she's fun to watch. Koko is hilarious with some really imaginatively strange moments, while Cab Calloway's involvement proves to be a masterstroke.

'Snow-White' is for me up there with Betty Boop's best cartoons, the story of 'Snow White' is told at its most wonderfully weird and a case of that done to great advantage. It's so rich in imagination, never less than entertaining and is up there as one of Betty's boldest.

Furthermore, the black and white animation is extremely good, smooth, meticulously detailed and well drawn with the black and white not looking too primitive. A lot of it is actually very imaginative as well, some of the most inventive and eye-popping of the early Betty Boop cartoons to me. Even better is the music, which is rousing, catchy and unquestionably accessible to anybody who loves or is familiar with the composition style.

Overall, outstanding cartoon and up there among Betty Boop's best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Bizarre twisted dark and absolutely magical

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 10/10 · 17 December 2012]

This is a great cartoon, a masterpiece in its own right among the many very old animations of yore. The lack of colour at the time only add to its magic. There's an old animated short for just about anything you could think of, but this is the fevered dream of a madman one! It must have been quite the animation wizard to have created everything that is seen all by himself, although to look at it a sorcerer seems more likely to have have dreamed up this animated dark wonder! This is one incredibly uncanny little vision here, it's a veritable melting-pot of creepy off kilter sights, ideas and atmosphere that is altogether not so much any real kind of take on Snow White, but more of a revolving carnival sideshow of phantasmagorical imagery gone wild - There's things leaping and bounding, morphing and sprouting into and out of other things, all falling into spirals of cackling witches and beautiful menacing skull- faced backgrounds, and all this goes along to sinister musical merriment that together, creates a work that's really totally indescribable, you've got to see it for yourself! It's almost like it's alive, it has a beat, so wonderful! Twisted and eerie are taken to new heights when Koko the clown transforms into something that kind of resembles one of the Mome Raths from Alice in Wonderland with an amazing soulful voice... I found the animation impressive when Betty trips and her big butt rolls all the way down the snowy mountain! It's a very primitive style of animation now, but not to me, that's all part of the charm in how I look at it. The oddball combinations and mind-boggling scenery all made for something greatly appealing to me. It's awesome and disturbing all at once, and absolute nonsense from start to finish, but ever so much wicked fun to watch - a surreal triumph of early animation and a visual feast, one that every fan of great vintage animation needs to check out! A little crazy but charmingly wonderful and timeless x

Cab Calloway

[michaelf · 10/10 · 16 December 1998]

Cab Calloway's soundtrack seems out of place, yet still fits in perfectly. Does that make sense? If not, don't worry. Just enjoy. This is one of the great cartoons of all time.

Betty Boop's Best 'Fairy Tale' Cartoon

[springfieldrental · 9/10 · 26 January 2023]

As the enforcement of the Hay's Censor office in mid-1934 came into effect, Betty Boop's cartoons were forced to tamp down Betty's sex appeal and racy plots. Before that happened, Betty appeared in a number of fairy tale cartoons, the best being March 1933's "Snow White," the first animation of the Brothers Grimm tale. Bette pays a visit to her mean step-mom, The Queen, who's furious when her mirror informs her Betty is the fairest one of them all. The Queens' guards, Bimbo and Ko Ko the Clown, are ordered to execute her and she ends up encased in a block of ice.

Roland Crandall, a talented artist with the Fleischers for years who became the lead animator for the Popeye series, was granted his wish to create the "Snow White" cartoon. Crandall drew most of the seven-minute short, which took six months to complete. His work has been recognized in a poll by members who make a living in the animation field by voting "Snow White" as #19 in the Greatest 50 Cartoons of All-Time.

A psychodelic trip of life and death

[guisreis · 9/10 · 8 October 2021]

Fantastic and dark humored version of Snow White tale by Fleischer Studio, animated by Roland Crandall. Here, Snow White, who is Betty Boop, goes to the castle to see her stepmother, the evil Queen. Furious after listening her magic mirror telling her Betty Snow White Boop is "the fairest in the land", the Queen orders not a hunter to kill her, but her guards Koko the clown and Bimbo. They spare her life, but afterwards there is a very psychodelic trip of life and death in the frozen river and deep in the dwarfs' mystery cave, probably the Hell, involving all characters, magic metamorphosis, dance and Saint James Infirmary Blues in the voice of Cab Calloway. It is a masterwork among nonsense cartoons.

Average cartoon overshadowed by Calloway

[praetorian42 · 9/10 · 30 September 2003]

This cartoon is about average- the storyline is somewhat contrived, some of the voices (the witch with the mirror) are terrible. The animation is very well done and imaginative, and makes up for the rest of the shortcomings. These shorts were definite precursors to some of the more imaginative 70's cartoons.

There is one part of this film that definitely shines above the rest- when one of the Witch's guards breaks out into song. The voice is Cab Calloway, singing "The St. James Infirmary Blues"- the song is absolutely amazing and fits right into the movie. I almost thought the song was made for the movie itself. The way the animation flows through his song, and the transformations that the guard goes through as he sings are just amazing.

Calloway and the animation make this average cartoon remarkable- 9/10