Out of the Inkwell (1938 film)

Out of the Inkwell
Directed by	Dave Fleischer
Produced by	Max Fleischer (producer) S. Roy Luby (associate producer)
Animation by	Thomas Johnson Otto Feuer
Color process	Black-and-white
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Running time	7 mins

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.