I want to steer everyone in the direction of Cartoon Brew and their story on Hattie Noel, the beautiful fat actress and dancer who modeled for Disney animators as reference for the hippo ballet sequence in Fantasia. Especially awesome is the clip they found of Hattie at the center of a song and dance number doing the jitterbug for the movie "Irene."

I love it when these things get out of the vault.

Week later update: Color version is up, here's the line art from last week.

Labels: comical, inspirado

What a great clip - Irene is one of those old gems that feature Lindy Hop in its heyday (misidentified in the clip as "Jitterbug").
Hattie in the front of the dance line towards the end does the "Shorty George" - named after Lindy Hop pioneer Shorty George Snowden, a short guy who took advantage of his height by dancing with large women. I wouldn't be surprised if that's another one of Harlem's famous troupes on stage with Hattie, Whitey's Lindy Hoppers. They appeared in a handful of movie dance sequences in the '30s most notably Hellzapoppin (1938) where they popularized aerials in swing dancing and brought their style to the mainstream. I'm gonna have to do some research now and get back to you. A lot of Lindy Hop websites don't list Irene.

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