Glen Mazza's Weblog

Twentieth-century American jazz band leader Cab Calloway collaborated in 1932 in the creation of a Betty Boop cartoon that featured his signature tune "Minnie the Moocher". In the cartoon, a walrus is drawn performing the song in Mr. Calloway's unique style.

Although of course not to be compared with today's computerized animation technology, the cartoon nonetheless featured a process called rotoscoping, which allowed the cartoonists to draw the movements of the cartoon walrus over still photographs of Mr. Calloway performing, in order to get the walrus' song-performing moves just right.

The song appears in the second half of this 7:45 cartoon, after a few minutes of the usual inanity found in Betty's cartoons.