From 1932 to 1933, jazz musician, songwriter, and bandleader Cab Calloway was featured in three pre-Code Betty Boop cartoons as a singer and dancer: Minnie the Moocher (1932), Snow-White (1933), and The Old Man of the Mountain (1933). While Calloway was not the only jazz musician to be featured in Fleischer Studios’ Betty Boop cartoons (Louis Armstrong notably appeared in I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You [1932]), his contributions to both the jazz and the animation worlds through his work with the Fleischers was impressive, especially because of the cartoons’ groundbreaking use of rotoscope technology to graph Calloway’s signature dance movements onto the bodies of his cartoon avatars. Of the three cartoons, Snow-White in particular reaches dizzying heights of complexity and coolness, but all three short films are important artifacts of jazz history and are particularly notable for their contributions to the shaping and styling of jazz celebrity in the popular imagination.

Minnie the Moocher (1932). 8