Antique Perversions: Starring Betty Boop

I'm a big fan of old cartoons, which of course is no secret to all of you out there. But today while I was freeze-framing part of a cartoon from 1930 called "Dizzy Dishes" (which was the first Betty Boop cartoon), I found a surprise.





Here is the cartoon on YouTube, which is unfortunately out of sync, but otherwise OK. If you skip to around 3:12 in the video, you will see a prototype Betty as a cabaret singer. But that's not all you'll see ...









I read somewhere that the Fleischer animators used a lot of their observations about life in 1920s and 30s New York in their cartoons. That's why they are so dark, smutty and entertaining. New York must have been quite a place back then.