Honest Love and True (1938)

Honest Love and True Review

Honest Love and True is a 1938 animated short film from the Betty Boop series. It is a pretty strong short.

Betty Boop is a poor-but-honest-actress in the gay 90s who, hungry and cold, gets a job as a singer in a dance-hall saloon. Once a villain kidnaps her, it is up to Freddie to save her. This was the last cartoon in the cycle of shorts that function as melodrama stage plays. It was a glorious run and every single one of these movies was terrific, including this one. This was once a lost movie and the quality of the newly found print is quite poor, but at least we have it, which is great.

Although not amazing as it was overlong and overly focused on music, this was still a great short that benefitted from once again superbly utilized imagery of its stage setting. Betty is very funny throughout. Her song that she sings is memorable and pretty good while some of her lines in the second half made me laugh quite a bit. Freddie is forgettable here, but the villain is delightfully over-the-top as always.

Honest Love and True is the last stage-set Betty Boop short and it’s a very good one. Betty was very funny in it.

My Rating – 4.1