Out of the Inkwell (1938 film)

Out of the Inkwell was the title for a 1938 Betty Boop animated short film. The title and concept for the film were a tribute to the Out of the Inkwell series of films that Max Fleischer had produced during the 1920s.

Synopsis

A live-action Black janitor, played by Oscar Polk, who played one of Scarlett O'Hara's slaves in Gone with the Wind, studies hypnotism from a book while cleaning Max Fleischer's desk at the Fleischer studio. He manages to conjure Max's pen into drawing Betty Boop. In a sequence of animation mixed with live-action, he uses his new powers to control the white animated Boop. She in turn is able to control a small dog. After waking from the spell, Betty manages to work a few more spells. Fraught with racial innuendo, one of her tricks includes turning the Black man white for a split-second, after which he begins cleaning in overdrive. Before that, he was sleeping on his broom and sweeping dirt under the carpet. At the end, Betty Boop leaps into a bottle of black ink.