Boop in Court

Among the characters of cinema cartoons, Betty Boop is the most celebrated human. She sets fashions in haircuts, conversation, dolls. Last week, Betty Boop made her first appearance in a Federal court.

In Manhattan, Fleischer Studios Inc., producers of Boop cartoons, sued Ralph

A. Freundlich Inc. for infringing their copyright by manufacturing Betty Boop dolls. The case came before famed Judge John M. Woolsey, in the same handsomely appointed Bar Association Building court room where two months ago he handed down his historic decision on Joyce's Ulysses (TIME, Dec. 18). After examining a Betty Boop doll and specimens of the real Betty Boop, Judge Woolsey ordered Ralph A. Freundlich Inc. to stop making the dolls, ordered an accounting of their profits. Like his famed decision in the case of the U. S. v. Ulysses, Judge Woolsey 's opinion was accompanied by discerning critical addenda. Woolsey on Boop: "Mr. Freundlich said to a sculptor, showing him a doll, This is about what I want but don't make it exactly like this.' That is a suggestion which I think is comparable to the way they used to sell grapejuice during Prohibition with accompanying instructions not to put any raisins in because if that were done the grapejuice would ferment. . . . "The character which was depicted combined in appearance the childish with the sophisticated -- a round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button and framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a body of which the most noticeable characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable."

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